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The Classical Music Experience: Hear & Discover Exclusive Access to More than 40 Hours of Music from the World's Greatest Composers Online
Featuring the work of 61 composers and spanning over 500 years of classical music history, this book examines the works of each of the great composers, as well as including a guide to what to listen for in each piece.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
360 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 19, 2021
The brief composer biographies are usually interesting but they all smack of “great white man” history. Yes, the author is trying to cover breadth instead of depth but the fact that not a single woman or person of color is reviewed in never addressed as a problem and only given backhanded acknowledgment. (The author lists a number of women composers in a single paragraph but then implies that he couldn’t include any of them because they weren’t great.) The fact that several of the composers have connections to the Nazis is hand-waved away. Also, the author’s personal voice frequently comes across as condescending and arrogant with his irrelevant asides, name drops, and judgmental pronunciations. This could have been an okay book but the constant small irritations meant I rushed through the las couple chapters just to get it over with.
January 2, 2022
I enjoyed this when I was 14 haha
August 15, 2016
Summary: The book is too exhaustive for an introduction. While the book is a great resource for a music library, the beginning listener (the target demographic for the book) will have difficulty distinguishing the styles of different composers and it's easy to get mired in 'this sounds a lot like that'.
Dr. Jacobson would have helped the reader tremendously by introducing the book with a few chapters on musical theory and the structure of classical music. Before you say 'that's taking it too far', consider that the book is 350 pages long and includes over 50 hours of listening material. Giving the reader an idea of what they should be listening for would behoove the listener and the author. The author does, however, do a great job with the composer biographies which were intriguing (even the writing of classical music has heartache and loss as the artistic inspiration for much of its work). From intrigue and betrayal to friendship and sponsorship, composers were celebrated, admired, and even reviled.
One of the fascinating plot lines throughout the ages of classical music is the censorship of rulers over music. Yes, even in classical music! Dictators, communists, and the the church itself railed against composers who innovated outside of the predefined norm or who dared to use atonality in their works. Some, like Profofiev, caved to the pressure and repented of their "infection...caught from contact with some Western ideas" while others faced persecution and either left their homelands and still others (like Wagner) sold out and joined the ruling movement with active participation.
I created a spotify playlist with the majority of the assigned listening pieces here:
https://play.spotify.com/user/lukqbwr...
The list does not include all of the mentioned music in the book, just the tracks assigned by the author.
Dr. Jacobson would have helped the reader tremendously by introducing the book with a few chapters on musical theory and the structure of classical music. Before you say 'that's taking it too far', consider that the book is 350 pages long and includes over 50 hours of listening material. Giving the reader an idea of what they should be listening for would behoove the listener and the author. The author does, however, do a great job with the composer biographies which were intriguing (even the writing of classical music has heartache and loss as the artistic inspiration for much of its work). From intrigue and betrayal to friendship and sponsorship, composers were celebrated, admired, and even reviled.
One of the fascinating plot lines throughout the ages of classical music is the censorship of rulers over music. Yes, even in classical music! Dictators, communists, and the the church itself railed against composers who innovated outside of the predefined norm or who dared to use atonality in their works. Some, like Profofiev, caved to the pressure and repented of their "infection...caught from contact with some Western ideas" while others faced persecution and either left their homelands and still others (like Wagner) sold out and joined the ruling movement with active participation.
I created a spotify playlist with the majority of the assigned listening pieces here:
https://play.spotify.com/user/lukqbwr...
The list does not include all of the mentioned music in the book, just the tracks assigned by the author.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews