Catalog Search Results
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
The cultural environment of California produced some of the most original musical thinkers of the 20th century. First encounter Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, composers of astonishing eclecticism whose works incorporated non-Western musical forms. Also meet John Cage and Morton Feldman, whose "indeterminate" music introduced new conceptions of unpredictability and a non-directional sense of time.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
Learn about three legends of "fingerstyle" guitar - the technique of playing with the right-hand thumb and fingers. Practice the basics of right-hand fingerstyle technique, with alternating fingers. Study the notation of open strings; then extend your fingerstyle to "fingering" chords. Play a G major scale across three strings, and use your fingerstyle in a song.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
Discover the music of visionary composers who turned away from Serialism and Ultraserialism, beginning with Hans Werner Henze and Luigi Nono. Assess the place of postwar Ultraserialism, and the factors that led many to reject it. Explore the extraordinary Stochastic or "sound mass" music of Iannis Xenakis, and how his innovations prefigured and influenced the phenomenal works of György Ligeti.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Take a closer look at the important role of inhalation in vocal technique. Explore three kinds of breath: clavicular (the upper chest), thoracic (the ribcage), and diaphragmatic (the lower abdomen). Then practice a gentle, three-part yoga breath that uses all of them.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
Melodies and harmonies combine pitches according to rules that we have internalized through experience. Listen to musical examples that demonstrate unresolved and resolved expectations. Consider the analogy to grammar in language, and search for a connection between music and language in the brain..
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
First, contemplate the principles of tonal beauty, as taught by the great Romero brothers. Study the technique of "planting", an aid for technical accuracy. Learn the D and A major chords, and how to read key signatures. Then play a new melody in D major, and accompany it in fingerstyle using your new chords.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
Here, take the measure of the Viennese triumvirate of Schoenberg and his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who advanced a historically new, non-tonal music. Delve into the most representative work of this era, Schoenberg's song cycle Pierrot Lunaire, and experience Schoenberg's stunning compositional language. Investigate the extraordinary works and contributions of Berg and Webern.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
In vocal technique, consider how the quality of the exhalation determines the quality of the inhalation. Study the appoggio technique, which focuses on encouraging sternum elevation and rib position during the exhalation. Practice exercises to maintain an open upper body and suspend the inclination to collapse on the exhale, releasing the inhalation and engaging appoggio on the exhale.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
The 1920s saw both an explosion of new compositional languages and a conservative backlash against modernism. Follow the fortunes of Stravinsky, as he created a new ballet score for Diaghilev, incorporating themes from the Baroque composer Pergolesi. In Pulcinella, see how Stravinsky's ingenious treatment of the score created a neo-Classic musical hybrid of astonishing modernist sensibility.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
Follow two lines of research that have put ideas about music’s origins to the test. Start with studies of music perception in monkeys. Then turn to an ingenious experiment with young children, designed to evaluate the theory that musical behavior enhances social bonds between group members..
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
Postmodernism in music represented both a return to the musical values of Romanticism and an amalgam of diverse musical influences. Investigate the music of George Rochberg and David del Tredici, both of whom embraced musical styles from the past. Then explore "pastiche" - direct quotation from earlier works - in the phenomenal music of Luciano Berio, Peter Maxwell Davies, and George Crumb.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
Hear classic road stories of some great guitar players, as they point to the collaborative roles of the guitar. Learn the B7, C7, and G7 chords ("dominant seventh" chords), and grasp their role in musical harmony. Play the scale of E major across all six strings; then use your legato technique, dominant sevenths, and E major scale in accompanying a singer.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
Learning to play the piano is a complex, challenging process, so don't worry if you feel like you're hitting a plateau. In addition to expanding your knowledge of theory - including secondary chords - use this lesson as a time to review what you know and assess what needs work.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
Continue your exploration of piano technique as it developed in the Romantic era. After some warm-up work on scales and extended arpeggios, you will find out what makes Chopin's style so interesting, and what made Liszt such a virtuoso. Conclude with a lullaby from Brahms.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
Enter the world of the blues, and learn about some pioneering pre-war blues players. For left hand technique, practice a "lateral stretching" exercise for flexibility. Add the A7 chord, along with syncopated blues strumming patterns and the A blues scale. Last, play "Blues for Art", incorporating your new strumming patterns and the blues scale.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Begin to explore your voice category, and learn a general way to classify your voice, with the goal of making the most of your own vocal mechanism and choosing repertoire that allows you to shine. Study vocal "registration," encompassing what are called chest voice, head voice, and falsetto. Find the point where your own voice shifts registers, as a guideline for understanding your voice type.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
In the first of two lectures on this giant of 20th-century music, trace the early life of Stravinsky, the environment in which he grew to maturity, and his musical education and influences. Follow Stravinsky's relationship with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, their legendary partnership in the ballets The Firebird and Petrushka, and grasp the striking musical originality of those works.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
This episode breaks down breathing into four phases associated with singing: inhalation, suspension, exhalation, and recovery. Work with exercises to coordinate these phases to create habitual patterns for breath. Experiment with how to make decisions about where you will breathe and divide the phrases, then troubleshoot aspects of breathing and posture that may be challenging.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
Take the measure of guitarist Charlie Christian and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, each of whom transformed jazz and their instruments. Grasp how to work for greater speed and accuracy when playing melodies. Learn "movable" chord shapes for major and minor seventh chords, practice the Dorian modal scale, and use them in a minor blues tune.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Description
Delve more deeply into the concept of chords and see how they can offer a richer harmony than single notes or two-note harmonic intervals. Examine one of the most popular chord progressions: I-IV-V-I (tonic to subdominant to dominant to tonic), one of the most common patterns in Western music.
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