This original, graphic-led book explores and explains the key ideas underpinning the world's greatest classical compositions and musical traditions, defines their importance to the musical canon, and places them into their wider social, cultural, and historical context. The nineteenth title in DK's bestselling Big Ideas series, The Classical Music Book combines accessible, authoritative text with bold explanatory graphics to make the subject of classical...

In this book, veteran New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff reimagines the very idea of music appreciation for our times. --Publisher

"A legendary record producer-turned-brain scientist explains why you fall in love with music. This Is What It Sounds Like is a journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favorite songs move you. But it's also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles to became Prince's chief engineer for Purple Rain, and then create other No. 1 hits (including Barenaked Ladies' "One Week")...

When the parade in town is rained out, Mickey and his friends look around the house for things to use to make their own musical instruments, in a book that includes instructions for readers to create their own instruments.

"As a child I loved reading about Greek mythology. I also had a fascination with outer space. This piece utilizes both to teach people about the orchestra in a unique and exciting way"--Insert.

For anyone wanting to master music's language, being able to read musical notation is a necessity. But this course, as Professor Greenberg notes, is a basic course, designed to introduce you to music's language in a way that is similar to the way you learned your own native language, by "discovering and exploring musical syntax through our ears-- by learning what the parts of musical speech sound like--rather than what they look like on paper." By...

An eccentric new boarder turns a young boy's life upside-down. Ludwig van Beethoven has moved in upstairs! Young Christoph exchanges letters about eh chaotic arrival of Mr. Beethoven and learns to appreciate and understand the great composer and his music.

"Survey more than 200 years of musical sounds and styles that are inextricably linked with the spirit and history of the United States of America"--Container. Professor Anthony Seeger teaches viewers how to listen to the music of America with new ears. Produced in collaboration with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, proprietor of the vast treasury of American vernacular music, these twelve lectures explore more than 200 years of music from trailblazers...

The ideal handbook on classical music. Both a CD guide and who's who, it covers a thousand years of music-- from Gregorian chant via Mozart and Schubert to contemporaries such as John Adams and Judith Weir.