The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works (Transcript)

By Robert Greenberg

The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works is the companion book to the audio/video series of the same name. It contains a full transcript of the series as well as the complete course guidebook which includes lecture notes, bibliography, and more.

About this series:

The Late Middle Ages - the two centuries from c. 1300 to c. 1500 - might seem like a distant era, but students of history are still trying to reach a consensus about how it should be interpreted. Was it an era of calamity or rebirth? Was it still clearly medieval or the period in which humanity took its first decisive steps into modernity? These 24 provocative lectures introduce you to the age's major events, personalities, and developments, and arms you with the essentials you need to form your own ideas about this age of extremes - an age that, according to Professor Daileader, "experiences disasters and tragedies of such magnitude that those who survive them cannot remember the like, and doubt that subsequent generations will be capable of believing their descriptions. "You'll look at the Black Death, the carnage of frequent wars, and the religious turmoil we associate with the Middle Ages." But you'll also look at the beginning of the intellectual and cultural movement known as Humanism, which planted the seeds of modernity. Humanism's precepts, which hearkened back to the moral inspiration inherent in classical artistic values, humans have an enormous capacity for goodness, for creativity, even for the achievement of happiness. But these were hardly the only forces that tug modern-day historians in multiple directions. The Middle Ages was also a period when the persisting legacy of knights, serfs, and castles coexisted with the cannons and muskets newly made possible by gunpowder. With so many contradictions, it's no wonder that historians have differed widely on how to judge this era-debating even when it ended and modernity began.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Great Courses
• Release date: Sep 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781598037685

Book preview

Reviews for The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works (Transcript)

[tatoosh-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This 32-hour DVD-Book combination begins with a dense and compact exposition on musical forms (e.g., ritornello, minuet and trio, sonata) and orchestral genres. While enlightening, the general impression conveyed is that the reader is in for a heavy time. That turns out to be inaccurate. The next 30 chapters focus on a single work by a renowned composer. Two or more works of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Mozart, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky and single works by 15 additional composers are examined. The final chapter briefly mentions several other composers. Greenberg begins each of the chapters on musical compositions with a brief synopsis of the life and background of the composer. Anecdotes illustrating significant events in or related to the composer’s life are recounted and psychological insights into the psyche of the composer are offered. An overview of the composer’s body of work follows. This varies in length and detail depending on the composer, the unique nature of the focal work and whether a single or multiple chapters are devoted to the composer’s works. This material is informative, well documented, and every bit as interesting as the material focusing on the composition.The chapter then turns to a detailed analysis of the focal work. Greenberg selects important movements and segments within those movements and illustrates the how the musical structure differs from the prevailing approach. A well-trained ear is an asset but by no means necessary as Greenberg’s explanation of the concepts and demonstration of them on the piano is easy to grasp. Nevertheless, I sometimes found the components difficult to recognize when the symphonic work was played by a full orchestra as we would hear it on a CD or in the concert hall. Greenberg’s explanation greatly enhanced my understanding of the novel approaches of the composers, because the innovative elements of the symphony meld together into a harmonious composition. “The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works” is an outstanding CD-Book combination that will increase even the most knowledgeable reader/viewer’s understanding of the featured symphonies and of the ingenious approaches of the composers. It is an excellent reference to keep on your shelf for ease in reviewing a relevant chapter before departing for the symphony hall. Doing so will contribute significantly to your appreciation of the work to be performed.