01. The Language of Music (Robert Greenberg, TTC, 2007) VOSE

Professor Greenberg begins the course with an introduction to one of the musical language’s key syntactical elements—timbre, or the actual sound or tone color of an instrument or instruments—beginning with the string section of the orchestra. Course Overview We all know that beneath the surface of music, beyond the joy or excitement or even heartache that this beautiful language of sound can stir within us, lies the often mysterious realm of music theory—a complex syntax of structural and instrumental resources that composers may draw on. No matter what kind of music we listen to—symphony or string quartet, saxophone solo or vocal ballad, hip hop or Gregorian chant—we feel the impact of that music and have done so all our lives, even though we may not know how such impact is achieved, or understand the fundamental processes of musical composition. But what if we did understand how certain musical effects were achieved? What if we could learn to follow the often-intimidating language of key signatures, pitch, mode, melody, meter, and other parts of musical structure used by composers? What if we could recognize these various components at work as we listened to our favorite music? What if we could “speak“ the language of Western music? It’s a language that Professor Robert Greenberg calls rich, varied, and magnificent, and he has little doubt about the rewards of even a beginning level of fluency. “It’s a language that pays us back tenfold—a hundredfold—for every detail we come to recognize and perceive! And it’s a language that will only get richer and more varied, as our increasingly global culture contributes ever more vocabulary to it.“ Learn the Basics of Music Theory without Knowing How to Read Music! In this course, Professor Greenberg offers a spirited introduction to this magnificent language—nimbly avoiding what for many of us has long been the principal roadblock, the need to read music. 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 sidestepping the necessity to read music, these lectures represent an extremely rare opportunity in musical education—an opportunity to experience a solid introduction to music theory’s basics in a way that is not technically intimidating, yet provides a substantial grounding in the fundamentals. As such, Professor Greenberg has devised a highly individualized approach to music theory. There is simply little or no literature in this field that can teach as much without recourse to music notation. Thus, it can appeal to those who are not learning, or even planning to learn, to play a musical instrument or to compose. It can even be beneficial to musicians who do not play a keyboard instrument and may have had difficulty grasping some of the more abstract concepts of music. As much as anything else, the course is designed to help deepen and intensify the experience of Professor Greenberg’s other Teaching Company Courses, currently 21 in number. Professor Greenberg has made use of a variety of tools, including thoughtfully chosen recorded examples, his own demonstrations at the piano, and helpful diagrams. One of those diagrams—a reproduction of a piano keyboard, with its keys identified—frees the student from needing access to a piano or any other keyboard instrument, a traditional demand of most music theory courses. It’s of tremendous help in visualizing many of the course’s most important concepts, such as how “pitch collections“ are built, and it opens up the benefits of this course to anyone without access to a piano or keyboard instrument. The extent of those benefits becomes clear the moment you start to apply the basic knowledge taught in this course. You’ll listen to music with new levels of understanding and appreciation, not only when you find yourself at the concert hall, but also at home with your stereo, and when you’re listening to your favorite music in the car or on a portable player.