If every journey starts with a single step, as the cliché says, let’s begin this Listening Journey with a selection of seven pieces that present much richness and variety. 

We’ve designed this course to guide you through a selection of pieces that are significant, vivid, and enjoyable. These compositions will serve as musical highways, leading to other pieces that will deepen and extend your experience.

Like most descriptions, the term “Baroque” was given after the fact by historians to describe the artistic and cultural styles that flourished across Europe from around 1600 to the mid 18th century.

If you look at the decorations in any palace of the era, you’ll find overwhelming displays of gold-leafed ornamentation, musical flourishes that are not necessary to carry the overall line of the melody (e.g. trills and grace notes), but which are added for interest frequently through improvisation, rows of sparkling chandeliers, floors almost dizzying with the designs of their geometrically elaborate inlaid floors (parquet), and gardens manicured in symmetrical patterns with technologically sophisticated fountains.

Most of us, as kids, loved to go fast. The faster and more furiously, the better! We are all attracted to compositions filled with fireworks. We use the term virtuosity to describe music-making that thrills us with its speed or fury. A player or singer able to perform with this kind of skill is called a virtuoso. And music demanding this kind of skill is labeled virtuosic.

The singer’s sound is individual and unique. A singer’s very breath and physiological structure combine to create the music we hear: it is impossible to separate the singer from the song.

The vocal selections chosen for this stage of our course allow you to experience the dynamic connection between singer and song. In each case, you will hear singers infusing famous songs with the qualities of their individual musical gifts, shaping the songs poignantly and powerfully.

Image: Manet, Spanish Singer

Within the classical world, the term “chamber music” describes music-making in small groups. We categorize both the works and the compositions as duos, trios, quartets, quintets, all the way to nonets, after which point the term “ensemble” works best. Over time, trios and quartets have dominated in the string world, while wind players are likely to find themselves drawn to the combined sound of more players (quintets, septets, and octets).

Gabbiani, Portrait of Three Musicians of the Medici Court (c. 1687)

The term “Romanticism” has multiple meanings. In music, though, it refers to an artistic and cultural atmosphere that prevailed throughout the 19th century and affected everything from poetry and painting to fashion and horticultural design. Causes for “Romanticism” include the turmoil and question of values brought about by the Napoleonic era, the rapid changes in technology and science, and the desire of artists to explore new territory.

Caspar David Friedrich, Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon

Human beings find satisfaction in clear, perceptible forms and structures. And they like to return periodically to such principles, particularly when their own contemporary styles have veered away from clarity of form and mathematical structures. People also seek and appreciate the continued relevance of almost any well-formulated creative expression, whether it be in music and the arts or in another area like fashion, design, and cuisine. So, we can expect the term “classical” to be with us a long time.

Raphael, School of Athens (detail)

Innovations may involve every one of the rudiments of music, from new configurations of rhythms, vastly compressed or stretched melodies, unexpected harmonic constructions, surprising combinations of instruments, or unusual thinness or thickness in combining musical lines.

Image: Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (c. 1916), Pedro Ribeiro Simões (CC BY 2.0)