The Educated Listener: A New Approach to Music Appreciation gives professors the freedom to customize the material based on what is most relevant to their courses and allows students to engage deeply with classical music from the Middle Ages right up to the present day. Students will become conversant with music terminology, enabling them to talk intelligently about music with colleagues, family members, and friends. Well organized and comprehensive in scope, students will absorb and internalize this knowledge and use it to enrich their lives.

Section One of the text serves as a prelude, educating readers about music vocabulary, the instruments and ensembles of classical music, and the concert-going experience. Subsequent sections discuss the history of music from the Middle Ages to the present.

Each time period features one chapter on forms, styles, and performance and compositional techniques; one chapter on various music genres; and one chapter on composers of that time period. Professors are free to select the topics most important for their students, and then pair the written material with musical selections from the vast amount of online options, thus creating their own playlists.

Now featuring updated composer biographies, an expanded bibliography, and added images, The Educated Listener is an ideal textbook for courses in music appreciation or music history.