What to Listen for in Music - Aaron Copland

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Category: Non-fiction. Acquired: Christmas present Read: Jan/Feb 2009 Briefly: one of the great American composers describes the elements, structure, texture and fundamental forms of music.

Comments: I have always wanted to take a music appreciation course, having missed it during my school years (it's not part of most engineering curricula). While looking for a self-study book I found this one, which is apparently a classic in the field. It made sense to me that you'd want to learn music appreciation directly from a composer, i.e. to hear him talk about how he goes about creating art from the various elements available to him. So, I put it on my Amazon wish list for Christmas, and there it was.

The book was enjoyable reading, although the jargon got a little technical at times - it's definitely not a beginner's book. But the bigger issue was that you really can't do music appreciation without actually hearing examples of the concepts being explained (doh!). The book has plenty of examples, but they're simply given as musical scores, as if expecting the readers to stop and plunk them out on their pianos. Right.

So, at this point, I'd have to say that I'm no more music-appreciative than I was in the beginning. That means I'm still looking for a book, but this time I'm looking for one that includes an audio CD. Any recomendations?