Listening musically will not replace listening sensually and expressively, nor make them any less satisfying; it will add another choice of what to listen for, a choice that can enhance your enjoyment and understanding of music.
For many readers, there was a problem with the book.
What to Listen For in Music includes about 40 brief musical excerpts, in the form of short musical scores, such as this one:
What is the poor non-musician to do with this score?
Among other benefits of this resource for Copland's book, this site allows you to hear these excerpts as you encounter them, which I think is what Copland would have wanted, but lacked the technology to provide in his time. Click the video below to play the excerpt.
For maximum effectiveness and enjoyment, listen to these excerpts at the moment you encounter the scores in the book. Try your best to HEAR what Copland is talking about, and understand it, before you read further.
At the end of each chapter, Copland suggested many musical works to listen to. In 1939, few families had record players, and records spun at 78 rpm, were expensive, and broke easily. YouTube was not even a glimmer on a far horizon; but today, technology like YouTube makes it is easy to find and listen to as many of his suggestions as you wish.
The links listed in the right-hand column take you videos of all of the book's musical excerpts and listening suggestions, as well as to many other resources. I developed these resources for a listening-to-music course that I taught from Copland's book. This site should help anyone who reads the book, including those who cannot read musical scores like the one above.
Page numbers in all resources refer to the Signet Classics reissue edition (February 1, 2011) ISBN-10: 0451531760 ISBN-13: 978-0451531766, available at Amazon. There are other editions available, including electronic ones, but their page numbers will differ from this edition. These discrepancies might be inconvenient when you try to listen to videos of musical excerpts in the text.
Many thanks to Adam Matlock for providing videos of all musical excerpts in Copland's book. These videos are the property of Adam Matlock and Gale Rhodes, and you may use them in any way except in get-rich schemes. For that, you need our permission, and likely also that of the publisher.
Other Resources
A Note to the Classically Insecure
This essay should be encouraging to anyone who loves music but is afraid they are missing something essential to their enjoyment of it. The take-home lesson: you know more than you think. In addition, if you are not a big fan of classical music, don't worry: Copland's book and these resources can also enhance your enjoyment of any kind of music you listen to -- that is, if you find that you really do like the idea of understanding more about music. But you will need to listen to some classical music in order to come face to face with more complex forms of music, form such as fugues, sonatas, and symphonies; you simply have to go where such forms are found.
The Science of Music
This supplement provides eight brief instructional units on the physics and biology of music: air; sound; how different types of instruments make sound; how we hear it; how to test and care for our ears; and how microphones, loudspeakers, hearing aids, and cochlear implants work. These are not essential to your understanding of Copland's book, but they should expand the range of your understanding. Personally, I always find that any subject gets better the more I understand.
Oral History of American Music
Want to hear American composers talk about their work and their inspirations? Visit this division of the Yale University Library, which holds a large collection of interviews with American composers who lived at least as long as the 1960s. From then to the present, OHAM has interviewed composers and maintained an archive of them. Among the composers are Eubie Blake, Les Paul, Aaron Copland, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Duke Ellington, Stephen Sondheim, Charles Ives, Joan La Barbara, Anthony Braxton, and Dave Brubeck. Click HERE for full list of interviewees.
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, by Alex Ross (2007)
The Author Reads from his Book, for NPR
If you are curious about all that strange music that developed from the early 1900's to the present, this book might help, especially after you finish Copland's book. Ross's writing about music is freer from jargon than most, and his is a highly respected take on increasingly free-form music that does not exactly make you want to get up and dance.
Listen !
Enjoy Copland's little book!
Tell me how to improve these tools (contact information at One Culture).
Gale Rhodes
Portland, Maine
2019
