This course is designed to help you learn how to listen to music in an intelligent, active way. It presupposes that music, when pursued as an art form (and much fruitful debate may ensue among us about what constitutes "art" music and what doesn't), requires us to focus in a way that uses our full human capacities and senses. The gifted listener is as important to the future of music as are its composers and performers. Listening and understanding great music can be demanding, intellectual work, but it is work that pays off in aesthetic and emotional dividends for the rest of one's lifetime. Few people know how to look for and find beauty in a work of art. Just as looking at the Mona Lisa does not guarantee that you "get" it, a Beethoven or Bartok string quartet does not yield its secrets on the first hearing. In other words, learning how to listen (and what to listen "for") REQUIRES PRACTICE. For this reason, you must own copies of the 6-CD set that accompanies Kerman's "Listen" textbook.

Supplementary to this course is material found online that was designed by Anthony Brandt at Rice University. It is an online course entitled "Sound Reasoning." We will use his approach to listening in the early stages of the semester. It amounts to learning how to listen globally, to the BIG picture, before attending to the details of the music. The Sound Reasoning link can be found at:

All Masterworks students are required to attend three (3) concerts during the semester. To receive credit for attending a concert you must file a Concert Report. It is your responsibility to look at the list of concerts at the beginning of the semester and make sure you can commit to three of them.

If you want to hone your listening skills beyond the class assignments, you have at least three areas of opportunity:

1. Pieces discussed in the Kerman book but not assigned in the course.
2. Compact discs in the Millsaps Library. We now have listening carrels and a collection of CDs which you may listen to in the library. I will post additional listening on the course website in MP3 format.
3. You are encouraged to listen to classical music radio. FM 91.3 (Public Radio Mississippi) plays classical music regularly.
4. Additional concerts (links coming soon): MS Symphony, Thalia Series, Bell Concert Series,etc.