The Music category has 313 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 510 ratings. The most-rated is How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition.

313 audiobooks
Cover art for The Rest Is Noise

The Rest Is Noise

3 ratings

Summary

The Rest Is Noise takes the listener inside the labyrinth of modern music, from turn-of-the-century Vienna to downtown New York in the '60s and '70s. We meet the maverick personalities and follow the rise of mass culture on this sweeping tour of 20th-century history through its music. Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including two ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism. In addition, he was named a 2008 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, given for achievements in creativity and potential for making important future cultural contributions.

©2007 Alex Ross (P)2007 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Narrator: Grover Gardner
Author: Alex Ross
Length: 23 hrs and 7 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Song of a Nation

Song of a Nation

3 ratings

Summary

The greatest story never told, this formidable and gorgeous biography documents the amazing and controversial short life of Calixa Lavallée - the composer of "O Canada" - and the tumult of 19th-century North America. The story of "O Canada" is one of the great unknowns of our collective lives. No longer. This formidable and gorgeous tale documents the history of this song of a nation, from its origins in French Canada in the years just after Confederation to the surprisingly controversial story of its adoption as Canada's national anthem 100 years later. Song of a Nation is also the extraordinary and mysterious story of Calixa Lavallée - the anthem's French-Canadian composer - and his compelling, almost unbelievable personal journey: his early life as a blackface minstrel, travelling throughout the United States for more than a decade; his service for the Union Army in the American Civil War; his production of the first opera in Quebec; and, in a final act, becoming a leading figure in American music education.  To understand "O Canada", and to understand the man who wrote it, is to return to the Canada of the mid-1800s, just forming as a nation, bringing together ancient racial hatreds and novel political possibilities. More than just a song, in its own story "O Canada" evokes the history of a country creating an identity for itself out of the unique forces and rivalries of French and English Canada, and looking to the infinite possibilities that lay ahead.

©2018 Robert Harris (P)2018 McClelland & Stewart

Narrator: Robert Harris
Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Alan Cross Guide to Alternative Rock, Volume 2

The Alan Cross Guide to Alternative Rock, Volume 2

2 ratings

Summary

In the second of four volumes, Alan Cross reveals the fascinating stories behind the music, focusing on the following top performers: Joy Division, New Order, The Cure, Depeche Mode, U2, Brian Eno, Skinny Puppy, and The Pixies.

©2007 Alan Cross (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Narrator: Alan Cross
Author: Alan Cross
Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Ring of the Nibelung: Opera Explained

Ring of the Nibelung: Opera Explained

2 ratings

Summary

Wagner’s Ring cycle is the most ambitious work in the history of music: four operas that combine to tell a single epic story. Based in legend, it has become a legend in its own right: a supreme challenge for conductors, singers, opera producers, and indeed for audiences. But for all its grandeur and complexity, The Ring is far more accessible than many music lovers think. This audiobook guide explains the basics of the plot, profiles the leading characters, and shows how Wagner’s revolutionary music adds fascinating layers of meaning and psychological insight, as well as providing some of the most stirring and intoxicating moments in the entire operatic repertoire.

©2007 Naxos AudioBooks (P)2007 Naxos AudioBooks

Narrator: Stephen Johnson
Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Country Music

Country Music

2 ratings

Summary

The rich and colorful story of America's most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the 20th century - based on the upcoming eight-part film series to air on PBS in September 2019 This deeply researched and hugely entertaining history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on Saturday nights. With the birth of radio in the 1920s, the songs moved from small towns, mountain hollers, and the wide-open West to become the music of an entire nation - a diverse range of sounds and styles from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the decades to the music's massive commercial success today. But above all, Country Music is the story of the musicians. Here is Hank Williams' tragic honky tonk life, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt-poor childhood, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into songs that spoke to women everywhere. Here, too, are interviews with the genre's biggest stars, including the likes of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with endlessly fascinating anecdotes, the stories in this sweeping yet intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to an extraordinary body of music that lies at the very center of the American experience.

©2019 Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns (P)2019 Random House Audio

Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Play It Loud

Play It Loud

2 ratings

Summary

The inspiration for the Play It Loud exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art "Every guitar player will want to read this book twice. And even the casual music fan will find a thrilling narrative that weaves together cultural history, musical history, race, politics, business case studies, advertising, and technological discovery." (Daniel Levitin, Wall Street Journal)  For generations the electric guitar has been an international symbol of freedom, danger, rebellion, and hedonism. In Play It Loud, Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna bring the history of this iconic instrument to roaring life. It's a story of inventors and iconoclasts, of scam artists, prodigies, and mythologizers as varied and original as the instruments they spawned.  Play It Loud uses 12 landmark guitars - each of them artistic milestones in their own right - to illustrate the conflict and passion the instruments have inspired. It introduces Leo Fender, a man who couldn't play a note but whose innovations helped transform the guitar into the explosive sound machine it is today. Some of the most significant social movements of the 20th century are indebted to the guitar: It was an essential element in the fight for racial equality in the entertainment industry; a mirror to the rise of the teenager as social force; a linchpin of punk's sound and ethos. And today the guitar has come full circle, with contemporary titans such as Jack White of The White Stripes, Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent), and Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys bringing some of the earliest electric guitar forms back to the limelight.  Featuring interviews with Les Paul, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, and dozens more players and creators, Play It Loud is the story of how a band of innovators transformed an idea into a revolution. 

©2016 Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna (P)2016 Random House Audio

Narrator: Rob Shapiro
Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Concerto

The Concerto

2 ratings

Summary

The concerto offers a kind of unique excitement no other instrumental music can match. Where a symphony enthralls us with its thematic variations and development, a concerto gives us human drama - the exhilaration of a soloist or group of soloists ringing forth against the mass of the orchestra. In 24 musically rich lectures, Professor Greenberg provides a guided tour of the concerto, from its conception as a child of Renaissance ideals, through its maturation in the Classical age, its metamorphosis in the Romantic era, and its radical transformation in the 20th century and beyond. You'll listen to selections from nearly 100 concerti from more than 60 composers - from Gabrieli to Gershwin, from Schumann to Shostakovich. Along with the bedrock of the repertoire - represented by Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Rachmaninoff, Bartok, and many others - you are introduced to superb concerti by a host of less-familiar masters. You'll study in depth some of the greatest and most beloved works of the genre, including Mozart's Concerto for Flute in G Major, K. 313; Haydn's Concerto for Trumpet in E-flat Major; Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4 in G Major, op. 58; Chopin's Piano Concerto no. 2 in F Minor, op. 21; Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor, op. 16; and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 35. Finally, you'll look at some notoriously esoteric and difficult 20th-century composers, including Arnold Schönberg and Elliott Carter, learning how their music is much more accessible than it appears. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2006 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2006 The Great Courses

Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Music of Richard Wagner

The Music of Richard Wagner

2 ratings

Summary

In these 24 lectures filled with musical excerpts, enjoy a rich and multifaceted exploration of the trailblazing works and outsized life of this historically pivotal composer. Your immersion in Wagner's art includes the following: The Flying Dutchman (which illustrates several of Wagner's key compositional innovations) Tannhäuser (the saga of a medieval knight torn between two worlds) Tristan and Isolde (Wagner's crowning masterpiece) And, of course, The Ring of the Nibelung (arguably the single most ambitious theater work ever created) The sheer outlandishness of Wagner's life makes for an endlessly intriguing story, from his desperate escapades outrunning creditors to his obsessive personal relationships to his utopian artistic schemes. In his writings, letters, and public actions, you investigate the often contradictory - and hypocritical - aspects of his personality. And, reflecting on the nationalist spirit of his time, you track his core desire to make "German Art in the service of a German national identity," even as he created a body of works whose communicative power transcends any national boundary. With Professor Greenberg's passionate and razor-sharp commentary, you'll plumb the fabulous mystery of a man who gave the world something of deeply compelling and universal resonance: music of great genius and a poetry that reveals the depths of the human psyche. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2010 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2010 The Great Courses

Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Music

Music

2 ratings

Summary

"A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched" (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who borrowed innovations, diluted their impact, and disguised their sources. In Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia reclaims the story of music for the riffraff, insurgents, and provocateurs. Gioia tells a 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval. He shows how outcasts, immigrants, slaves, and others at the margins of society have repeatedly served as trailblazers of musical expression, reinventing our most cherished songs from ancient times all the way to the jazz, reggae, and hip-hop sounds of the current day. Music: A Subversive History is essential for anyone interested in the meaning of music, from Sappho to the Sex Pistols to Spotify.

©2019 Ted Gioia (P)2019 Basic Books

Narrator: Jamie Renell
Author: Ted Gioia
Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Biscuits, Bands and Very Big Plans

Biscuits, Bands and Very Big Plans

2 ratings

Summary

From the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, the Red House Children's Book Award, the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Blue Peter Best Story Book Award 2013 comes the 14th instalment in the brilliant Tom Gates series!  Tom Gates and his hilarious adventures are back! Can Tom and DogZombies write a new hit song, get a peek at Delia's top secret diary and complete his doodle-a-day mission?

©2018 Liz Pichon (P)2018 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Narrator: Russell Tovey
Author: Liz Pichon
Length: 1 hr and 42 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Appetite for Self-Destruction

Appetite for Self-Destruction

2 ratings

Summary

For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world - and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology. Based on interviews with more than 200 music industry sources - from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning - Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride through the past three decades. From the birth of the compact disc, through the explosion of CD sales in the '80s and '90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to iTunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the boardrooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen.

©2009 Steve Knopper (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Narrator: Dan John Miller
Length: 11 hrs
Available on Audible
Cover art for That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound

That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound

2 ratings

Summary

That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound is the definitive treatment of Bob Dylan's magnum opus, Blonde on Blonde, not only providing the most extensive account of the sessions that produced the trailblazing album but also setting the record straight on much of the misinformation that has surrounded the story of how the masterpiece came to be made. Including many new details and eyewitness accounts, as well as keen insight into the Nashville cats who helped Dylan reach rare artistic heights, it explores the lasting impact of rock's first double album. Based on exhaustive research and in-depth interviews with the producer, the session musicians, studio personnel, management personnel, and others, Daryl Sanders chronicles the road that took Dylan from New York to Nashville in search of "that thin, wild mercury sound." As Dylan told Playboy in 1978, the closest he ever came to capturing that sound was during the Blonde on Blonde sessions, where the voice of a generation was backed by musicians of the highest order.

©2019 Daryl Sanders (P)2018 Tantor

Narrator: Graham Halstead
Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Great Music of the 20th Century

Great Music of the 20th Century

2 ratings

Summary

The 20th century was a hotbed of musical exploration, innovation, and transformation unlike any other epoch in history. Ranging across the century in its entirety, these 24 lectures present a musical cornucopia of astounding dimensions - a major presentation and exploration of the incredible brilliance and diversity of musical art across a turbulent century. Using a chronological approach, you'll explore the fascinating gamut of 20th-century musical "isms", from impressionism and fauvism to serialism, stochasticism, ultraserialism, neoclassicism, neotonalism, and minimalism as well as the inclusivity and synthesis within concert music that embraced Western historical styles, folk and popular music, jazz, rock, Asian, Latin American, and other influences in the service of heightened musical expression. Through the panoramic view of the course, you'll discover the genius of composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Bartok, Ligeti, Riley, and many others. Far more than simply a series of lectures, the program comprises a huge and many-sided resource for discovering the endless riches of 20th-century concert music across the globe. The phenomenal range of genres and composers covered and the wealth of suggestions for specific works make this a reference that could easily inspire years of musical exploration and glorious listening. This remarkable inquiry opens the doors to an extraordinary spectrum of contemporary masterpieces that await discovery and deep listening. Within these unique and riveting lectures, Professor Greenberg offers you the keys to understanding and deep enjoyment of a revolutionary, visionary, and magnificent era in music. In Great Music of the 20th Century, you'll experience the living, evolving, and superlative musical art that so vividly and unforgettably speaks to the life of our times. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio. 

©2018 The Teaching Company, LLC; 2018 The Great Courses (P)2018 The Great Courses

Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Powerhouse Singing Techniques

Powerhouse Singing Techniques

2 ratings

Summary

This audiobook reveals how the greatest singers in the world practice and develop their voices. In Powerhouse Singing Techniques, vocal coach James Cohen reveals it all: how to develop one's voice to its full potential. After teaching thousands of students, Cohen has discovered what really works, and he explains it all in simple terms anyone can understand and follow. The methods and techniques in this book will work for anyone, using any method or voice teacher. Consider giving this book to your voice teacher as a gift! That being said, this is not a program for beginners. Among the many powerful techniques, you will learn: The secret to a *perfect* tone (i.e. beautiful sound) Why warm-ups are crucial to voice development (and how to do them) The only method to developing high notes you'll ever need! The $795 voice maintenance tool (yours, for free) The best supplements for your voice The one psychological trick that will boost your voice forever The only breathing method you'll ever need The one thing you must do in every voice lesson (if you want to reap the benefits from the lesson) The one thing you must do after every voice lesson (otherwise you just wasted your time and money) The one mistake almost every voice teacher makes, and how to avoid it Why online voice courses rarely work (and how you can fix that) And more!

©2017 James A. Cohen (P)2017 James A. Cohen

Narrator: Jared Capper
Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Concert Masterworks

Concert Masterworks

2 ratings

Summary

Have you ever thought about the creative process that boiled inside geniuses like Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorák, Strauss, Brahms, Mendelssohn, or Liszt - or any composer, for that matter? What goes through a composer's mind when a musical composition is being set to paper? Are those magical weeks or months spent in an agonizing creative blur of ideas first tried and then discarded, or is it a matter of pure inspiration? Does the composer hear the music in his head before even picking up a pen, or does the music in fact begin on that blank sheet of staff paper? Most important, can lay listeners like us, untrained in music's technicalities, learn how to open our ears to a composer's creative intentions? Happily, the answer is a resounding "yes!" And in this series of 32 lectures, a professional composer and accomplished teacher will give you a new level of sophistication as a music listener - using as his teaching tools some of the most memorable works in all of music, by geniuses whose work has not only withstood time, but transcended it. Through listening to these lectures, you'll gain a new grasp of the intricacies of musical purpose, structure, and narrative content that you will then be able to hear in any piece of music. And though this is a demanding course, with a deeper look into musical structure than untrained listeners are likely to have experienced, it is not an intimidating one. Professor Greenberg vividly positions each composition and its composer in the social and musical fabric of its period, so you can understand the music in its proper societal and artistic context and feel its emotional power in the same way as did its original audiences. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©1995 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)1995 The Great Courses

Length: 24 hrs and 50 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for For the Sake of Heaviness

For the Sake of Heaviness

2 ratings

Summary

The story of Metal Blade Records is the story of Brian Slagel - a metal-obsessed Southern California kid who launched a fanzine and landed a record store job before cobbling together what he assumed would be a one-off compilation of fledgling bands from the LA scene. Released in 1982, the Metal Massacre LP included the debut recordings of local groups such as Steeler, Malice, Ratt, and Metallica. In the wake of the album's unexpected success, Slagel virtually stumbled into creating a proper record label, issuing the first releases by Bitch, Armored Saint, and Slayer the following year. Read by Brian Slagel in his own casual and informal style, For the Sake of Heaviness is an inside look at how he built Metal Blade from a one-man operation in his mom's non-air-conditioned garage to the preeminent international home of heavy music it is today. He shares his insights into signing and working with Cannibal Corpse, Flotsam and Jetsam, Gwar, King Diamond, Manowar, Mercyful Fate, Overkill, and others. Always hard at work on a diverse range of projects, Brian reveals the early advice he gave that helped guide Motley Crue's career; how he helped Metallica replace their bassist - twice; his detailed work on Thin Lizzy and Alice Cooper reissues; his behind-the-scenes role in the careers of Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains, and Lamb of God; and his unlikely ventures with kindred metal heads - from hockey star Ken Baumgartner, to celebrity chef Chris Santos, to The Howard Stern Show's Richard Christy, to comedians Jim Florentine, Don Jamieson, and Jim Breuer. Throughout For the Sake of Heaviness, Brian steps aside to present first-person insights and extended guest interviews featuring friends, colleagues, Metal Blade staffers, and a long list of artists, including Metallica's James Hetfield, Slayer's Kerry King, King Diamond, and many more. Each of these segments is performed in the audio edition by John Bush of Armored Saint. Brian highlights the ins and outs of his 35-year metal odyssey, from promoting small shows in California's San Fernando Valley in the early days, to forging a major partnership with Warner Bros. Records; from weathering the Parents Music Resource Center's attempts to regulate lyrical content, to squaring off with Time Warner over Gwar's envelope-pushing themes; from nearly going bankrupt after underestimating the impact of the rise of CDs; to surviving and thriving in today's rapidly changing music business environment. Featuring a foreword by Metallica's Lars Ulrich, For the Sake of Heaviness pulls back the curtain to reveal the definitive look at how Metal Blade began, what they've accomplished, and where they're going. With the help of cowriter Mark Eglinton, Brian Slagel invites the listener into a personal conversation about his life's passion and the passion that drives Metal Blade - finding, exposing, and promoting the best heavy music on the planet.

©2017 BMG Books (P)2019 BMG Books

Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The Supreme Team: The Birth of Crack and Hip-Hop, Prince's Reign of Terror and the Supreme/50 Cent Beef Exposed

The Supreme Team: The Birth of Crack and Hip-Hop, Prince's Reign of Terror and the Supreme/50 Cent Beef Exposed

2 ratings

Summary

When the crack era jumped off in the 1980s, many street legends were born in a hail of gunfire. Business-minded and ruthless dudes seized the opportunities afforded them, and certain individuals out of the city's five boroughs became synonymous with the definition of the new-era black gangster. Drugs, murder, kidnappings, shootings, more drugs, and more murder were the rule of the day. They called it The Game, but it was a vicious attempt to come up by any means necessary. In the late 1980s, the mindset was get mine or be mine, and nobody embodied this attitude more than the Supreme Team. The Supreme Team has gone down in street legend and the lyrical lore of hip-hop and gangsta rap as one of the most vicious crews to ever emerge on the streets of New York. Their mythical and iconic status inspired hip-hop culture and rap superstars like 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Biggie, Nas, and Ja Rule. Born at the same time as crack, hip-hop was heavily influenced by the drug crews that controlled New York's streets. And the cliché of art imitating life and vice versa came full circle in the saga of the Supreme Team's infamous leaders - Kenneth Supreme McGriff and Gerald Prince Miller. In the maelstrom of the mid-80s crack storm and burgeoning hip-hop scene, their influence and relevance left a lasting impression. Going from drug baron to federal prisoner to hip-hop maestro to life in prison, Supreme was involved in hip-hop and the crack trade from day one. His run stretched decades, but in the end, he fell victim to the pitfalls of the game like all before him had. His nephew, the enigmatic Prince, who had a rapid, violent, and furious rise in the streets, also fell hard and fast to the tune of seven life sentences. The Supreme Team has been romanticized and glorified in hip-hop, but the truth of the matter is that most of their members are currently in prison for life or have spent decades of their prime years behind bars. This audiobook looks at the team’s climatic rise from its inception to its inevitable fall. It looks at Supreme’s redemption with Murder Inc. and his relapse back into crime. This audiobook is the Supreme Team story in all its glory, infamy, and tragedy. It’s a tale of turns, twists, and fate. Meet the gangsters from Queens where the drug game influenced the style and swagger of street culture, hip-hop, and gangsta rap and made the infamous cast of characters from the Supreme Team icons in the annals of urban lore.

©2012 Gorilla Convict Publications (P)2018 Gorilla Convict Publications

Narrator: Glenn Langohr
Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Wagnerism

Wagnerism

2 ratings

Summary

This program is read by the author and includes excerpts from Richard Wagner's musical compositions throughout.  Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international best seller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics - an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence. For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation. A mighty procession of artists, including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Cézanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buñuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious antisemitism. For many, his name is now almost synonymous with artistic evil.  In Wagnerism, Alex Ross restores the magnificent confusion of what it means to be a Wagnerian. A pandemonium of geniuses, madmen, charlatans, and prophets do battle over Wagner’s many-sided legacy. As listeners of his brilliant articles for The New Yorker have come to expect, Ross ranges thrillingly across artistic disciplines, from the architecture of Louis Sullivan to the novels of Philip K. Dick, from the Zionist writings of Theodor Herzl to the civil-rights essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, from O Pioneers! to Apocalypse Now. In many ways, Wagnerism tells a tragic tale. An artist who might have rivaled Shakespeare in universal reach is undone by an ideology of hate. Still, his shadow lingers over 21st century culture, his mythic motifs coursing through superhero films and fantasy fiction. Neither apologia nor condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of passionate discovery, urging us toward a more honest idea of how art acts in the world.  A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux  

©2020 Alex Ross (P)2020 Macmillan Audio

Narrator: Alex Ross
Author: Alex Ross
Length: 28 hrs and 25 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for The History of Classical Music

The History of Classical Music

2 ratings

Summary

From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Polyphony, sonata form, serial music - many musical expressions are also explained - with the text illustrated by performances from some of the most highly praised recordings of recent years.

©1997 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd. (P)1997 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd.

Narrator: Robert Powell
Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Practice Less, Play More

Practice Less, Play More

2 ratings

Summary

If you're a self-taught guitarist wanting to play songs without spending all your time practicing, this may be the most important audiobook to which you ever listen.... This isn't one of those “practice until your fingers bleed“ or “cram confusing theory into your mind” type of guitar instruction guides. There are plenty of those available (i.e. practice scales and exercises for hours per day and feel guilty if you don’t). When you approach practice like that, you have a lot of “stuff” to practice, but you usually have no real music to show for it, ending up with what I call mountain climber syndrome. You feel like eventually, your hard work is going to pay off, everything will come together, and you’ll finally be able to play songs. Why not play songs right away instead? This audiobook shows you: How to get songs to performance quality no matter what level you're starting at You should practice guitar parts over and over until you master them, right? Wrong! (Find out why in chapter seven) How to create a practice routine you enjoy and can actually stick to (even if you have a super busy schedule) When the best time to practice is for long-lasting results Five ways to cut your practice time in half and virtually guarantee you make progress each time you pick up your guitar What to think about while you're playing songs (the answer may surprise you) How to reduce the amount of mistakes you make and exactly what to do when you make one (most beginners are doing the opposite!) One practice method you should never use if you want rapid results on guitar Say good-bye to guessing what to practice next and finally build a playlist of songs you're proud to play on guitar!

©2019 Rockstar Mind (P)2019 Rockstar Mind

Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
Available on Audible