Wondrium Journeys by The Great Courses has announced “Great Music Masters of Vienna” with Robert Greenberg — A 7 day, 6 night trip to Austria! During the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony premiere, we’ll explore the legacy of the city’s music masters. Follow the footsteps of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert to the homes where they composed, the palaces where they performed, and the cafés and shops they frequented. Through private tours and concerts and an excursion to Baden bie Wien, delve deep into the circumstances and personalities that shaped their incomparable bodies of work. During the 18th and 19th century, Europe’s promising young musicians flocked to Vienna, producing and performing what would become the masterpieces of the Classical period. From Mozart’s The Magic Flute to Schubert’s Ave Maria, the spirit of the music created during these years permeates the lively streets of Vienna still. Trip Highlights
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
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I have joined up with a wonderful new operation called “Klatch,” which means, literally, “a gathering characterized usually by informal conversation.” Klatch’s mission statement: “Klatch is an all-in-one platform for live, highly interactive workshops across every topic. Our Facilitators are building unique communities for curious, life-long learners who are interested in taking up a new hobby, pursuing personal growth, or seeking professional development.” I will be just such a “Facilitator”, doing live, 90-minute music presentations via zoom. My actual content will typically run roughly 75 minutes, which will leave time for interaction: questions, comments, huzzahs, and the like. (Perhaps someone can create an app allowing cyber tomatoes and cabbages to be hurled in case of dissatisfaction? Just a suggestion.) Here is a link to the Klatch website and a description of my initial workshop, “Music as a Mirror.” It will be held on Wednesday, May 18, at 6:30 pm Eastern time; 3:30 pm Pacific. My initial workshops will be one-offs like this one, though over time I/we intend to offer two, three, and four-session workshops: “course-lets” (as distinct from “corsets”), if you will. Because of the interactive nature of the workshops, enrollment will be, initially, capped, so do sign up sooner […]
Continue ReadingIn February of this year, I was asked to be among the first “influencers” (yes, that’s how I was referred to: I, who am incapable of “influencing” my daughter to turn out the lights when she’s left a room or my son to flush the freakin’ toilet) to record original content for Amazon’s Audible brand. The result is a ten-lecture, five-hour (30 minutes per lecture), 40,000-word biography of Beethoven titled The Life and Times of Beethoven: The First Angry Man. Created in conjunction with The Great Courses, the course was recorded in Chantilly, Virginia in July and hit the market last month. A couple of points before moving on. Point one. By titling my course The First Angry Man, I have, admittedly, indulged in the tired cliché that Beethoven was angry pretty much all the time, a cliché reinforced a gazillion-fold by the famously scowling images of Beethoven that became stock-in-trade of the Beethoven myth as it evolved during the nineteenth century. In response to the clichéd images of a sullen, glowering Beethoven, enjoy the included image of Beethoven smiling. Yes, of course, it is bogus, but so is the impression that he never smiled or laughed, which he did, […]
Continue ReadingIt has been a week since my roll out at Patreon, and I have been awed and no small bit humbled by the response. I thank each and every one of you who have signed on. As per my listed Patreon benefits I would take this opportunity to list my “Principal” patrons and “Deities”: Principals: Gary Cohn Dr. Judith Davis Leigh O. Harper Ernie McWilliams James Rea William Mark Thompson Deities: Gregg Garbin Bennett Markel Mickey Urdea Lis Young A heads up on what will be appearing on my Patreon page over the course of the next week: I have managed to dig up and digitize a television advertisement for my Teaching Company/The Great Courses survey “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” from 1993. It’s a bit painful for me to watch: I weighed 30 pounds less than I do now; I had all my hair (including a very large moustache); and I wore contacts. I looked good, but most painful of all, I looked young. The production values back then in the early days of The Teaching Company were, well, let’s say minimal: I’m working from notes without a set, with only a blackboard and an upright […]
Continue ReadingRobert Greenberg joins Cole Cuchna of the Dissect Podcast on the Break It Down Show. Part One Part Two Related Courses
Continue ReadingDr. Robert Greenberg, best selling creator of audio and video courses for The Teaching Company/The Great Courses since 1993, is now offering those courses for direct download, right here on RobertGreenbergMusic.com! These courses are crafted and produced for lifelong learners and offer a learning experience that goes far beyond anything that can be achieved merely by placing a camera in a classroom. The 27 courses currently available constitute a full-blown musical curriculum, a curriculum that divides the courses into “basics” and those that “dive deeper”. Explore these categories below: The Basics How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, third edition. This is The Great Courses’ “Music 101”, 48-lecture survey spans nearly 2500 years of Western music, from the music of ancient Greece to the year 1913. (FYI: this course was named by Inc. Magazine as being “one of the ten great leadership classics you’ve never read”, or watched as the case may be.) How to Listen to and Understand Great Opera. This series offers a broad survey of the single most important genre of Western music to have emerged over the last 400-plus years, opera. Understanding the Fundamentals of Music. This course expands on the vocabulary and listening skills […]
Continue ReadingExactly 300 years ago today – on November 6, 1717 – the great Johann Sebastian Bach was tossed into jail and spent nearly a month cooling his heels courtesy of his boss, Prince Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar. You see, in 1717, a working-class artisan like Bach did not mouth off to the boss. And that was the crime for which an unrepentant Bach served his time. Some perspective There are some precious people who so well represent the best of our species that merely mentioning their names makes us nod and smile: Da Vinci and Michelangelo; Shakespeare and Dickens; Newton and Einstein; Lincoln and Churchill; Ruth and Mays; Gandhi, King, and Mandela. If we were to ask the composers Mozart, Beethoven, Clara and Robert Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Schoenberg, Stravinsky – and even that nasty French snothead Claude Debussy – whose was the most precious name in the history of musical composition, they all would have said – without a moment’s hesitation – Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s a sad irony that Bach never felt this love in his lifetime. On the contrary, in his own lifetime – which ran from 1685 to 1750 – his music was considered by most of […]
Continue ReadingThe Break It Down Show hosts Robert Greenberg after the recent launch of the new The Great Courses series “Music as a Mirror of History”:
Continue ReadingAs I mentioned in my post of July 1, my next The Great Courses/Teaching company course – “Music as a Mirror of History” – is scheduled for release on Friday, July 22nd. It was recorded in January and February of this year and has been in post-production since. Since it’s my gob that’s on display throughout the finished course, it is all-too-easy to overlook the role played by the incredible crew of professionals who were tasked with producing the course. Well, overlook them we cannot; it’s an absolute truism in the media and the performing arts that we are only as good as the good people whose job it is to make us look good. My thanks to everyone who was involved with the production and a special call-out to my producer, Jaimee Aigret; my editor, Cat Lyon; and my directors, Jonathan Levin and Jim Allen. Thank you, my friends, for making The Great Courses GREAT. For anyone with 17 minutes to burn, I did a Google Hangout/Facebook Live interview with my bud Ed Leon of The Great Courses on Friday, July 1, in which we discuss the new course in some detail:
Continue ReadingPhotos from the recording session from my upcoming course for The Great Courses — Music as a Mirror of History:
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