September is “Fine Arts Celebration” month for The Great Courses. To that end, I have been asked to write up a music curriculum that TGC can post on its social media channels. I preview it below: Among the questions I am most frequently asked (along with “what’s that aftershave you’re wearing?”) is a curricular one. That is, if my 27 in-print courses should constitute a curriculum, in what order should they be consumed? An excellent question: in fact, I do not wear aftershave. As for a curriculum, this is what I would recommend: Category One: Pre-requisites “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, third edition.” This remains The Great Courses’ “Music 101”, the entry-level pre-requisite for all my other courses. FYI: this course is an intensified version of the full-year music history sequence I used to teach at the San Francisco Conservatory. “How to Listen to and Understand Great Opera”. If “Great Music” (above) is Music 101, then this is Music 102: a broad survey of the single most important genre in Western music: opera. “The Fundamentals of Music”. This course expands on the vocabulary and listening skills first introduced in “Great Music” and “Great Opera.” From here on […]