[joshstaiger]

I highly recommend Robert Greenberg's "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music" if you have any interest in Classical.

Available on audible:

https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Listen-to-and-Understand-G...

It's long (36 hours, broken up into ~45min lectures), but very engaging and accessible. He goes through the entire history of Western music from Pythagoras through the 20th century. He covers everything from (very basic) music theory to how trends in society and technology influenced the music that was produced in each period.

After listening to the whole thing, it gave me a much more fully formed mental model of how different eras, composers, and styles relate to each other.

And from there it's become much easier to dig in and appreciate different areas of the repertoire, rather than idly trying to absorb disparate pieces that would come up on radio/streaming.

[JasonFruit]

I think this is the last thing people need. Do you really expect me to listen to 36 hours of lectures before I am able to appreciate art music? Listen to the music! Then, if you hear something that clicks with you, and you want to learn more about it, do. You don't have to understand the history, theory, and technology of music to appreciate it.

An interest in learning about the music follows a love for the music.

[freetime2]

I don’t think the parent was suggesting that you need to listen to 36 hours of lectures before listening to classical music. Just that for people who have any interest this could further enhance your appreciation. Seems like a reasonable suggestion to me.

[vintermann]

I'm not a fan of classical music's cultural self understanding myself - although I do like a lot of classical music. So I do understand where you're coming from.

However, we can't entirely divorce music from its context. If you only listen to music you like without ever asking what it is, who made it, and what they were trying to do with it, you're going to miss out on a lot of things you easily could have liked.

We shouldn't treat music as if it was just sound waves for producing feelings. I think music is communication, people trying to say things, things that maybe aren't so easy to fully say in words. And as with any communication, context matters, and language matters. Understanding non-verbal messages from hundreds of years ago is worth a little effort, I think.

[JasonFruit]

I think we're in agreement on this. It's true that the best classical music has great depths to be plumbed, and some of it requires an understanding of the techniques and intentions of the composers, but there's still plenty that can be taken in by an uneducated listener. My point was that until that uneducated listener gets a bit hooked on it, telling them that they can't possibly appreciate it until they've engaged in serious study is going to sound like off-putting elitist claptrap, and put them off completely. (Which was probably not what you were saying, but it was about my turn to fail at nuance in online conversations.)

[kodyo]

Nobody expects you to do anything.

[TylerE]

I wish I could tolerate him. The content is great, but I find his constant tone of “oh how enlightened and civilized we are because we listen to the right music” thing beyond irritating.

[cowuser666]

Funny, it comes off as tongue in cheek and charming to me. To each their own I suppose!

[vintermann]

That makes me think of the "light music" which was popular in the 20th century, especially in the US. It was very much music for and by the upper classes, but supposed to be tongue in cheek and charming, not to take itself too seriously. The patrons of orchestral music increasingly weren't too keen on the "serious" classical music of the time which had the conservatories' stamp of approval (because, well, have you heard it?)

Leroy Anderson was part of that tradition. I'd say so were comedians like Victor Borge and Anna Russell.

[bobx11]

I LOVE that audiobook/course. I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would.

For anyone on the fence, the narrator/instructor is funny and makes you want to listen to more of it. They walk you through history of music and play songs explaining how the song came about. As an adult that loves music, it’s easy to enjoy it because it’s a very informal format but you learn interesting things the whole time.

[samvher]

Similarly there's an open Yale course "Listening to music": https://oyc.yale.edu/music/musi-112/lecture-1

I enjoyed it, it goes into quite a bit of music theory and many different musical styles, with a lot of listening exercises.

As a sibling comment said, of course you don't need this to enjoy music, but I did feel like it deepened the experience in some way (and maybe made it a more analytical experience simultaneously - which may or may not be what you want).

[kazinator]

I once read Aaron Copeland's What to Listen for In Music. Very good.

[kar5pt]

I'm listening to this now and love it. The best part is that he puts clips of various types of music throughout (European) history, so you get to listen to them all and compare.