 |
| |
 |
|
 |
|
Available 2/07
Listen
SIXTH EDITION
Joseph Kerman
University of California, Berkeley
Gary Tomlinson
University of Pennsylvania
© 2008
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
We spoke with Joseph Kerman and Gary Tomlinson at the 2006 American Musicological Society gathering
in Los Angeles, California, to discuss their work on the Sixth Edition. You can hear excerpts
from the interview below. (Clicking on the links will launch the audio file.)
If the link does not automatically start playing, you may need to download the latest version of an audio media
player. Apple iTunes is a free program available for Windows and Mac users.
Review their system requirements before downloading.
1. Joe and Gary discuss how they
make decisions about the repertory for Listen.
2. The authors talk about the design of
Listen and its listening charts.
3. Gary explains changes made to coverage
of 20th Century music in the new edition of the book.
4. Gary tells us why he and Joe decided to cover
Wagner's The Valkyrie instead of Tristan und Isolde.
5. Joe describes the DVD excerpts, particularly a
performance from The Rite of Spring that wonderfully illustrates the instruments of the orchestra.
6. Joe and Gary discuss the importance of using
the best possible recordings in teaching music appreciation.
7. Joe on the inclusion of a sonata by Francesca
LeBrun in this edition.
8. Joe and Gary talk about the
necessity of focused listening, and the how students benefit from such an approach to music.
9. Lastly, the authors talk about the
process of writing together.
Joseph Kerman and Gary Tomlinson are leading musicologists and music educators.
Kerman, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, served two terms as Chair of the
Music Department, and Tomlinson has done the same at the University of Pennsylvania. Both are known as
inspirational and wide-ranging teachers; between them, their course offerings encompass harmony and ear
training, opera, world music, interdisciplinary studies, seminars in music history and criticism,
and—many times—Introduction
to Music for nonmajor students.
Kerman’s books include Opera as Drama (second edition, 1988), Contemplating Music (1985),
The Art of the Fugue (2005), and studies of Beethoven and William Byrd. His lectures as Charles
Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard in 1997-1998 were published as Concerto Conversations
(1999). Tomlinson, a former MacArthur Fellow, is the author of Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance
(1987), Music in Renaissance Magic (1993), Metaphysical Song: An Essay on Opera (1999),
and The Singing of the New World (2006). He has also published on jazz and music historiography.
Instructors who adopted the original Listen back in 1972 may remember a soft plastic 5-inch LP
packaged with the book, modeled on a cereal box give-away and containing listening examples for the “Introductions”
chapter. Incredibly, that first edition came out without any other recordings—though the publisher scrambled
together a 6-LP set soon afterwards, and LP sets became a fixture with subsequent editions. In 1986 we wept as CD
production slowly got underway, just as Listen, First Brief Edition, went to press; we were able to refer
to upcoming CDs but couldn’t provide our now-familiar 3- and 6-CD sets until the next time around. By 2004,
Listen took advantage of new media to provide interactive resources on a CD-ROM and a companion Web site.
And Listen, Sixth Edition, which you have before you, draws on technology for new features that may enhance
music instruction more significantly than any other innovations of recent years. First, the companion disc included
in every copy of the print book is no longer a CD-ROM but a DVD; now immediately accessible are video excerpts of
operatic and orchestral works treated in the text, as well as additional audio tracks. Second, with this edition
we introduce the e-book version of Listen. The e-book gives students an online version of the text that
integrates the features of the Listen Web site and offers instructors more opportunities to customize
the content. For both print and online versions of the book, new tutorials on music fundamentals and enhanced
listening quizzes use streaming music clips to provide students with a streamlined interactive experience.
We try to follow the injunction of our title, and not only in musical matters—listening carefully to many
thoughtful suggestions from readers, we have once again worked to improve the coverage of musical repertories
at the heart of the book. Both small changes (a Josquin chanson, a rondo by Francesca LeBrun) and large ones
(a new Wagner selection) aim to bring clearer and more accessible examples to students. We’ve cut down the
discussion of early modernism—without cutting out any of the selections—and drawn a new, more vivid
picture of composers' stylistic choices at the end of the millennium. Film music makes its overdue debut, as does
John Adams, welcomed with a video from his oratorio El Niño, on the Companion DVD.
The publishers of Listen, no less than the authors, have always worked hard to make the book attractive
to look at (one edition received a design award). But the real point of a good design is to make it easy to find
your way around in a book and to make the book inviting to use. In that respect, longtime users will notice some
improvements: the streamlined design is easier to follow than before, and the book’s many diverse elements or features
are now easier to distinguish. In a number of unobtrusive but stylish ways, the new design highlights the most
important parts of the book—the musical selections.
We have also redesigned, revised, and rechristened the abbreviated charts that go with the DVD’s audio tracks
in Unit 1, “Fundamentals.” The seven Listening Exercises, as they are now called, illustrate rhythm, melody,
counterpoint, texture, and so on, and culminate in the redoubtable Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra by
Benjamin Britten. We show students how to listen to this work both for instrumental sonority and as an informal
summary of fundamentals at the end of the unit.
But in the end Listen owes it success less to features than to two basic attributes, which the authors
have been grateful to hear about many times from instructors as well as students over the history of Listen.
Listen is distinctive in its writing style and, related to that, in the sense it conveys of personal
involvement with the music that is treated. The tone is lively and alert, authoritative but not stiff and not without
humor. We sound (because we are) engaged with music, and we work to engage the student. We never condescend to students,
and we don’t begrudge them careful explanation of matters that we as musicians find elementary. “My music course used
Listen, Third Brief Edition,” an alum of a college in Colorado, now an attorney, wrote recently.
“I cannot tell you how amazing it was to take that course. It opened my ears and my heart to hear and feel much more
from music than I ever dreamed possible. To this day, I have the textbook and consult it frequently—it is one of
the few that has had such an impact on my life.”
The excitement and joy that the experience of music can provide—this, more than historical or analytical data
about music—is what most instructors want to pass on to their students. This is the ideal goal of music teaching,
so to speak, which is why technology will never replace live instructors. It’s no easy undertaking, and most
(though not all) of us turn to textbooks for support and assistance—or at best, collaboration. We have prepared
every edition of Listen in this spirit, always in the hope of collaborating more closely and getting closer
to that goal.
Back to top
|
|
|
|
|