This course examines eight great concert masterworks by Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorák, Strauss, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Liszt. The works are divided into pairs for comparison.

You explore the life, times, personality, and stylistic assumptions of the composers and analyze each composition's form, themes, thematic relationships, and expressive content.

Other topics include:

• the Enlightenment aesthetic ideal
• the rise of nationalism and its role in 19th-century music
• the nature and development of Beethoven's heroic style
• the efforts of Romantic-era composers to tell fantastic stories, paint vivid pictures, and describe ever more complex states of emotion in purely instrumental terms.

WordScore Guides are also included so you can follow each work's musical narrative even if you don’t read music.