All You Have to Do is Listen: Music from the Inside Out [Hardcover]

Rob Kapilow (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470385448 | ISBN-13: 978-0470385449 | Publication Date: September 22, 2008 | Edition: 1

Rob Kapilow has been helping audiences hear more in great music for almost twenty years with his What Makes It Great? series on NPR, at Lincoln Center, and in concert halls throughout the US and Canada. In this book, he gives you a set of tools you can use when listening to any piece of music in order to hear its “plot”—its story told in notes. The musical examples are available free for download to help you hear the ideas presented. Whether you are an experienced concertgoer or a newcomer to classical music, the listening principles Kapilow shares will help you "get" music in an exciting, fresh new way.

"Kapilow gets audiences in tune with classical music at a deeper and more immediate level than many of them thought possible."
—Los Angeles Times

"Rob Kapilow is awfully good at what he does. We need him."
—The Boston Globe

"A wonderful guy who brings music alive!"
—Katie Couric

"Rob Kapilow leaps into the void dividing music analysis from appreciation and fills it with exhilarating details and sensations."
—The New York Times

"You could practically see the light bulbs going on above people's heads. . . . The audience could decipher the music in a new, deeper way. It was the total opposite of passive listening."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Clearly he wants to switch people on to classical music" (The Gramophone, April 2009)

From the Inside Flap

Musical knowledge is real when it becomes simply how you listen. Rob Kapilow has been helping audiences hear more in great music for almost twenty years with his What Makes It Great?TM series on NPR, at Lincoln Center, and in concert halls throughout the United States and Canada. At the heart of his success is an approach that focuses less on historical facts and musical terminology than it does on the ability to pay attention, listen closely, and notice.

In this book, he gives you a set of tools you can use when listening to any piece of music in order to hear its "plot"—its story told in notes. He helps you listen to music from the inside out, from the composer's point of view, so that you'll follow the composer's musical thoughts, whether the piece is by Bach, Schumann, Stravinsky, or Gershwin.

Kapilow starts right where the listener does—at the beginning. The book is structured like a piece of music, with topics organized as they would naturally arise in a composition—progressing from idea, to phrase, to section, to movement, to form. Whether you are an experienced concertgoer or a newcomer to classical music, the listening principles Kapilow shares will help you "get" the music you hear in an exciting, fresh new way.

Throughout, he includes a wide range of examples, from a fascinating, note–by–note look at "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" to excerpts taken from the standard classical music repertoire. The examples are at the heart of the book and are invaluable in helping you to grasp—and most importantly, to hear—the musical ideas presented in each chapter, whether it's the "punctuation" of a musical phrase, the meaning of repetition, or the three–act structure of sonata form.

One of the book's unique features is the accompanying Web site, where all of the musical examples can be downloaded, heard, and followed with the help of a real–time scrollbar. There is no need to hunt for recordings and no ability to read musical notation is required to follow and grasp the musical examples.

As you become more practiced in hearing the musical concepts explored in the book, you'll find that they will become a natural, built–in part of your listening experience that will increase your enjoyment of every type of music. All you have to do is listen.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470385448
• ISBN-13: 978-0470385449
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #84,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rob Kapilow, a composer, conductor, and pianist, has been affectionately nicknamed "the pied piper of classical music" because of his talent for unraveling the mysteries of classical music for audiences of all ages and backgrounds.  His "What Makes It Great?"TM made its debut over a decade ago on NPR's Performance Today. With its accessible10-minute format it quickly attracted an enthusiastic and wide base of fans and developed into full-length concert evenings, which are now a mainstay of Lincoln Center's "Great Performers" series (with its first nationwide broadcast on "Live from Lincoln Center" in January and two video podcasts now available on iTunes), the Celebrity series in Boston, and at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.  He also appears regularly throughout the U.S. and Canada, both with "What Makes it Great?"TM  and FamilyMusik©, in public and corporate venues. He has conducted new works of musical theater including Tony Award-winning Nine on Broadway. He is the conductor/creative director for FamilyMusik© at Lincoln Center, Boston's Celebrity Series, the 92nd Street Y, co-director of the Rutgers SummerFest Festival, assistant conductor of the Opera Company of Boston, conductor of the Kansas City Symphony's summer Family Fare program, and he was music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra for five seasons.  He was the first composer to set the words of Dr. Seuss to music in Green Eggs and Ham. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale and Eastman School of Music, he lives in River Vale, NJ.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Opening My Ears, April 2, 2009

By 

Accordion player "Accordion player" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: All You Have to Do is Listen: Music from the Inside Out (Hardcover)

All You Have To Do Is Listen is one of those few books that I got out of the library, read it some, and thought "Nope - I need to own this one!" - I am VERY SLOWLY working my way through this book - letting my mind apply what I have heard when I last read to any music I hear on the radio.

And then going back for another "bite" of information.

What a gift!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He makes it sound so simple, August 18, 2009

By 

Matt Kent "Perplexed Contusion" (Altlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All You Have to Do is Listen: Music from the Inside Out (Hardcover)

All You Have To Do Is Listen is fun and informative. It reads like a conversation with a friend who has a wealth of knowledge,a library of examples, and a piano at his fingertips. Great book for anyone who loves music but does not possess the acumen for to follow complex musical notation. It is an amazingly clear and confident book for a subject so ineffable.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars learninglistening, November 4, 2008

By 

Pickett T. Simpson (Troy, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All You Have to Do is Listen: Music from the Inside Out (Hardcover)

At last. Lessons on how to use your head to gain the full appreciation of the music. Not since my college music appreciation course elective have I found just the correct text to help me expand my musical listening experiences. Thanks Mr. Kapilow.