Customer Reviews

Music, an Appreciation

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I have used this text and earlier editions teaching music appreciation at community college and have found it to be the best yet so far. The most useful part of the text for the [before class] non-active listener are the listening outlines, with very detailed descriptions of what to listen for in various pieces of music. Kamien includes very early musical selections up to the very recent. Also included are some non-western music examples. This text could be very beneficial to musician and non-musician alike. There is great detail in his explanations of how various musical forms are put together. There is just enough history included in the text to avoid the boredom of the purely historical perspective of music appreciation.

I ordered this book/ cd set because it was required text for a college class. It is well organized and clearly written. I especially like the way the listening guides in the book refer to specific portions of songs which are recorded so that the entire work can be played seemlessly in its entirity, or specific portions can be accessed individually.
The only thing this work lacks is impossible for any work that attempts to offer a complete appreciation of music to achieve, complete scope.
I recommend this set.

This is an excellent text for a survey course strictly on the history of western classical music. Kamien's experience and scholarship as a teacher and historian cannot be equalled in this area. I don't recommend the chapters on non-western music, jazz and popular music, however. If you are teaching a survey course that is more inclusive, this text is not ideal. Of all the western classical music texts I have used in my teaching, Kamien's accompanying CD compilation contains the nicest performances.

I'm using this 5th Brief Edition with Brief Set Of Four CDs for my fall-2005 community college Music Appreciation class.

As a person with a few listening skills, I wish more joyful pieces were here. Some of the music seems overtly here for historic context; but, please don't exact the comment as negativity, but only for face-value. I feel Gustav Mahler had a tremendous impact on society particularly since the 1960s and '70s and is a strange omission. Also, I feel a section of one of Gilbert & Sullivan's operas belongs in this class. Students may relate the storytelling with orchestral music if they understood the language, and Gilbert and Sullivan composed in English. Gilbert and Sullivan operas are just as good as any other opera. English opera could be important because many of the people in my class have the attitude of, "What, you actually expect me to listen to this stuff?" Well, some people in the class are just idiotic, anyway. They don't know what they are saying; but, the quicker they relate, the more convinced we make them, that this music really is better. We must tell the students what makes better music; otherwise, they go back to Paula Abdul. Do you know what I mean?

One thing I noted, the CDs use multiple tracks for each single piece of music. E.g., Duke Ellington's C-Jam Blues, the second piece of music in the set, runs 2:38, but it is divided into 8 CD tracks so that teachers can goto a specific place within the song. I understand the point, but dividing the songs into different tracks confuses me, a student, because the class uses the CD set to test me on "music recognition". I have to hunt down the manual with every listen because the pieces aren't just more simply track-labeled according to piece. One piece may take up 16 tracks, and, initially, when I'm looking at the player, I can't always recognize when the song changes to a different composer. (Some composers sound very similar.) Granted, that's what the tests are for, but THE CD SET EVERYONE BUYS IS USED FOR STUDY. As far as the track divisions, the track method opts to appeal to the teachers before the students for a single reason: book sales depend on the teachers selecting their books for classes, so make the teachers happy. An author marketing his book is not negative, but affective.

Another alternative, which I recommend regardless, is track-naming the disc. I imagine the production cost may rise; or maybe not, I don't know. I play the CDs while I drive my car, and, if the track names were on the disc, I could just look at the CD player screen, instead of fumbling around with the booklet while I'm waiting at a stoplight. Tracknames would be useful, either way.

I like having booklets of information in CDs of classical music, or whatever music I buy. Usually, musical pieces with a foreign language means translation necessity. I believe, wholeheartedly, that foreign language classical music belongs in any class like mine, and excluding a translation seems unwise, since much of classical music history came from Europe. If anything, putting a translation in the set makes it certifiable as classical music. Instead, it has an eight-page booklet stating almost the exact information already on the backside of the CD case, which doesn't even include the first name of the composers: you have to get that from the textbook. Maybe the textbook is supposed to act as the CD booklet, but I still prefer the info in the CD case. Well, since it's in the book, then maybe this is okay, but I felt like putting that fact here because I want the CD information with the CD for reactive reference.

Many famous movies used the pieces referenced in the book, some more famously than others. Multiple viewings of certain films helped me know these pieces before I heard the CD set or began attending this class; particularly, Unfaithfully Yours (1948), and Disney's Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. Buying the movies help benefit your "music recognition" skills because the films paint imagery to the works of great composers, many of which are used in the CDs, making those pieces even more distinguishable for recognition when getting tested.

On an individual opinion, some may think Pavarotti is a great singer, I understand, but he only has one sound when he sings. He is generally incapable of the proper feeling outside of shtick. For the section of La Boheme, he fits into his part quite well, even if he doesn't rise above his normal self. It's a great piece for his singing, but I usually don't think he deserves his reputation.

CD1,1-2, Igor Stravinsky's Firebird was used as the finale of "Fantasia 2000".
CD1,37-41, Bizet's L'Arlesienne Suite No. 2 Farandole was used in Preston Sturges' "Unfaithfully Yours" (1948), recently released by Criterion DVD.
CD1,42-44, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite was used in Disney's original "Fantasia". If I have to listen to the Nutcracker ONE MORE TIME,... I may flip out.
CD2,45-69, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the initial segment used in "Fantasia 2000".
CD4,16-23, Stravinsky's Rites Of Spring [Le Sacre du Printemps] is used in "Fantasia", showing Earth's evolutions of early forms of life, finally including the violence of dinosaurs.

This book does a good job of putting music in an overall historical context. For example, it notes how Baroque productions, whether sculpture or music, meant to "fill space." That accounts for elaborate melodies in music, and movement in painting and sculpture.

Music used to be written as much for the mind as the ear. In some vocal pieces, lyrics correspond to melody. For example, if the word "ascending" is used in the song, the notes of the melody also go up. Vice-versa for descending. If the song mentions one person, a single voice is used--three voices come in when three people are in the storyline.

The musical selections are varied and enjoyable to listen to.

This book purports to be a survey of music from the Middle Ages through the present; as such, it spends rather a lot of space covering music from 450 AD through 1900, and precious little attention on anything that could loosely be considered "modern". It also gives only a short chapter nod-of-the-head to non-western music, with a tiny subchapter on sub-Saharan Africa and a slightly longer subchapter on Indian Classical music and Ravi Shankar. It seems to me that if the desire was to write a text on "classical" music from pre-1900, it would have been better to simply do so and make no attempt to PRETEND to pay any attention to anything more recent, and leave the more recent music to another book entirely. (And yet another one for "Non-Western World Music".) By making vague hand-waving gestures at including recent and non-Western music but doing such a slipshod job of it, the author has seriously weakened his claim to accomplishing what he sets out to do.

To make matters worse, the editing in the book is atrocious for a seventh edition; one would hope that the majority of the careless errors in writing would have been caught by now. Granted, most of the errors occur in the parts of the book that deal with post-1900 music, so perhaps it's a sign that these sections simply weren't considered important enough to bother proofreading; we have such sloppy mistakes as (on page 318) "Bela Bartok...was born Hungary..." (rather than "born IN Hungary" -- I suspect the author was not suggesting that Bartok was born with an appetite, and even if he was, THAT was misspelled), or on page 324, "(George Gershwin's) parents were Russian-Jewish immigrant..." rather than "immigrants", or on 325, "...clarinet solo that stasrts...", or on 330, "His textures clear..." rather than "are clear", or on 334, "...the second movement in calm and lyrical..." rather than "is calm and lyrical". Granted, the total number of errors for the book are not excessive, but when there are five sloppy mistakes in a space of 16 pages, it's a sign of something being wrong.

book was in good condition. but this book does not come with online connect access code. buyers beware, most people need this for their class.

Despite the product description referring to the CONNECT Kamien site, this book DOES NOT contain an access code for that site. Without that code this book is worthless for my class.

Very informative but not overwhelming. Easy to read - follow and understand - color photos and solid build.

We were required to have a code to access a website for classwork with this book and that was not packaged with the book. There is a lot of good information in this text but there are some pricey peripherals to get the full benefit of the topic.