Everyone should understand music. Not that everyone is called to be a musician, but understanding the basic structure of music and its place in history and society is crucial. By age 14-16, your students should understand enough history and culture to be able to appreciate the importance of music throughout the ages. Or, if you’re a middle-aged adult like me, and were not exposed to historical music and shown its significance in your earlier years – it’s never too late to learn!
The Teaching Company produces several lectures on music understanding, history, and appreciation. The low-priced lectures are available on DVD or CD and are a wonderful introduction to music and it’s influence on western civilization
Recently, I’ve discovered a wonderful author and lecturer on music – Jeremy Begbie. Dr. Begbie is a pastor, musician, scholar, and composer. He’s written several helpful books and personally presents many of his ideas at seminars and conferences. Thankfully, several of these presentations are available online.
I recommend beginning with Resounding Truth – a wonderful book on music history, understanding, and appreciation. The book is so much more than just music – really a worldview book synthesizing history, sociology, theology, and, of course, music.
It’s a survey of music throughout history from ancient times to the present, focused on how music has been perceived as a transcendental, spiritual medium by peoples of all ages. From Pythagoras’ Music of the Spheres, to the great medieval cosmic schemes, through the renaissance and reformation, continuing to our modern day.
Dr. Begbie beautifully explains how several spiritual realities that seem to evade description through word or image can be more fully apprehended in a world of sounds.
While Resounding Truth can serve as a course book for your music appreciation studies, the following lectures and short presentations by Dr. Begbie are very helpful in demonstrating a few of the musical ideas in the book. At YouTube, you can also find performances of the various musical pieces discussed in the book. Hearing them as you read through the book is a great help. One of the (few) redeeming qualities of the internet.