Product Description
The more you know about classical music, the more you love it. Now, thanks to Classical Music For Dummies, you can achieve a whole new level of insight into both the composers and the compositions that have made classical music one of the great accomplishments of humankind. Classical Music For Dummies doesn’t assume that you have a degree in musicology — or even that you took a course in music appreciation. Rather, the multimedially gifted David Pogue and re… More >>
#1 by Anonymous on April 22, 2010 - 9:19 pm
This audio cassette is a terrible production. It is (almost) all talk with very little sampling of the music they are trying to explain. Sure the humor is good and their organization is well developed. Consider publishing a book about trees without any pictures and you get the idea of what is lacking here. If this cassette is truly for dummies, back to the drawing board guys.
Rating: 1 / 5
#2 by Anonymous on April 22, 2010 - 10:09 pm
The content of the book is satisfactory and average as far as its information and class are concerned. But even this is diminished, because it is written in an irresponsible, scoffy style (so typically “New World” American, I suppose) that it is guaranteed to make you a dummy instead of the other way around.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Anonymous on April 22, 2010 - 11:28 pm
Greatly increased my understanding and appreciation. This might be subtitled: ‘Spike Jones in Print’.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Bill Butler on April 23, 2010 - 1:15 am
Yes. Everybody is an expert. I’ve almost given up on making my bed. AND I’M 48! Why does the informational community ASSUME that we know certain things? In “Cooking for Dummies”, I didn’t want to know how to make a Greek soufle or whatever…now read my lips…I WANTED TO LEARNED HOW TO COOK! And it told me how. The classical music bit is much harder to crack. “That was a 4 flute concerto by List in D flat” they say on the radio. Oh yeah! Of course. Everybody knows that catchy tune! I love this book. I keep playing the CD they give you over and over again on my stereo. It will break you in. I doubt any other book will. But this one will. And when your date or spouse says, “Do you like Baroque?”, you won’t have to say, “No. That’s okay. I have enough money.” This book is a Godsend. If you really love rock or rap, give this jazz (oops! I said an unintentional funny) a try. I’ve had my ears cleaned my the Who and Jimi Hendrix. So gives this other weird but magnificent universe a try. I think that I am going to stay in this galaxy of melody (did I say that? A “galaxy of melody”? And my college teachers said I was gifted). Let’s get on with it. BUY THE BOOK!
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Shing Lin on April 23, 2010 - 1:51 am
I found this book is really useful and save a lot of time for the people who are interested in classical music but afraid to ask questions. The 80-pages of the history of Music is one of the best I have ever read. The humors here & there add fun to leisure reading. For example, Dvorak looked more like a full-bred bulldog than any other composer in history etc.
I think the author missed The Trout Quintet when he listed Schubert’s work. He should also mention the movies like Song to Remember (Chopin), Sound without End (Liszt), Death in Venice (Mahler) etc.
I bought some CDROMs (classical music, licenced from one company in southern California, the author is a music professor of UCLA) from Microsoft several years ago. One of them is Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. I consider this one a breakthrough product. Unfortunately, after 5 or 6 CDROMs got released, there has been no new release. It is a shame that classical music industry doesn’t explore the new opportunity that high tech multimedia can offer. For instance, Encarta or encyclopedia on CDROM almost replace the book-style encyclopedia. In the future, any music book should be in the CDROM or include a CDROM that contains the whole text with audio clips that reader can play right away. For instance, a reader will appreciate much more if he can hear that melancholy English horn solo in the New World Symphony (2nd movement) while the author tries to tell him how melancholy it is. There is also one bonus, the reader will know how English horn sounds right away. The CDROM and PC can do things that book can not do: Audio & Video. Recently I bought a good old book in the book sale from one library. The title is “Great Symphonies, How to Recognize and Remember Them” by Sigmund Spaeth published in 1936 (a really old book). This had to be a great book at that time. It describes a lot of great symphonies with musical clip & score. Alas, it is a silent book if you don’t read the music score, be it G minor or B flat major, it is not very useful to you. I can imagine this will become a great book if someone can put it in CDROM and add the audio clip for each passage of the score. Suddenly, the book will be alive and the whole world will be different after you read the book. Without this neat feature, I can only stick to this dummy book for now. After all this one is one of the best I can find at this moment.
Rating: 4 / 5