Professor Craig Wright: Listening to Music

Craig M. Wright is the is the Henry L. and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Music at Yale University. He received his Bachelor of Music degree at the Eastman School of Music in 1966 and his Ph.D. in musicology from Harvard University in 1972. He began his teaching career at the University of Kentucky and for the past 40 years has been teaching at Yale University, serving as the chair of the department of music from 1986 to 1992.

At Yale, Wright's courses include his perennially popular introductory course "Listening to Music," also part of the offerings of Open Yale Courses, and his selective seminar "Exploring the Nature of Genius." He is the author of numerous scholarly books and articles on composers ranging from Leoninus to Bach. Wright has also been the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Einstein and Kinkeldey Awards of the American Musicological Society, and the Dent Medal of the International Musicological Society. In 2004, he was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Chicago. And in 2010, he was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining fellow inductee banjo player Steve Martin.

Wright specialises in music history. His early work concentrated on mediaval and renaissance music. More recently, he started to work on Mozart. Among his books are Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364-1419: A Documentary History (1979); Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500-1550 (1989); The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology and Music (2001); Music in Western Civilization (2005); Listening to Music (6th edition, 2010); and Listening to Western Music (2007). He is presently at work on a volume entitled Mozart's Brain: Exploring the Nature of Genius.

Lecture 1. Introduction


 

 

 

Lecture 2. Introduction to Instruments and Musical Genres

 

 

Lecture 3. Rhythm: Fundamentals

 

 

Lecture 4. Rhythm: Jazz, Pop and Classical

 

 

Lecture 5. Melody: Notes, Scales, Nuts and Bolts

 

 

Lecture 6. Melody: Mozart and Wagner

 

 

Lecture 7. Harmony: Chords and How to Build Them

 

 

Lecture 8. Bass Patterns: Blues and Rock

 

 

Lecture 9. Sonata-Allegro Form: Mozart and Beethoven

 

 

Lecture 10. Sonata-Allegro and Theme and Variations

 

 

Lecture 11. Form: Rondo, Sonata-Allegro and Theme and Variations (cont.)

 

 

Lecture 12. Guest Conductor: Saybrook Orchestra

 

 

Lecture 13. Fugue: Bach, Bizet and Bernstein

 

 

Lecture 14. Ostinato Form in the Music of Purcell, Pachelbel, Elton John and Vitamin C

 

 

Lecture 15. Gregorian Chant and Music in the Sistine Chapel

 

 

Lecture 16. Baroque Music: The Vocal Music of Johann Sebastian Bach

 

 

Lecture 17. Mozart and His Operas

 

 

Lecture 18. Piano Music of Mozart and Beethoven

 

 

Lecture 19. Romantic Opera: Verdi's La Traviata, Bocelli, Pavarotti and Domingo

 

 

Lecture 20. The Colossal Symphony: Beethoven, Berlioz, Mahler and Shostakovich

 

 

Lecture 21. Musical Impressionism and Exoticism: Debussy, Ravel and Monet

 

 

Lecture 22. Modernism and Mahler

 

 

Lecture 23. Review of Musical Style