Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

More temptations for lifetime-learning junkies.

• I'm blessed with ears that crave Western-classical-music sounds but I'm cursed with a mind that struggles to comprehend what the hell's going on in there. Sad to say, but here's the kind of inner monologue that runs through my head while at a classical-music concert:

  Hey, I think I recognize that tune! Which may mean that this is one of those "theme and variation" sections, right? Or was I daydreaming for a while there? ... Hey, things are getting energetic around here! Which may mean that the climax is approaching, right? But I've only counted two movements so far, and don't most of these things have three movements? Or even four? Or was I daydreaming for a while there? ... Hey, I'm not sure I can tell which key this thing is in any longer! Which may mean that we're in the "development" section, right? Or was I daydreaming again? ...

  As a consequence, while I'm happy to plain ol' listen to and enjoy a lot of the music, I also occasionally enjoy being taken by the hand through the music. Lucky me, The Wife has a first-class classical-music mind, no snobbery about her knowledge and insights, and tons of patience.

  But I can't turn to her for coaching all the time. So I've found and developed a shelfful of history-and-technique resources. D. F. Tovey is Da Man where classical-music analysis is concerned; his many volumes of Essays in Musical Analysis are major ear-and-brain-openers.

  But they're also a very demanding go, so I've spent more time with some other works. Robert Winter's CD-ROMs offer biographical and historical context as well as bar-by-bar musical analyses, with visuals accompanied by straighforward English) of how the pieces he discusses are put together. They're phenonemally good -- and also, as far as I can tell, all out of print, though used copies of his Beethoven disc can be bought here. The Teaching Company's Robert Greenberg is sensational too, and his many music-history lecture series can be enjoyed as simply as audiobooks -- in the car or while exercising, for example. Richard Fawkes' Naxos productions The History of Opera and The History of Classical Music, are also first-rate; I blogged about them here.

  A new addition to my shelf is Jeremy Siepmann's CD-based audiobook, Life and Works: Josef Hayden. Given that I didn't get much out of Siepmann's analysis of The Four Seasons, I was pleasantly surprised by how helpful and enjoyable I found this work. Perhaps Siepmann is simply better at presenting classical music in historical context than he is at presenting analyses of it. In any case, he delivers about as much Hayden biography as I need to know, spares us the usual scholarly digressions, quotes a generous number of original documents (diaries, letters, reviews), provides a decent amount of historical context, and supplies first-class musical examples. He's a friendly and organized guide; The Wife, who listened to the discs with me, assures me that his musical tastes and observations are solid too.

  Siepmann's lowkey worldliness is a relief; he's able to both acknowledge Hayden's genius and take note of the crucial role that audiences, patrons, the press, friends, and lovers play in the creation of great work. It's a special pleasure of this audiobook that Hayden turns out to be lovable -- one of western art's Really Good Guys: generous, never petty, immensely hard-working (more than a hundred symphonies, plus much, much else), grateful to god for his gifts, delighted at any success, frank about his emotions, and helpful to younger artists. Born into the working class, when he died he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.

• Barnes and Nobles' "Portable Professor" series is providing The Teaching Company with some competition. Teaching Company fan that I am, I was curious to see how the Portable Professors measure up. So far I've been through two of their packages, and the answer is: quite respectably.

  Timothy Shutt's Foundations of Western Thought traces the influence of Greek, Hebraic, and Roman civs on Western culture. F.E. Peters' One God, Three Faiths is an exposition of the three monotheistic, "Abrahamic" (ie., descended from Abraham) religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Both profs are helpful, efficient, and enthusiastic, and both courses are staggeringly well-organized. Kudos, presumably, both to the profs and their editors. It ain't as easy as many people think to pull together straightforward, entertaining, relatively brief overviews of immense subjects.

  These are both ultra-basic Civilization 101 courses. But, as someone who can never get enough of rehearsing (and re-rehearsing) the basics, I found them fresh and friendly. I'm partway through Frances Titchener's To Rule Mankind and Make the World Obey, a history of Rome, and it's a modest winner too. I like it better, in fact, than I liked the Teaching Company's History of Rome, which I wasn't able to get through. I'm psyched about this series, and have already bought a couple of other Portable Professors: Colin McGinn on philosophy and Richard Freedman on -- oh, joy! -- Western classical music.

I made all these purchases before vowing to buy no media products for an entire month. So it's OK, really it is. I'm doing fine; so far I've only fallen off the wagon once. But I gotta say, it felt sooooo good ...

Best,

Michael