Introduction to Music Appreciation is about listening, appreciating, understanding, and discussing music. It explores the history, aesthetics, and criticism of Western music for an enhanced understanding of the topic. Chapters include:

Musical Elements, Critical Listening, and Course Overview;
Early Western Art Music;
The Baroque Era;
The Classical Era;
The Romantic Period;
Twentieth-Century Music;
Jazz; and
Music of the World.

An Introduction to Technical Theatre draws on the author’s experience in both the theatre and the classroom over the last 30 years. Intended as a resource for both secondary and post-secondary theatre courses, this text provides a comprehensive overview of technical theatre, including terminology and general practices.

Introduction to Technical Theatre’s accessible format is ideal for students at all levels, including those studying technical theatre as an elective part of their education. The text’s modular format is also intended to assist teachers approach the subject at their own pace and structure, a necessity for those who may regularly rearrange their syllabi around productions and space scheduling.

"The Jazz Republic examines jazz music and the jazz artists who shaped Germany's exposure to this African American art form from 1919 through 1933. Jonathan O. Wipplinger explores the history of jazz in Germany as well as the roles that music, race (especially Blackness), and America played in German culture and follows the debate over jazz through the fourteen years of Germany's first democracy. He explores visiting jazz musicians including the African American Sam Wooding and the white American Paul Whiteman and how their performances were received by German critics and artists. The Jazz Republic also engages with the meaning of jazz in debates over changing gender norms and jazz's status between paradigms of high and low culture. By looking at German translations of Langston Hughes's poetry, as well as Theodor W. Adorno's controversial rejection of jazz in light of racial persecution, Wipplinger examines how jazz came to be part of German cultural production more broadly in both the US and Germany, in the early 1930s.

Using a wide array of sources from newspapers, modernist and popular journals, as well as items from the music press, this work intervenes in the debate over the German encounter with jazz by arguing that the music was no mere "symbol" of Weimar's modernism and modernity. Rather than reflecting intra-German and/or European debates, it suggests that jazz and its practitioners, African American, white American, Afro-European, German and otherwise, shaped Weimar culture in a central way"--Publisher's website.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the cultural impact of swing dancing. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This course is a survey of the world's music with attention to musical styles and cultural contexts. Included are the musical and cultural histories of Ociania, Indonesia, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Course Outcomes:
1. Demonstrate an understanding of diverse peoples, cultural communities, and traditions while reflecting upon and challenging individual and societal ethnocentrism.
2. Describe and discuss music using appropriate terminology relevant for the field of ethnomusicology.
3. Analyze and identify music from a global intercultural perspective using analytical and critical listening skills.
4. Explain artistic, social, historical, and cultural contexts of world music.

"The purpose of this course is to help students further enhance their appreciation for music as a creative tool of the imagination, as entertainment, and as a window into who we are as social beings. Part of the course also helps students to advance their listening skills, which leads to a better understand of what music actually contains. For this purpose, the course explores western classical music; American folk, popular and religious music; along with a sampling of music from non-western cultures.
Course content is divided into modules. Each module includes text readings, listening examples, videos, and study/review questions. Thought-provoking discussion board topics, written assignments, Power Point presentations, and group projects are also included in some of the modules"--Open Course Library.

Authors' Description:

"The author of this text has intentionally kept it general in nature in order to create a platform for those who want to expand content into more in depth studies of the mentioned concepts and traditions. I believe that appreciation of any subject comes from open-minded exposure to that topic. With the arts this generally must happen at a moment when the message and meaning of the work resonates naturally with the appreciator.

Each instructor of music appreciation brings a unique expertise in differing genres. I encourage you to utilize this text along with musical examples of your choice. The music appreciation specific goals (found in the syllabus) vary between individual classes as the instructors see fit. These goals will be achieved by those who have competently met all of the requirements of the course. For the course that this text accompanies the goals for each student are:

To gain basic exposure to the elements of music and their treatment in music
To learn historical and cultural signifiers in a diverse body of music • To approach listening to music actively/analytically and to reflect on the experience
To understand the factors that contribute to musical style in their own music and music presented in the course
To gain knowledge about differing musical aesthetics and trends
To become more knowledgeable and sensitive to varied human expression through music
If we endeavor together to reach these course goals the successful student will be able to:

Describe elements of music that s/he hears, employing correct musical terminology
Place music into an appropriate historical and cultural context
Listen critically and discuss a wide variety of musical styles
Analyze the stylistic features of a diverse group of musical styles
Identify nationalistic tendencies in musical expression
Identify musical diversity and aspects of our global society"--Galileo Open Learning Materials.

This course is divided into three sections: 1 - the personal experience with music; 2 - the logical, historical, mathematical aspects of music; 3 - the abstract power of music.

This module addresses the following music fundamentals topics:
1 Introduction to Pitch Notation in Music
2 Clef
3 Introduction to the Piano Keyboard
4 Pitch: Sharp, Flat, and Natural Notes
5 Chromatic and Diatonic Half Steps
6 Octave Designations in Music
7 Key Signature
8 Major Keys and Scales
9 Scale Degrees of the Diatonic Scale
10 Enharmonic Spelling
11 The Circle of Fifths

This collection is the first of five dealing with the rudiments of music.

This collection is the second of five dealing with the rudiments of music.

This module addresses the following music fundamentals topics:
1 Duration: Note Lengths in Written Music
2 Duration: Rest Length
3 Dots, Ties, and Borrowed Divisions
4 Rhythm
5 Time Signature
6 Introduction to Subdivisions in Simple Meters
7 Simple and Compound Time Signatures
8 Meter in Music
9 Introduction to Subdivisions in Compound Meters
10 Pickup Notes and Measures
11 Tempo

This module addresses the following music fundamentals topics:
1 Minor Keys and Scales
2 Learning Major and Minor Scales
3 Ear Training

This module addresses the following music fundamentals topics:
1 Intervals and Inversions
2 Quickly Recognizing Simple Intervals
3 Consonance and Dissonance

This module addresses the following music fundamentals topics:
1 Triads
2 Naming Triads
3 Beginning Harmonic Analysis
4 Seventh Chords and Inversions

This text is designed to introduce students to works representative of a variety of music traditions including the repertoires of Western Europe from the Middle Ages through the present; of the United States, including art music, jazz, folk, rock, musical theater; and from at least two non-Western world areas (Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Indian subcontinent). A primary goal is to enable students to speak and write about the features of the music, employing vocabulary and concepts of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, timbre,and form used by musicians. The texts explores the historic, social, and cultural contexts and the role of class, ethnicity, and gender in the creation and performance of music, including practices of improvisation and the implications of oral and notated transmission. Similarly, the text aims to acquaint students with the sources of musical sounds—instruments and voices from different cultures, found sounds, electronically generated sounds; basic principles that determine pitch and timbre. Lastly, the text aims to examine students to the influence of technology, mass media, globalization, and transnational currents on the music of today.

Welcome to Music 1300, Music: Its Language History, and Culture. The course has a number of interrelated objectives:
1. To introduce you to works representative of a variety of music traditions.These include the repertoires of Western Europe from the Middle Agesthrough the present; of the United States, including art music, jazz, folk, rock, musical theater; and from at least two non-Western world areas (Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Indian subcontinent).
2. To enable you to speak and write about the features of the music you study,employing vocabulary and concepts of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, timbre,and form used by musicians.
3. To explore with you the historic, social, and cultural contexts and the role of class, ethnicity, and gender in the creation and performance of music,including practices of improvisation and the implications of oral andnotated transmission.
4. To acquaint you with the sources of musical sounds—instruments and voices fromdifferent cultures, found sounds, electronically generated sounds; basic principlesthat determine pitch and timbre.
5. To examine the influence of technology, mass media, globalization, and transnationalcurrents on the music of today.
The chapters in this reader contain definitions and explanations of musical terms and concepts,short essays on subjects related to music as a creative performing art, biographical sketchesof major figures in music, and historical and cultural background information on music fromdifferent periods and places.

Music Theory for the 21st–Century Classroom is an openly–licensed online four–semester college music theory textbook. This text differs from other music theory textbooks by focusing less on four–part (SATB) voiceleading and more on relating harmony to the phrase. Also, in traditional music theory textbooks, there is little emphasis on motivic analysis and analysis of melodic units smaller than the phrase. In my opinion, this led to students having difficulty with creating melodies, since the training they are given is typically to write a “melody” in quarter notes in the soprano voice of part writing exercises. When the assignments in those texts ask students to do more than this, the majority of the students struggle to create a melody with continuity and with appropriate placement of harmonies within a phrase because the text had not prepared them to do so.

Music Theory for the 21st–Century Classroom is an openly–licensed online college music theory textbook that is meant to take the student from the basics of reading and writing pitches and rhythms through twelve–tone technique and minimalism over the course of four semesters. This text differs from other music theory textbooks by focusing less on four–part (SATB) voiceleading and more on relating harmony to the phrase. Also, in traditional music theory textbooks, there is little emphasis on motivic analysis and analysis of melodic units smaller than the phrase. Whenever possible, examples from popular music and music from film and musical theater are included to illustrate melodic and harmonic concepts, usually within the context of the phrase. Practice exercises (with answers), homework exercises, and practice tests are included.

This text provides just a small sampling of some of the various musical styles and traditions that might be found, though the skills developed in this course can be applied to any type of music.