Now Hear This
Music appreciation begins by paying attention to how we listen.
- Starts with students’ existing excitement about music
- Helps students recognize and move beyond hidden musical prejudices
- Places sound and listening first—then connects them to history
What do you hear?
The central question throughout the text.
Now Hear This connects students’ natural enthusiasm for music with the skills to hear more deeply.
Instead of beginning with names, dates, and historical periods, this interactive digital textbook begins with the sound of music—and with the experiences, expectations, and assumptions every listener brings to it.
Through concise writing, guided listening, video, interactive activities, and more than 100 musical examples, students learn to recognize what they hear, describe it with confidence, and connect it to the cultures, people, and historical forces that shaped it.
Chapter one begins with a challenge
Hearing Beyond the Familiar
We all bring a culture into every listening experience.
We do not listen from a neutral position. Our musical tastes are shaped by culture, family, community, identity, and experience. Students may arrive with deeply rooted ideas about which music belongs to them, which music is “good,” and which music is too difficult, strange, old, or culturally distant to understand.
Now Hear This brings those hidden musical prejudices into the open.
In the first chapter, students step outside their own musical world and examine human music almost as an anthropologist—or an alien visitor—might. They consider their physical and emotional reactions, recognize the difference between unfamiliarity and genuine dislike, and become more conscious of the assumptions influencing what they hear.
The purpose is not to tell students what they should like. It is to give them greater control over how they listen.
Once students can recognize their own resistance to the unfamiliar, they are freer to explore music beyond the limits of their previous experience.
From liking music to understanding it
Enjoyment is already there. The book supplies the listening tools.
Most students arrive in Music Appreciation already enjoying music. What they may not yet possess are the tools to recognize a melody within an instrumental work, distinguish musical textures, identify instruments by sound, or explain what is happening as they listen.
Now Hear This builds those tools step by step. Students develop a working vocabulary of melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, form, timbre, instrumentation, dynamics, tempo, and articulation.
These concepts are not presented merely as definitions to memorize. They become practical tools that students continue to use as they encounter new periods, composers, instruments, and musical styles.
Organized Around Listening
The book gives students the tools to hear the music before asking them to place it in history.
Now Hear This begins by examining music as a human experience, the physical nature of sound, and the assumptions listeners bring to unfamiliar music. Students then develop a practical vocabulary for recognizing and describing what they hear.
Only after establishing that foundation does the book begin its historical journey. This order allows students to approach each period with listening tools they can continue to apply as the music changes.
The organization supports learning by:
• Placing sound before historical detail. Students first learn to recognize musical characteristics, then connect those characteristics to composers, periods, cultures, and events.
• Keeping the writing direct and focused. The text emphasizes the ideas students need in order to understand what they hear without allowing names and dates to obscure the music.
• Beginning chapters with questions. Ungraded opening questions encourage curiosity and reveal what students already think or recognize before encountering the material.
• Dividing substantial chapters into manageable sections. Checkpoints give students opportunities to pause, apply new ideas, and confirm their understanding.
• Making listening part of assessment. Chapter quizzes ask students to recognize and interpret musical examples rather than relying exclusively on factual recall.
• Connecting music to its larger world. Historical chapters place music alongside the culture, politics, science, philosophy, and art of its period.
It is less important that students memorize the exact year Beethoven was born than that they recognize his musical language, understand his innovations, and hear why he became a bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods.
Across Thirteen Chapters
Now Hear This is organized as thirteen individual chapters, each with its own subject and purpose. Across the course, however, the emphasis gradually shifts—from preparing students to listen, through a broadly chronological exploration of music history, and finally into the many intersecting developments of modern music.
THE OPENING CHAPTERS · Chapters 1–3
Opening minds and developing the tools to listen
The opening chapters prepare students for everything that follows. They examine music as a human experience, consider how culture and familiarity shape our reactions, and encourage students to recognize the assumptions they bring to unfamiliar music.
Students then develop the practical tools they will use throughout the course: an understanding of sound, a working musical vocabulary, and the ability to recognize instruments and ensembles by sight and sound.
THE HISTORICAL SEQUENCE · Chapters 4–9
Following musical change from the Medieval world through Romanticism
The central chapters move broadly through Western music history, from the Medieval and Renaissance periods through the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras.
Students apply the same listening tools as musical language, instruments, ensembles, forms, and the role of the composer change over time. Music is connected to the politics, religion, science, philosophy, art, technology, and social life of its period.
THE LATER CHAPTERS · Chapters 10–13
Exploring the many directions of modern music
The later chapters become less strictly chronological because modern musical development does not follow a single path. Traditions overlap, react against one another, borrow from one another, and develop simultaneously.
Students explore modernism, nationalism, jazz, the avant-garde, electronic music, minimalism, postmodernism, crossover artists, Broadway, and film music. Historical context remains important, but it is introduced within each musical development rather than presented as one continuous timeline.
Learning Outcomes
Exhibit active listening, demonstrated by distinguishing musical components such as melody, harmony, texture, meter, instrumentation, and dynamics.
Recognize and classify musical instruments, both orchestral and non-orchestral.
Demonstrate the ability to understand and utilize a basic musical vocabulary of common terms.
Associate the stylistic and aesthetic developments of music history with the concurrent developments of cultural history.
Identify characteristics and aurally recognize distinguishing features of music from the major style periods of Western music.
Explain the contributions of major composers and identify their musical styles.
Understand the place of the Western musical tradition within the context of global music.
Listening Without Unnecessary Barriers
Listening examples are delivered through YouTube, a platform students already know how to use. In practice, this has greatly reduced the technical problems that can interrupt online learning.
Many selections allow students to watch the performers while they listen. Seeing an instrument produce a sound, observing the interaction within an ensemble, or watching the physical energy of a performance can make an unfamiliar musical idea more immediate and understandable.
Other selections use YouTube simply as an accessible source for the recording. In either case, the technology remains in the background so that students can concentrate on the music.
- A FAMILIAR PLATFORM
- FEWER TECHNICAL OBSTACLES
- MUSIC STUDENTS CAN OFTEN SEE AS WELL AS HEAR
Built for the Course You Actually Teach
Now Hear This is structured around the practical rhythm of a Music Appreciation course. Its thirteen chapters generally support a one-chapter-per-week schedule, while allowing flexibility near the end of the semester.
The direct writing style keeps essential information clear without reducing the intellectual substance of the course. Preliminary questions, guided activities, checkpoints, and assessments provide a consistent learning pattern that students can understand and follow.
The text works as a complete standalone resource for an online course and can also support face-to-face or blended instruction. Instructors may use the complete sequence or select the materials that best suit their course and teaching approach.
Flexible for Instructors Structured for Students
Now Hear This combines readings, listening experiences, activities, and assessment within one adaptable digital course resource.
Inside Each Chapter
Opening questions encourage curiosity and connect new material to students’ existing experience.
Musical concepts are presented through multiple forms, with listening always central.
Students are directed toward specific musical characteristics and encouraged to describe what they hear.
Chapters are divided into manageable sections with opportunities to reinforce important concepts.
Assessments include questions based directly on the musical examples explored in each chapter.
Resources for Instructors
- PowerPoint and Keynote presentations
- Curated YouTube playlists
- Online, blended, or face-to-face use
- Additional question banks
- Comprehensive final assessment, including listening-based questions
- LMS integration and automated assessment
Created in the Classroom
Now Hear This grew directly from my experience teaching Music Appreciation both online and face-to-face at the State College of Florida.
I knew how I wanted to teach the course, but the organization and priorities of existing textbooks did not fully support that approach. I wanted listening to remain central, complex musical ideas to be presented clearly, and the material to fit the actual rhythm of a college semester.
The result was a thirteen-chapter digital text—roughly one chapter for each week of instruction—with videos, guided listening, interactive experiences, checkpoints, and assessments integrated into the course.
Explore the Chapters
Open a chapter to explore its central subjects and learning objectives
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN:
- What is music and how we define it
- The science of sound.
- The relationship between sound and music.
- That music stimulates physical and mental reactions in humans.
- How music is an integral part of human culture throughout time.
- How historical and cultural events influence music.
- Different ways to listen to music.
- Why this matters to you: How to examine your own physical and mental reactions to music.
- Why this matters to you: How to examine your own time and culture from a more objective viewpoint.
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN:
- How to examine and describe music in an academic fashion.
- Recognize and describe the various qualities and aspects of music including
- Melody
- Harmony
- Lyric
- Texture
- Rhythm
- Dynamic
- Tempos
- Articulation
- How to analyze and label musical form.
In this chapter, you will learn:
- How to organize and understand instruments from around the world.
- How to identify by sight and sound instruments used in Western music, classified by their families:
- Woodwinds
- Brass
- Strings
- Keyboards
- Percussion
- Electronic
- Common ensembles, their makeup, sound, and common practices.
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN
- An overview of the Medieval period, including the politics, art, architecture, and philosophy
- Early music forms: chant, organum, and Motet
- Important composers from the Medieval period
- The beginnings of modern music notation
- The sections of the mass
- An overview of the Renaissance period, including politics, art, philosophy, and religion
- Important composers from the Renaissance period
- The early development of musical instruments
- Common musical forms from the period: Mass, Motet, and Madrigal
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN
- An overview of the Baroque period, including the politics, art, architecture, and philosophy.
- How to identify and describe style characteristics of Baroque music.
- Important composers from the time period.
- Advancements in instruments and the birth of the orchestra.
- Baroque musical forms including concerto grosso, solo concerto, suite, and sonata.
- The differences between opera, oratorio, and cantata.
- The birth of opera and how it is organized.
- The complexities of polyphony.
- Beginnings of the major/minor tonal system.
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN
- The definition of the term “Classic” and how it applies to music
- The difference between “Classical” and “classical”
- An overview of the Classic Period, including the politics, art, architecture, and philosophy
- Characteristics of music from the Classical period
- Important composers from the time period
- Solidification of the classic sound and ensembles, including the orchestra
- The pristine classical forms: Symphony, Sonata, String Quartet, Solo Concertos
- Classical Opera
- The use of homophony and how adding polyphony created the paradigm style of Western classical music
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN
- An overview of Beethoven’s place in musical history
- A short biography of his life
- About his personal and musical style
- About many of his musical innovations and how they impacted composers who followed
- How his influence made him the bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods
- Some of his pieces and the characteristics for which to listen
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN:
- The characteristics specific to the Romantic period.
- How these characteristics affected the philosophy, literature, art, and music of the period. à How musical form was altered during the time period.
- How Nationalism manifested in music.
- What qualities unite Romantic composers.
- How the middle class affected the business of music.
- Identifiable musical traits in Romantic period music.
- Important composers and their contributions to music.
- The new forms: Concert Overture, Symphonic Poem.
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN:
- How class structure and the salon affected cultural life in the Romantic period.
- About art songs and song cycles.
- The effects of industrialization on the piano and salon culture.
- About the proliferation of piano music for all performance levels.
- More important composers and their contributions to music history.
- About many new small forms for piano music.
- Important vocal music from the period.
- Opera and its developments throughout the Romantic period.
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN
- Various branches of music development in the twentieth century
- Some types of musical modernism
- Impressionism
- Primitivism
- Expressionism, serialism, and atonalism
- Neoclassicism
- A quick overview of early American music history
- Nationalism in the twentieth century, especially American nationalist composers
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN:
- An overview of the history of jazz, including predecessors and influences on the genesis of jazz.
- About some specific artists who were instrumental in the development of jazz and its various advancements.
- Musical characteristics of jazz, and how to recognize those characteristics when listening
- How concurrent events affected the development of jazz
- The continued evolution of jazz through the twentieth century
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN
- About the difficulties defining postmodernism
- The important qualities of Minimalism
- The definition of avant-garde in relation to musi
- Avant-garde explorations of nonconventional instrumentation and notation
- The development of indeterminacy in music and various ways it was employed
- Early explorations in electronic music and tape music
IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN
- How various twentieth-century musical developments influenced each other
- Composers who merged jazz and classical idioms
- A short introduction to Broadway and classical composers who wrote for the stage
- An overview of film history in the twentieth century
- The evolution of film technologies and how they influenced music for film
- The development of classical film scoring from early film to today
- An introduction to some film composers and their influence on film music
The Music Inside the Course
More than 100 listening and video selections carry students from plainchant and symphonies to jazz, film, and experimental music. The complete index offers an immediate view of the extraordinary range they encounter along the way.
Browse the Complete Listening and Video Index