All You Have to Do Is Listen: Music from the Inside Out - Hardcover

by Rob Kapilow (Author)

Rob Kapilow has been helping audiences hear more in great music for almost twenty years with his What Makes It Great? series on NPR, at Lincoln Center, and in concert halls throughout the US and Canada. In this book, he gives you a set of tools you can use when listening to any piece of music in order to hear its "plot"--its story told in notes. The musical examples are available free for download to help you hear the ideas presented. Whether you are an experienced concertgoer or a newcomer to classical music, the listening principles Kapilow shares will help you ""get"" music in an exciting, fresh new way.

""Kapilow gets audiences in tune with classical music at a deeper and more immediate level than many of them thought possible.""
--Los Angeles Times

""Rob Kapilow is awfully good at what he does. We need him.""
--The Boston Globe

""A wonderful guy who brings music alive!""
--Katie Couric

""Rob Kapilow leaps into the void dividing music analysis from appreciation and fills it with exhilarating details and sensations.""
--The New York Times

""You could practically see the light bulbs going on above people's heads. . . . The audience could decipher the music in a new, deeper way. It was the total opposite of passive listening.""
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

Front Jacket

Musical knowledge is real when it becomes simply how you listen. Rob Kapilow has been helping audiences hear more in great music for almost twenty years with his What Makes It Great?TM series on NPR, at Lincoln Center, and in concert halls throughout the United States and Canada. At the heart of his success is an approach that focuses less on historical facts and musical terminology than it does on the ability to pay attention, listen closely, and notice.

In this book, he gives you a set of tools you can use when listening to any piece of music in order to hear its "plot"--its story told in notes. He helps you listen to music from the inside out, from the composer's point of view, so that you'll follow the composer's musical thoughts, whether the piece is by Bach, Schumann, Stravinsky, or Gershwin.

Kapilow starts right where the listener does--at the beginning. The book is structured like a piece of music, with topics organized as they would naturally arise in a composition--progressing from idea, to phrase, to section, to movement, to form. Whether you are an experienced concertgoer or a newcomer to classical music, the listening principles Kapilow shares will help you "get" the music you hear in an exciting, fresh new way.

Throughout, he includes a wide range of examples, from a fascinating, note-by-note look at "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" to excerpts taken from the standard classical music repertoire. The examples are at the heart of the book and are invaluable in helping you to grasp--and most importantly, to hear--the musical ideas presented in each chapter, whether it's the "punctuation" of a musical phrase, the meaning of repetition, or the three-act structure of sonata form.

One of the book's unique features is the accompanying Web site, where all of the musical examples can be downloaded, heard, and followed with the help of a real-time scrollbar. There is no need to hunt for recordings and no ability to read musical notation is required to follow and grasp the musical examples.

As you become more practiced in hearing the musical concepts explored in the book, you'll find that they will become a natural, built-in part of your listening experience that will increase your enjoyment of every type of music. All you have to do is listen.

Back Jacket

Praise for Rob Kapilow

"Kapilow gets audiences in tune with classical music at a deeper and more immediate level than many of them thought possible."
--"Los Angeles Times"

"Rob Kapilow is awfully good at what he does. We need him."
--"The Boston Globe"

"A wonderful guy who brings music alive!"
--Katie Couric

"Rob Kapilow leaps into the void dividing music analysis from appreciation and fills it with exhilarating details and sensations."
--"The New York Times"

"You could practically see the light bulbs going on above people's heads. . . . The audience could decipher the music in a new, deeper way. It was the total opposite of passive listening."
--"The Philadelphia Inquirer"

Author Biography

Rob Kapilow is a composer, conductor, pianist, and music commentator. His "What Makes It Great" programs, which began on NPR, have been developed into full-length concert evenings that are a mainstay of Lincoln Center's Great Performers series, and are presented on a recurring basis in Boston, Washington, DC, and Kansas City, and in California at Cerritos and Palo Alto. They have also been turned into CD recordings and video podcasts. He appears regularly throughout the United States and Canada, both with "What Makes It Great" and "FamilyMusik," and has been featured in print and on television, including on NBC's Today show and PBS's Live from Lincoln Center.