Andres Hartman FRIDAYS 9:30-10:45
In modern times, people are not exposed to classical music as much as they had in the past, leaving it inaccessible to many, except in popular avenues such as movie music and commercials. Additionally, classical music can be intimidating to engage with on one’s own, due to its lengthy history, complexity, foreign terms and languages, and the length and profundity of many of its compositions. This course will illustrate the evolution of classical music from the medieval era through the renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, modern, and postmodern eras. There will be a mix of historical and composer biographical content, explanatory information about classical music forms, genres and terms, and generous recorded musical excerpts to illustrate themes and concepts. The goal of the course is to open the entire history of this art form to students, to enrich their lives, and hopefully to act as a springboard to further in-depth learning about individual genres, eras and composers within the field of classical music.
Note: This course is a repeat of the course offered Spring 2025.
Andrew Hartman has lectured on classical music at the Vassar LLI, the New York City Opera Guild at Lincoln Center, and at several Bruderhof Communities in Pennsylvania and New York, to both school children and adult audiences. He has published a dozen articles on classical music on MusicWeb International, a premier classical music website, and has attended over 1,000 live performances of classical music over a forty-five year period, including chamber and orchestral concerts, ballets and operas. He owns a comprehensive collection of thousands of classical music recordings from which he will provide all musical examples for the course.