Discovering Music Online

The more you understand about music, the more you will enjoy it.

Discovering Music Online is about understanding music in the context of its time and place.  If you have an interest in history, this is the course for you.  It ties music history to the history of monarchs, politics, religious movements, technology, economics, and the other arts – literature, painting, architecture, and theater.

Because music is connected to everything.

Professor Carol has long been a popular speaker for adult audiences.  In this online course, she combines her skills as a teacher and performer with her passion for the arts to offer surprising insights and to demonstrate how the arts reflect and shape all of history.

• In the Court of Louis XIV, your ability to dance was a sign of intelligence and competence, and you could lose your diplomatic post over a faux pas.
• The popularity of coffee houses in Leipzig helped usher in the public concert and even inspired a secular cantata by J.S. Bach.
• The harpsichord was associated with the aristocracy, and the French Revolution led people to replace them with pianos and keep their heads.
• The contemporaries Beethoven and Napoleon both exemplify the rise of individualism in the early 19th century.
• The music of America is often characterized by portability: what could be brought over in ships or transported across the prairie in wagons.
• Since the introduction of the wax cylinder, popular songs have tended to be about 3 minutes long.