We all know that beneath the surface of music, beyond the joy or excitement or even heartache that this beautiful language of sound can stir within us, lies the often mysterious realm of music theory—a complex syntax of structural and instrumental resources that composers may draw on.

No matter what kind of music we listen to—symphony or string quartet, saxophone solo or vocal ballad, hip hop or Gregorian chant—we feel the impact of that music and have done so all our lives, even though we may not know how such impact is achieved, or understand the fundamental processes of musical composition.

But what if we did understand how certain musical effects were achieved? What if we could learn to follow the often-intimidating language of key signatures, pitch, mode, melody, meter, and other parts of musical structure used by composers? What if we could recognize these various components at work as we listened to our favorite music? What if we could "speak" the language of Western music?

It's a language that Professor Robert Greenberg calls rich, varied, and magnificent, and he has little doubt about the rewards of even a beginning level of fluency.

"It's a language that pays us back tenfold—a hundredfold—for every detail we come to recognize and perceive! And it's a language that will only get richer and more varied, as our increasingly global culture contributes ever more vocabulary to it."


Course Lecture Titles
1. The Language of Music
2. Timbre, Continued
3. Timbre, Part 3
4. Beat and Tempo
5. Meter, Part 1
6. Meter, Part 2
7. Pitch and Mode, Part 1
8. Pitch and Mode, Part 2
9. Intervals and Tunings
10. Tonality, Key Signature, and the Circle of Fifths
11. Intervals Revisited and Expanded
12. Melody
13. Melody, Continued
14. Texture and Harmony, Part 1
15. Harmony, Part 2—Function, Tendency, and Dominance
16. Harmony, Part 3—Progression, Cadence, and Modulation