Audiobook 2011.10.14 - Beethoven's Piano Sonatas

With classical music, I tend to listen to the parts I like (the familiar ones), and skip through the slow, boring, unfamiliar ones. With this audiobook playing in the car, I'm forced to listen through all of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas.

The audiobook is an extensive academic discourse by Professor Robert Greenberg on each of Beethoven's piano sonatas. More than that, the lecturer goes beyond the music and expounds on the life and times of Beethoven, how the music came about, how it works, some funny anecdotes and metaphors here and there, etc.

By the end of the course, my head is full of movements, cadence material, modulating bridge, coda, tarantella, gigue, fugue, adagio, allegro, pianissimo, bel canto, open cadence, theme and variation, trills, major/minor keys and chords, etc.