Reddit reviews What to Listen For in Music (Signet Classics)
We found 2 Reddit comments about What to Listen For in Music (Signet Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I strongly recommend Aaron Copland's What to Listen For in Music. A classic, for good reason, written by a major American composer.
And I agree with another commenter about searching for "[Name of piece] program notes". I'd be careful about Wikipedia-- I've found its music articles about specific pieces to be relatively poorly written, compared to (say) history and science articles. (Although, to be fair, I just tested this long-held theory by checking out Wikipedia on Beethoven's Grosse Fugue, and it was excellent.)
If you would like to read a book anyway, Aaron Copland's "What to Listen for in Music" is a great read and teaches you both how does your fugue, sonata, canon (and gavotte, minuet, passacaglia, basso ostinato...) work and where it comes from. And also how to listen to it to get the most out of it. It also has a lot of listening recommendations which are now very easy to find e.g. through Google Play. It's quite old, but it doesn't diminish it in any way.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004IYJE4M/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1