This course helps you listen to classical music well, and provides guidance on how to bring the power of great music into your literature and history classes. You'll begin by seeing how Western music grows from and gives shape to our shared cultural story. From there, the course shows you how to thread music purposefully through existing courses and units: mapping works to themes you already teach, staging short listening encounters that open discussion, and aligning outcomes with writing, speaking, and close-reading goals. You'll also learn a simple toolbox for the humanities classroom: three-minute “first listen” protocols, Socratic prompts keyed to form and motif, guided note-taking for non-musicians, and quick formative checks that strengthen attention and memory. Next, you'll recover music’s classical roots in the Quadrivium. Framing music this way gives you concrete ways to connect it to mathematics, astronomy, architecture, and rhetoric: for instance, charting musical pulse pairs with analyzing phrase length, and harmonic tension with narrative conflict.
This course will help you practice “hearing form”: tracing ostinato and crescendo as students annotate what repetition means in both sound and story. With Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, you'll model how tone, texture, and tempo convey pathos. With Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, you'll explore irony and courage under pressure, connecting musical choices to historical context and ethical judgment.
Lessons
Lesson 1: Music in Western Culture
Lesson 2: Music in the Humanities Curriculum
Lesson 3: Music in the Humanities Classroom
Lesson 4: Music in the Classical Quadrivium
Lesson 5: Demo 1: Beethoven Symphony #7, 2nd Movement
Lesson 6: Demo 2: Tchaikovsky Symphony #6, 1st Movement
Lesson 7: Demo 3: Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47
Note: you will need to sign up for a free ClassicalU account (if you don't already have one) before you can complete your purchase.
$50 for lifetime access
Note: you will need to sign up for a free ClassicalU account (if you don't already have one) before you can complete your purchase.
Explore this topic with this conversation between Jesse Hake of ClassicalU and Junius Johnson about music in the Western tradition:
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Dr. Johnson uniquely combines his analytic thinking with his vast theological knowledge and his love for wonder and imagination to expand our view of reality and what is possible.
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Junius’ classes have revitalized my hunger and thirst to keep growing, to be a mind awake. Junius’ experience and training is vast, but he is also gifted in articulating complexities, connections, concepts, et cetera, in a lively and warm manner that is accessible to the amateur while fully satisfying the most experienced.
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Participating in a course led by Dr. Junius Johnson is a wonderful journey of exploration, seeking hidden gems in unexpected places. It is an opportunity to learn to look deeper than the surface, both in reading and in the mundane of life. A delightful feast for the mind that lasts far beyond the actual banquet.