The course combines elements of music history, theory, and analysis with strategies for mindful listening. It draws on a diverse range of musical examples, from Indonesian gamelan to British grime, baroque to 20th-century avant-garde.
No prior formal training in music is required. The course provides a welcoming introduction to musical concepts and listening approaches accessible to all.
Participants will come away with an expanded appreciation for music and enhanced skills for attentive, insightful listening.
- The ability to recognize musical structures, elements, and forms across eras and cultures.
- Skills to engage actively, not just passively, when listening.
- An understanding of the contexts surrounding music historically and today.
- A perspective of music as a vast, borderless ocean in which everything is connected.
- Mastery over different listening modes to apply consciously.
- Enriched discussions about music through informed analysis.
- The joy of immersive listening experiences.
Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present. By the imperfection of his nature, man is doomed to submit to the passage of time — to its categories of past and future — without ever being able to give substance, and therefore stability, to the category of the present.
The phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
Igor Stravinsky
- The space of sound and the properties of silence
- How music was defined in different eras, and why it matters
- Silent pieces, their background, context, and importance: what makes music music?
- Sensual, expressive and structural planes of music: Aaron Copland’s scheme
- How we listen is how we perceive the world: a neuroscience perspective
- The power of emptiness: the inaudible/invisible in music and visual arts
- Text scores and imaginary music: instructions for inner listening
Case study: «4’33» by John Cage
The first unit is devoted to studying the conceptual, anthropological, cultural, and historical frameworks of the notion of "music" and our ideas about listening. Where does music "begin" and "end"? Who participates in its creation and reproduction, and how has this changed over time?
At the center is John Cage's radical composition "4'33"," which challenged conventional assumptions of what can be considered music. By "listening" to 4'33, we learn to pay attention to how we listen in general. A discussion of it, enriched by the analytical tools proposed by composer Aaron Copland, serves as a starting point for exploring historical notions of music. The focus is on modern dictionary definitions of music (Grove Dictionary), formulations from medieval music treatises (Boethius, Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus), Ancient Roman texts (Aurelius Augustinus), classical Ottoman (Hajji Khalifa) and Arab texts ("Epistles of the Brethren of Purity").
Analyzing the context for the emergence of silent pieces (Rauschenberg's white canvases, early English translations of the I Ching) allows us to examine the concept of the invisible/inaudible in traditional cultures (from Japanese ceremonial gagaku music to classical Chinese painting). These, in turn, shed light on the influence of silent pieces in modern performance (Beethoven's 7th Symphony performed by Musicaeterna) and composition (Wandelweiser).
Studying the tradition of text scores in the 20th-21st century (Yoko Ono, La Monte Young, Dmitry Kourliandsky) offers an example that music doesn't have to be performed by musicians to be heard – it can sound exclusively in the listener's mind. Matthew Herbert's "Imaginary Music" can be performed by the class at the end of the first unit.
Further reading:
Aaron Copland - "What to Listen for in Music"
Kyle Gann - "No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage's 4'33"
Piero Weiss, Richard Taruskin. "Music in the Western world: a History in Documents"
Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’. Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: Epistle 5: on music ( O. Wright , Ed. and Trans.)
John Lely, James Saunders «Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation»
Matthew Herbert "The Music: A Novel Through Sound"
- Psychology and anatomy of hearing.
- The listener as co-participant. Forgotten listening traditions.
- Noise and silence in the concert hall: history of the issue.
This unit explores the science behind our auditory abilities from anatomical, historical, and cultural lenses.
The first part of the unit is devoted to the physics of sound and how we perceive sound, how our acoustic and cognitive apparatus is structured, how we process sonic material, and how this affects what and how we hear. The formation of human listening takes us back thousands of years, to times when proto-singing preceded speech. Students learn about research on the listening abilities of Neanderthals, archaeological discoveries related to sound production and musical instruments, and the views of traditional cultures on the role of listening.
Next, we will examine how listening norms and behaviors have been shaped by society. In 18th-century Europe, boisterous crowds treated operas and plays as background amusement. Yet by the 20th century, strict silence became expected during performances. Primary sources documenting premieres from Lully to Mahler will showcase how listening norms were transformed between the 18th and 20th centuries.
As a case study, students will recreate a Mozart symphony premiere from the perspective of its original audience. Ultimately, these investigations will reveal that listening experiences are informed by a complex interplay of acoustic science, culture, history, and individual perception.
Further reading:
Steven Mithen “The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body”
Mark Changizi «Harnessed. How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man»
Daniel Levitin "This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession"William Weber. "Did People Listen in the 18th Century?". Early Music. Vol. 25, No. 4, (Nov., 1997)
"The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 1769-1791".
"On deaf and blind listening to Beethoven". The Auricle, Vol. II, No. 6, March 1924. American Foundation for the Blind, Helen Keller Archives.
James Johnson "Listening in Paris. A Cultural History"
Bruce Haines "The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century"
- Archaeology of sound: megaliths, lithophones, and resonant caves
- Voices from above and within: acoustics as a compass of the sacred
- A brief history of concerts: From Babylon to Love Parade
- How music lost its connection to place: the advent of recording and the digital revolution
Unit 3 is dedicated to spatial listening and music's relationship to physical spaces. In the modern world, streaming, recordings, and personal audio players have largely severed the link between place and music. Yet for most of history, this connection was vital. Participants will trace this bond from cave acoustics to megalithic resonances, through studies of how temple acoustics shaped early known composers like Pérotin. We’ll explore the site-specific elements in Vivaldi and other Baroque music, up to Stockhausen’s experiments in Lebanese caves. The first part covers recent discoveries in archaeoacoustics, while the second surveys the history of concerts from Babylon to Love Parade.
The focus is on Tuvan throat singing and other authentic music of nomadic steppe cultures (""Tuva, among the spirits: Sound, music, and nature in Sakha and Tuva""). This offers different conceptions of music’s spatial relationship and listening approaches (including timbral and spatial listening) that can inform performers and listeners today.
Further reading:
Theodore Levin, Valentina Süzükei "Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond"
John Blacking. "How Musical is Man?"
Tim Blanning "The Triumph of Music: Composers Musicians And Their Audiences 1700 To The Present"
- What is "expressive power" in music? Can compositions have inherent meaning?
- Tracing the history of "absolute music" debates
- Interpreting and describing what a piece of music is "about"
- The composer as an oracle
In this unit, we'll explore the longstanding discussion around music's expressive qualities and potential for meaning, known as the "absolute music" debate. Does instrumental music carry set meanings or narratives? Participants will trace key points in this debate, from myths of Orpheus to the dispute between Richard Wagner and Eduard Hanslick, to Igor Stravinsky's statements denying music's power. This discourse encompasses Pythagorean beliefs about microcosm and macrocosm, medieval music theorists' views, early opera creators, Kant's critiques, Romantic ideas of music's superpowers, and concepts of rhetoric and mimesis in music - all of which can be found, in varying proportions, in modern listening concepts.
Students will test and discuss theoretical arguments about music's expressive power by analyzing select works of Bach, Vivaldi, Marin Marais, and C.P.E Bach. They also try their hand at a Harvard Music Lab experiment on guessing song genres using a large dataset of traditional songs (lullabies, love songs, dance songs, healing songs). Attempts to "decode" meaning embedded in music will also be discussed using Iranian classical music and Azerbaijani mugham. Mugham scales, gūshehs, dastgāh parts can convey meaning understood by tradition bearers, without necessarily being universal.Further reading:
Mark Evan Bonds. "Absolute Music: The History of an Idea"
Andrew Hicks "The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind and Well-Being"
Gültekin Shamilli. "The Philosophy of Music. Theory and Practice of the Art of Maqam".
- "Beauty" and "Ugliness": The History of Consonance and Dissonance
- The Independence of Voices and the Emergence of Polyphony
- Harmony: Combining Sounds
This unit explores the "beauty" and "ugliness" in music—that is, consonance and dissonance problems which listening discussions traditionally revisit. Are consonances and dissonances universal? Is perceiving consonant and dissonant intervals innate or culturally conditioned? Starting from modern attempts to define consonance and dissonance, participants learn about the cultural history of consonance and dissonance in the Western canon, tracing how intervals fell in and out of favor, and how theorists explained this in Pythagorean, physiological, religious and political contexts - from Aristoxenus to Lachenmann, from ancient harmony ideas to Wagner's "Tristan chord", Schoenberg's "emancipation of dissonance" and the "decay of tonality" idea. The consonance history also reveals a brief history of polyphony and music's relationships with power.
"Deciphering" attempts, in the spirit of the previous unit, on Bach's prelude "Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt" (BWV 637) and selections from Shostakovich's "24 Preludes and Fugues" cycle, each using dissonances distinctly, provide discussion starting points.
Countering consonance "universality" theories is non-Western music where consonance is solved differently - particularly Korean court sogyo music and Indonesian gamelan with its unique tempering system.
Further reading:
James Tenney "A history of consonance and dissonance"
Helmut Lahenmann "The "beautiful" in music today" (Tempo, New Series, No. 135 )
Mark Pelman "Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory"
"Dm Shostakovich. Pro et contra: an anthology"
- Melody as a Problem and Possibility
- Timbre and Exploring Sound's Depths
- Rhythm: Structuring Time
- Konnakol: Indian Rhythmic Tradition
Participants learn summary "hit" melody rules from the latest research, observing manifestations across genres - from Verdi and Mozart operas to SIA and Leonard Cohen songs.
Analyzing Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy" hit traces how pop music's narrowing melodic range heightened another syntax - rhythm and timbre. Interest in timbre and exploring sound's depths also marks contemporary classical (Gérard Grisey, Giacinto Scelsi).
Part 2 covers rhythm and meter - its notation emergence, music development impact, and 20th century classical pulsation renaissance (Messiaen, American minimalism, African, Javanese and Indian rhythm influences)
As an alternative rhythmic view, participants get a konnakol introduction — South Indian Carnatic music's rhythmic school — with group rhythmic études.
Further reading:
F. Pachet. Hit song science. In Tzanetakis & Ogihara Tao, ed, in "Music Data Mining".
Alban Berg. «Why is Schoenberg's Music so Difficult to Understand?»
Eugene Narmour «The Analysis and Cognition of Basic Melodic Structures: The Implication-Realization Model»
David P. Nelson. «Solkattu Manual. An Introduction to the Rhythmic Language of South Indian Music»
- Time: The Invisible Fabric of Music
- Dynamic Pairs in Music
- The Magic of Repetition: Ostinato, Motif, Sequence
- Dialogue in Music: From Antiphon to Rap Battle
- Lamento: The Journey of the Bass Line from Monteverdi to Portishead
Unit 7 covers music's non-syntactic elements and noticeable constructions passed down through centuries, signaling meaning and emotion. Non-syntactic elements (dynamics, density, register, duration, timbre, pauses) are more universal across traditions and genres. Dynamic pairs (tension-repose, variety-unity, motion-stability) offer another analytical and listening strategy. Through pauses and "energy" flow, participants comparatively study Gesualdo madrigals, Webern variations, and Ornette Coleman's free jazz. Linearity and non-linearity concepts arise via temporal listening - music as abstract, temporal sonic shapes simultaneously moving through and creating time, generating internal (syntactical) and external (symbolic) meanings. This enables new performance and analysis opportunities, distinguishing time understanding modes in music.
Numerous sound examples also showcase music dialogue variability (call-and-response, antiphon, Jewish cantorial, polychoral Venetian, fugal proposta-risposta, classical concerto, string quartets, Sufi qawwali, rap battle). And ostinato - the famed repeating basso ostinato idea originating in laments across traditions and woven through Monteverdi to Radiohead.If possible, students improvise basso lamenti with available instruments, applying prior lesson knowledge.
Further reading:
Alex Ross. "Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues"
Edward Sarath «Music theory through improvisation»
Jonathan D. Kramer «The Time of Music. New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies»
Joseph Kerman. «Contemplating music. Сhallenges to musicology».
- Reviewing the module's listening strategies (timbral, contextual, structural, linear, fascial, etc.)
- The 20th century and new listening approaches
- Sound recording and the invention of classical music
- Tonality's decay, polyrhythms, microtonality
- Serialism and aleatoricism. Graphic and text scores.
- The new electronic wave
- Minimalism and post-minimalism
- R. Murray Schafer and soundscape's birth
- Spectralism
- Sound art: acoustic ecology, acoustic justice
- Keys to contemporary music
The final unit summarizes prior modules, synthesizing and re-analyzing listening strategies. This knowledge is applied to a concise 20th century music history, spotlighting the listener's role and technologies at each turning point. Through critical reactions to Ligeti's "Le Grand Macabre" opera premiere versus reviews of Debussy, Beethoven, Bizet, and Mussorgsky's works, participants discuss critical reception's role and historical conditioning. The unit concludes by discussing contemporary multimodal listening approaches.
Further listening:
Alex Ross "The Rest is Noise"
Alvin Lucier «Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music»Milton Babbith «Who Cares if You Listen»
Tim Rutherford-Johnson «Music after the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989»
Ed Mckeon «Heiner Goebbels and Curatorial Composing after Cage. From Staging Works to Musicalising Encounters»
R.M.Schafer «The Tuning of the World (The Soundscape)»
Brendon LaBelle «Acoustic Justice: Listening, Performativity, and the Work of Reorientation»
Alexey Munipov (b.1977) is a Berlin-based curator, educator, researcher and music critic with 25+ years of experience. Author of the award-winning book "Fermata. Conversations with Composers». Taught the art of listening, music in theater, and cultural journalism at HATS (Tromsø), HSE University Art and Design, Golden Mask Theatre Institute (Moscow), European University (St. Petersburg). Curated concerts, music festivals, performances, exhibitions and film screenings at Barbican, Under the Bridge (London), Israel Conservatory of Music, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Habait Theatre (Tel Aviv), Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, V-A-C, and DK Rassvet (Moscow).
Led numerous listening groups and workshops, delivered lectures and pre-concert talks.
Ph.D. in Cultural Studies.
Polina Proskurina-Yanovich
Philologist
The "attentive listening" course isn't lectures or monologues. It's a thoughtfully crafted collective music history journey where you feel constantly engaged, experiencing encounters through sound, words, images, even your body trying unfamiliar rhythms. Each meeting I gained interesting micro-stories and facts to share. And music I'd likely never have discovered alone.Alexander Gavrilov
Critic, Poet
"Fermata" author Alexei Munipov teaches unexpected, refreshing listening practices for diverse music types. If you've long wanted to approach understanding music generally - this is for you.
The course allows hearing not just music, but sounds overall, with impossible new fullness and freshness, as if you'd grown another set of more sensitive ears!- Ekaterina TimokhinaEntrepreneurAlexei's course immersed our group in music, offering an unusual inside perspective - explaining the workings, and connections, in an exciting yet profound way. We were participants, not just listeners - reacting to music as in Mozart's time, improvising on unfamiliar instruments, and reading score charades. Even total beginners. Pure joy!
- Alina AnufrienkoMusicianThe Attentive Listening School interested me as a chance to learn more "musics" from Alexei Munipov. It influenced me not just as a listener and composer, but as an interlocutor and improv partner. And as a person in dialogues with music and in communication. For me, the course truly became a school of attentive listening.
