Table of Contents

Part 1 Foreword Part 2 Book One: 101 Ways of Hearing a Dog Bark Part 3 Book Two: Walking the Dog Part 4 Book Three: Strings, Surfaces, and Empty Spaces Part 5 Book Four: Reflections Part 6 Book Five: Sound Bites Chapter 7 Introduction Chapter 8 I Parts of Speech Chapter 9 II Echoes and Absence Chapter 10 III Precision Instruments Chapter 11 IV Teamwork Chapter 12 V Leadership Chapter 13 VI Time and Motion Part 14 Book Six: Impressions of Beethoven Part 15 Index Part 16 About the Author

About the Author

Robin Maconie is a New Zealand born composer and musicologist who studied with Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He is the author of The Second Sense (2002) and Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (2005), both published by Scarecrow Press.

Reviews

This is a fascinating and highly stimulating approach to music, based on the idea that the most fundamental aspect of any music is not technical training in one tradition or another, but rather the action of listening....The Way of Music offers pathways to lead a thinking person or music student from that everyday attraction into reflecting on the engrossing and interlocked worlds of ritual, creativity, meaning, pattern, science, and philosophy of art which music knits together. The book does not set out to demand submissive agreement with its assertions, but more commendably to engender in readers thought, discussion and a creative response.
*Martin Lodge, Composer and Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Waikato at Hamilton*

Maconie, a composer and musicologist, provides a guide to music appreciation that draws on his earlier text The Second Sense: Language, Music, and Hearing. Intended for nonmusicians and upper level nonmusic courses, this guide was conceived as a "paper website" and sections can be studied individually. Sections, called "books," consist of brief explanations of one idea and cover attention training, aural skills, and musical meaning. Book Five surveys 100 recorded examples of classical and world music; it is meant to be read in conjunction with listening to the music. The final section presents reactions from listeners from different backgrounds to a movement of a Beethoven piano concerto.
*Reference and Research Book News, May 2007*

A very original and compelling (and accessible) piece of work.
*Michael Schmidt, Editor of PN Review*

Maconie's commentaries are lucid and immediate, and the reader is offered some stunning descriptions of the music under discussion....the book will prove extremely useful for music teachers and lecturers...
*The Musical Times*

...a significant achievement. It deserves widespread circulation and implementation.
*David Morriss*

Focusing on classical music, Maconie shows how readily the rich and varied textures, structures, and rhetoric of classical music can be learned and can satisfy and intrigue anyone, irrespective of their previous background. ... Maconie brings both a more up-to-date scientific perspective … and a more sympathetic awareness of how the students are situated 'in-the-world' and need to be led into this knowledge from their 'in-the-world' status, rather than just be regarded as objects into which knowledge is poured by the expert.
*Musicae Scientiae: The Journal Of Escom*

.... written primarily for the nonspecialist, and primarily in nontechnical language. This text would be eminently suitable for an introductory course in music appreciation inasmuch as these courses are almost invariably designed as music history courses, albeit somewhat less rigorous than the music history courses designed for music majors.... Overall, Maconie's book is refreshingly different from many musical appreciation texts, and this alone is a strength that sets it apart from the mainstream of historically oriented texts. It is based on universal, innate responses from the listener and is not dependent on technical music training, although it serves well as an introduction from which inclined students could then ease into more technical instruction in music theory or history. The interdisciplinary nature of the commentary, necessitated by the desire to speak in terms of universals for an audience of students, is a great strength and should lead to many fruitful class discussions combining anthropology, sociology, aesthetics, philosophy, religion, and music.
*Music Reference Services Quarterly, Volume 11 Number 22 (2008)*