Music analysis, music history, classicism, romanticism, Opera 

Beginning with the introduction your attention will be caught and held throughout this book. The author puts you, the listener, on speaking terms with music, tells you what composers are saying, why they are saying it, and how they say it. Graphically, he gives a criterion for the differences in the music of various composers and periods; refreshingly, he remains objective in his approach.

The books takes you progressively along all the steps which have brought music to its present stage, explaining all the styles in composition, from Bach to Shoenberg, in a way intelligible to all. You finish each chapter with a grateful feeling that a period in the evolution of music has been summed up with clarity and without bias.

The Listener's Guide to Music Appreciation will open your eyes, ears and mind to the beauties and intricacies in music which may have been escaping you. The intelligent listener is shown to be just as necessary in the musical world today as the composer or the performer.

Highly entertaining, this book gives you a key to musical enjoyment. Simple in style, direct in approach, it will prepare you, the general listener, for a genuine appreciation and understanding of the music of today and yesterday. It is also a book which you will want to pick up and refer to whenever you turn on your radio, phonograph, or before you go to a concert.

Mr. Feldman has played in symphony orchestras under many well known conductors, among them Leopold Stokowski, Nicolai Sokoloff, Walter Damrosch, Bruno Walter, Frederick Stock, and Albert Stoessel. He has long been a student of musical form and is eminently fitted to write this book. He is at present teaching in the New York City High Schools. This may, in part, account for his lucid, straightforward style.

Taken from the front inside flap.