Listen!

“There is no beauty in music itself.
The beauty is within the listener,” said Igor Stravinsky.

Imagine a conventional orchestral concert for a moment. Let’s say there are around 85 performers on stage, among them 1 soloist and 1 conductor. Typically, works by 3 composers are featured. There are 1,000 people in the audience. Taking these numbers and ratio as a guide, shouldn’t our music education focus more on teaching appreciation, on teaching how to listen critically?

The ability to listen purposefully requires training and practice no less than the ability to perform. LISTEN! is an aural training course, developed as an aid to teach aural perception skills in music. Over 1,000 exercises, graded by 9 levels of difficulty and using only authentic recordings, are available in the Resources section inside the Naxos Music Library for classroom and private use.
Course Overview

LISTEN! is developed for NML by
Dennis Kiddy, MA (Oxon)




Here, we share with the education community a set of exercise from each of the entry levels of the course, with hundreds more available in the resource section of Naxos Music Library. Test your aural skills now!

Try the Initial Level with your class on Quizziz (requires a Super account on Quizziz)







With your aural skills heightened and sharpened, you will discover a whole new dimension of nuances and subtleties – the hidden treasures – in music, and be ready to explore classical music through the vast collection of recordings as well as live performances. We have just the road maps for you as you embark on this most rewarding journey!

Road Maps to Classical Music