Introduction to Western Music
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this survey of the Western classical music canon, tracing its development from early notated sacred plainchant through medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods to contemporary concert music and opera. Lessons cover musical styles, forms, and the cultural context in which composers worked, examining representative pieces to illustrate how the tradition changed over roughly a thousand years. Materials include lecture notes, listening assignments, and readings drawn from MIT's actual course syllabus, giving a structured path through the repertoire rather than a single overview lecture. The course suits listeners with no formal music background who want a grounded introduction to how Western classical music developed, from plainchant's monophonic lines to the harmonic and formal complexity of modern opera. As with other MIT OCW offerings, all course materials are free to access, with no certificate offered.