Suggestions for Teaching Music History to Students

[Dancing Divertimentian]

The road to the serialists might be easier if the novice/young listener first travels through some, well...'entry-level' works, i.e. works that draw from both the tonal tradition and the atonal/serial.

Composers like Enescu, Zemlinsky, Martinu, early Schoenberg, Janacek, Britten, etc...might fit the bill.

None of these composers are knock-'em-on-the-noggin imposing as far as atonal/serial yet signs of a new musical language are everywhere.

Might make the leap to pure atonal/serial a little less daunting.

(And to keep it simple you could grab string quartets from each of the above composers!)