Vance Bollinger – Can You Hear It?

William Lach

One of the many duties of a general music teacher is to ensure that their students come away from their teaching with a basic understanding of common musical instruments and what they sound like.  This book is a perfect way to work on identifying instrumental timbres.  At the beginning of the book, there is an overview of the most common musical instruments in Western music, and the second part of the book takes the readers and listeners through various classical music classics.  Lach challenges the listener to hear the “bees” in Flight of the Bumblebee, as portrayed by the flute, and to hear the honking horns in An American in Paris, as portrayed by the French horns.  Exercises like this will be fun, and the associated art in the book makes the book very aesthetically pleasing.