The subjects taught as “music history” can be pretty vague. In my experience it is really about two things:

1. Listening to music.
2. Knowing things about the music.

Part 1 refers not to casual listening but critical listening. This means training your ear to hear details such as style, form, meaning, and extramusical connections in a piece of music. Think of it as “how” to hear music.

Part 2 involves knowing the stories of the composers and their time period. This gives you the context to apply to your critical listening. Often music history exams involve a lot of short answer and essay questions. Answering such questions requires not only facts about music but also the connections (social, philosophical, causal, etc.) you can draw between them.

The dreaded bane of every student is memorization (I personally hate memorizing composer birth/death dates). The trick to remembering facts and dates is again, context. If you focus on discovering the relationships between different names, dates, and pieces, the story of music will come alive.

Whether you’re playing a piece or listening to your music player, whenever you’re around music try asking yourself,

• “What does this music say about the person who wrote it and the time/place it was written in?“, or conversely,
• “How is this composer/songwriter and the world they live in expressed through the music?

By always thinking this way about music, not only will you be ready for any essay question, but you’ll become better at understanding the music you play and hear.