Naxos Books: 72 books

Beethoven bestrides the history of music like no other. Without him it would have been a very different story. This biographical portrait reveals a titanic personality, both vulnerable and belligerent, comic and tragic, and above all heroic, as he comes to grips with perhaps the greatest disability a...

For Gustav Mahler, there was nothing abstract or escapist about music. The symphony must be like the world, he insisted. It must embrace everything. He lived up to that ideal spectacularly, creating works of such emotional range and imaginative power that each feels like a world in itself. Uniquely,...

Mendelssohn is one of the worlds best-loved composers. His greatest music The Hebrides, the Violin Concerto, the Italian Symphony is a cornerstone of the classical repertoire, while the Wedding March from his incidental music to A Midsummer Nights Dream has been the soundtrack to the happiest moments...

Perhaps the greatest pianist who has ever lived, Liszt was one of the titanic musical figures of the Romantic age. Abandoning his spectacular career as a travelling virtuoso in his mid-thirties, this passionate lover and fond father dedicated himself instead to a life of composing, conducting, teaching...

Well over a century after Wagners death, the man and his music are as controversial as ever. Praised for his profound insights into the workings of the human heart, he has also been condemned as a dangerous libertine, a proto-fascist and an arrogant bore. His vast four-part operatic Ring cycle has been...

Haydn was among the first great composers whose fame in his own lifetime endured after his death. While he is loved for a handful of popular, tuneful symphonies and the oratorio The Creation, the broader scope of Haydns musical achievements and his fascinating life have been overshadowed by the prodigious...

Chamber music is the most intimate, and arguably the most joyful and sociable, form of music-making in the world. It may also be the oldest, and its scope is all-embracing, ranging from infectious light entertainment to profound explorations of the human spirit, from boisterous humour to the outer reaches...

To many people, the term 'American classical music' means a handful of famous names: Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein, Sousa. But this doesnt begin to scrape the surface of a musical heritage reaching back to colonial times. For instance, did you know that George Washington loved dance music, and that Abraham...

In music, the period from the middle of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth is usually referred to as the Classical era. This was a period in which the art, literature and architecture of Ancient Greece and Rome were being rediscovered and re-evaluated, which in turn strongly influenced...

Dvořák is one of the giants of nineteenth-century music. His New World Symphony is among the best loved works in the classical repertoire, and his inexhaustibly rich and varied output remains a staple of concerts and recordings across the globe. Catapulted to international fame by the runaway success...

The Middle Ages began with the collapse of the Roman world. This left a military and political system in ruins but a cultural world-view largely intact. Artistically rich and varied in themselves, the medieval centuries also sparked both the artistic Renaissance and the religious Reformation that followed....

Singing is a basic form of human expression whether of worship, sorrow or joy and the sound of a choir in full cry is a spine-tingling experience. Discover Choral Music surveys and explains the development of choral music from medieval plainchant to contemporary favourites such as John Rutter and...

For 400 years, opera has illuminated the innermost recesses of human existence. Once the sport of kings and princes, it now provides the soundtrack of our lives, its best-loved tunes heard on football terraces, in films and advertisements, and even at the opera house. From Monteverdis Orfeo to Harrison...

Amidst a background of wars and revolution, the nineteenth century produced many of the worlds best-loved composers. Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and Tchaikovsky are just some of the many familiar names whose music was shaped by the events of the period: Discover Music of the Romantic Era charts the course...