Hundreds of colour photographs, artworks, musical manuscripts and maps, along with authoritative and engaging text by eminent musical scholars from around the world take you on a musical journey thorough time, revealing how composers and performers, priests, princes and patrons, and the events of history have created the unique extraordinary tradition of Classical Music.

The journey begins 1,000 years ago, with music from Christian monasteries and churches. It then takes you through the millennium, era by era, from the glories of the Gregorian chant in the Middle Ages, to the masses, motets and madrigals of the Renaissance; the birth of opera and the beginnings of the modern orchestra in the Baroque era; the concertos, symphonies, sonatas, trios and quartets of the Classical period; the rise of the virtuoso in the early Romantic period; the ... more