Amazon.com description: Product Description: Organized chronologically by musical era, this comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible volume contains a dazzling display of information, analysis, and color, adding up to a major new learning tool and ongoing reference source to inform and entertain students, scholars, and all lovers of classical music. Each chapter features an introduction to the period, its key composers and other personalities, musical styles, forms, and instruments. Six thematic strands developed throughout the book are identified by a series of icons at the top of each spread. These elucidating themes-designed to expand the reader's knowledge of various aspects of classical music and provide a context within each era-are "Women in Music," "Arts & Culture," "Inside the Music," "The Voice," "Performance," and "Influences." A Listening Guide for each era covers details of orchestration, instrumentation, timing, and full historical background, and an extensive discography and bibliography are also included.