Product Description: Beethoven’s Third Symphony was written as Beethoven was struggling with his advancing deafness. Meant as a celebration of Napoleon’s victories, the four movements reflected Bonaparte’s courage and heroism. Soon after Beethoven completed the work, he discovered Napolean’s treachery in declaring himself Emperor of France, and the composer considered destroying the composition...read more

Seventeenth-century composer Johann Sebastian Bach helps young organist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg by giving him lessons and by presenting him with a composition which came to be called the Goldberg Variations,includes historical notes.

Product Description: Camille Saint-Saëns was a brilliant French composer from the nineteenth century. In SAINT-SAËNS'S DANSE MACABRE, readers are transported to France in 1872 when Saint-Saëns visited the catacombs beneath the streets of Paris, known best as the final resting place of victims of the French Revolution...read more

Product Description: In eighteenth-century Venice, Italy, the finest musical performances are heard at an orphanage called the Ospedale della Pieta. Hidden from the audience is an orchestra of young orphan girls, some with physical disabilities and illnesses...read more

Tells the story of how George Gershwin--with just a few weeks' notice--came to write Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, a concerto that exemplified American music of the art-deco 1920s.

In 1772, with summer long gone and winter fast approaching, Joseph Haydn, court musician to Prince Nicholas of Esterhazy, creates a symphony that finally persuades his oblivious employer to close up his summer palace and allow the staff to return home. Reprint.

When Beethoven learns he is going deaf, he is determined to write a great symphony and thinks he has found his inspiration in the heroic deeds of Napoleon, in an addition to a remarkable series which introduces the fascinating story behind Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 'Eroica' and which is included on the enclosed CD as performed by the Berlin Philharmonic.

Presents folktales, background information, and activities related to beliefs of peoples around the world about heavenly bodies, the seasons, and the weather.

Taki the monkey teaches Baku the crocodile the importance of treating friends with honesty and loyalty.

In this East African folktale, the friendship between a mango-eating monkey and a crocodile is tested when the leader of all crocodiles falls ill and needs to eat a monkey's heart to be cured