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The lives and music of the great composers of classical music unfold in this entertaining account, introduced by singer and presenter Aled Jones. In 1200 years, classical music grew from the chanting of medieval monks through the symphonies of Beethoven and the grand operas of Wagner to the huge orchestral sound-world of the 21st century, with its electronics and its film music.

Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn't another exposé about how they broke up. It isn't a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles' music on their parents' stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? Find out.

Musician and naturalist Bernie Krause is one of the world's leading experts in natural sound, and he's spent his life discovering and recording nature's rich chorus. Searching far beyond our modern world's honking horns and buzzing machinery, he has sought out the truly wild places that remain, where natural soundscapes exist virtually unchanged from when the earliest humans first inhabited the earth.

Here is the colorful story of sometimes temperamental composers and even more temperamental singers working in an art form which has produced some of man's noblest artistic creations. This absorbing history is illustrated by over 100 musical examples by Naxos artists as well as some of the greatest singers of the 20th century, including Enrico Caruso and Fyodor Chaliapin.

Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel are the three great composers of the Baroque era, though there are many other well-known figures, including Albinoni, Pachelbel, and Scarlatti. This engaging introduction, interspersed liberally with music, shows how the works of these composers graced the courts and churches of Europe from 1600 to 1750. It is a fascinating story.

From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Also available: The History of Opera.

Dal primo nucleo di quelli che diventeranno i Rolling Stones, all'arrivo di Brian Jones, che ne sarà l'anima per qualche tempo, fino alla costituzione della vera "fabbrica" Jagger/Richards. Questo audioBook è un viaggio avventuroso e a volte impietoso lungo le tappe di una delle carriere più "granitiche" del rock: quella delle Pietre per eccellenza, i Rolling Stones. Un disco dopo l'altro per raccontare l'avventura della band più longeva della musica senza dimenticare qualche aneddoto curioso e, soprattutto, dando il giusto spazio a quello che più conta.

One fateful evening, journalist Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites and began an epic quest that would unravel three centuries of intrigue, politics, and passion. Winner of the Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction and the McAuslan First Book Prize, The Cello Suites weaves together three dramatic narratives: the disappearance of Bach's manuscript in the 18th century; Pablo Casals's discovery and popularization of the music in Spain in the late-19th century; and Siblin's infatuation with the suites in the present day.

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafes and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of 21 to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon.

The story of jazz encompasses the story of American courtship and show business; the epic growth of cities, and the struggle for civil rights and simple justice that continues into the new millennium. If you haven't already, download the accompanying audio to Ken Burns' remarkable documentary!

Alex Niven charts the astonishing rise of Oasis in the mid 1990s and celebrates the life-affirming, communal force of songs such as “Live Forever,” “Supersonic,” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol.” In doing so, he seeks to reposition Oasis in relation to their Britpop peers and explore one of the most controversial pop-cultural narratives of the last thirty years.

In the '80s, the Birmingham, England, band Duran Duran became closely associated with new wave, an idiosyncratic genre that dominated the decade's music and culture. No album represented this rip-it-up-and-start-again movement better than the act's breakthrough 1982 LP, Rio. A cohesive album with a retro-futuristic sound—influences include danceable disco, tangy funk, swaggering glam, and Roxy Music's art-rock—the full-length sold millions and spawned smashes such as "Hungry Like the Wolf" and the title track.

The recording sessions for Let It Be actually began as rehearsals for a proposed return to live stage work for the Beatles, to be inaugurated in a concert at a Roman amphitheater in Tunisia. In this thoroughly researched book, Steve Matteo delves deep into the complex history of these sessions.

Bowie has long been haunted by the angst-ridden, emotional work of the Die Brucke movement and the Expressionists. Berlin is their spiritual home, and after a chaotic world tour, Bowie adopts this city as his new sanctuary. Immediately he sets to work on Low, his own expressionist mood-piece.

In 1785, when the great German poet Friedrich Schiller penned his immortal “Ode to Joy,” he crystallized the deepest hopes and dreams of the European Enlightenment for a new era of peace and freedom, a time when millions would be embraced as equals. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony then gave wing to Schiller’s words, but barely a century later these same words were claimed by Nazi propagandists and twisted by a barbarism so complete that it ruptured, as one philosopher put it, “the deep layer of solidarity among all who wear a human face.”

The worlds of pop and rock owe a much greater debt to the classical canon than we realise. A direct and fascinating lineage draws from the experimentalism of Pierre Henry to The Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows', from Stockhausen to Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' and from Bruckner to Sonic Youth via Glenn Branca. In Everything We Do is Music, Elizabeth Alker highlights the innovators of classical music and their fans and collaborators in pop who challenged the notion that such musical worlds were mutually exclusive.

Stephen Catanzarite takes a close look at what many consider to be U2's most fully formed album through the prisms of religion, politics, spirituality, and culture, illuminating its previously unexplored depths, arguing that it's a concept album about love and the fall of man.

Chances are you've heard Handel's Messiah at least once, if not many times. Maybe you've even performed it, as have countless musicians around the world. After all, it's probably one of the best-loved, and certainly one of the best-known, works in the standard repertoire. But if you think you know all there is to know about the great composers famous oratorio, think again. For example, it may surprise you to learn that: Handel's first impulse to compose the work came not from religious or even musical inspiration. It had a whole lot more to do with money.

How has the internet changed the way we listen to, and love, the music that shapes our lives? Award-winning musician Rollie Pemberton (Cadence Weapon) interrogates our current musical landscape.

The definitive history of LGBTQ music, from Stonewall to RuPaul, and its impact on culture and American life.