Includes index.

V.1 -- The history of music, from its beginnings, through the lives and works of J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel, and the nature and import of the Classical style as embodied in the works of Gluck, Mozart, and Haydn. V.2 -- Chronicles 19th-century Romanticism and the lives and works of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Puccini and others. V.3 -- Focuses on the second half of the 19th century, looking at the lives and works of composers such as Franz Liszt, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky. V.4 -- Examines the changes in music which have taken place in the 20th century, especially the revolutions caused by Debussy and Schoenberg.