A biographical sketch combined with a detailed analysis of each of his major types of composition, including vocal music, organ music, keyboard music, and instrumental music. Many Bach compositions are examined and evaluated in relation to the rest of the composer's work, as well as in relation to the music of his contemporaries. More than seventy musical examples enable the reader to understand how Bach worked and to observe his music in various...

Chronologically arranged, the book covers some 25,000 years of cultural history. It starts with the whirring bones and clay drums of the Stone Age and concludes with the chance music and electronic synthesizers of the modern era. The reader is carried along in a grand sweep, from the magical-sacred beginnings of music, the primitive pipe and "bull-roarer," through the instruments of antiquity, the experiments of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,...