• Paperback
• 128 pages
• ISBN: 978-1-84379-235-2
• Publication date: April 2008
• Free access to accompanying website with hours of extra music

In music, the period from the middle of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth is usually referred to as the ‘Classical’ era. This was a period in which the art, literature and architecture of Ancient Greece and Rome were being rediscovered and re-evaluated, which in turn strongly influenced the ‘modern’ art of the time. But this was also a period of immense social change and political unrest, with challenges to the old established order culminating in the French Revolution of 1789. Discover Music of the Classical Era shows how all this was reflected in the music written during those turbulent but also intensely creative years.

About the Author

Stephen Johnson studied at the Northern School of Music, Manchester, at Leeds University under Alexander Goehr then at Manchester University. Since then he has written regularly for The Independent and The Guardian, and was Chief Music Critic of The Scotsman (1998–9). He has also broadcast frequently for BBC Radios 3 and 4, and for the BBC World Service, including a series of fourteen programmes about the music of Bruckner for the centenary of the composer’s death (1996). He is the author of Bruckner Remembered (Faber, 1998), a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Conducting (CUP, 2004), and a regular presenter for Radio 3’s Discovering Music. In 2003 Stephen was voted Amazon.com Classical Music Writer of the Year.