The Gift of Music: Great Composers and Their Influence
The Gift of Music integrates the lives, philosophies, and music of the great composers, including Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart. Readers will be placed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as observers, not historians, as they explore the lives of these great men. This third edition has been expanded and revised.
One of the finest achievements of Western culture is its brilliant heritage of classical music. "A Gift of Music looks at the lives of the greatest composers who have given us this heritage, and especially at how their music was shaped by their beliefs
The result is a remarkable and inspiring book, showing the importance of Christian faith for many composers, and the effect of this upon their music. But it also shows how the lack of faith has brought profound change in the meaning and form of contemporary music.