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James Naughtie, in this major Radio 4 series, uncovers the roots of our music, revealing how composers and performers, princes, patrons and chance happenings built a classical tradition that has become the soundtrack to our history. Volume 1 takes us from Plainchant to Paganini ...The history of classical music is inextricably linked with the places where it was written, its purposes and patrons - and with politics, war and social change. From the earliest music of the monasteries to the court and church music of the Renaissance and Reformation, into the age of democracy, composers changed with the times, coping with the restraints imposed by religion and state, even as they responded to new ways of thinking, new instruments and the impact of artistic revolutions. Their music speaks of their time as well as their individualism. Bach and Handel were contemporaries, both German by birth, but the settings in which they worked were strikingly different; Haydn and Mozart relied on rich patrons from whom their musical successors would soon break free. The influence of the French Revolution on Beethoven and others changed the composer's role dramatically; the Romantics bred the big symphony and the conductor, and virtuosi like Liszt, Chopin and Paganini; Italy consummated a love affair with opera which was entwined with its national story; and, amateur music-making in the nineteenth century helped to create a mass audience that embraced the European tradition and carried it forward. This title is winner of AudioFile Earphones Award. '"The Making of Music" proves both entertaining and informative' - "Daily Telegraph". '...presented with such reverence and commitment that it even surpasses the audiobook's exquisite musical excerpts...A superlative listen!' - "AudioFile".