Pioneer of opera. Claudio Monteverdi -- Transfiguration of the baroque. Johann Sebastian Bach -- Composer and impresario. George Frideric Handel -- Reformer of opera. Christoph Willibald Gluck -- Classicism par excellence. Joseph Haydn -- Prodigy from Salzburg. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- Revolutionary from Bonn. Ludwig Van Beethoven -- Poet of music. Franz Schubert -- Freedom and a new language. Weber and the early romantics -- Romantic exuberance and classic restraint. Hector Berlioz -- Florestan and Eusebius. Robert Schumann -- Apotheosis of the piano. Frédéric Chopin -- Virtuoso, charlatan--and prophet. Franz Liszt -- Bourgeois genius. Felix Mendelssohn -- Voice, voice, and more voice. Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini -- Spectacle, spectacle, and more spectacle. Meyerbeer, Cherubini, Auber -- Colossus of Italy. Giuseppe Verdi -- Colossus of Germany. Richard Wagner -- Keeper of the flame. Johannes Brahms -- Master of the lied. Hugo Wolf -- Waltz, can-can, and satire. Strauss, Offenbach, Sullivan -- Faust and French opera. From Gounod to Saint-Saëns -- Russian nationalism and the mighty five. From Glinka to Rimsky-Korsakov -- Surcharged emotionalism. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky -- From Bohemia to Spain. European nationalists -- Chromaticism and sensibilité. From Franck to Fauré -- Only for the theater. Giacomo Puccini -- Romanticism's long coda. Richard Strauss -- Religion, mysticism and retrospection. Bruckner, Mahler, Reger -- Sympolism and impressionism. Claude Debussy -- Gallic elegance and the new breed. Maurice Ravel and Les Six -- The chameleon. Igor Stravinsky -- The English Renaissance. Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams -- Mysticism and melancholy. Scriabin and Rachmaninoff -- Under the Soviets. Prokofiev and Shostakovich -- German neoclassicism. Busoni, Weill, Hindemith -- Rise of an American tradition. From Gottschalk to Copland -- The uncompromising Hungarian. Béla Bartók -- The second Viennese school. Schoenberg, Berg, Webern -- The international serial movement. From Varése to Messiaen -- The new eclecticism. From Carter to the minimalists.