This work of reference guides the music lover through a maze of conflicting ideologies and personalities, weeding out the historic from the ephemeral and explaining compositional techniques in comprehensible language. It assesses the merits of jazz and rock and their role in musical evolution, and examines the political environment in which music was created and concludes that music acquitted itself best of all the arts in its response to Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism. The book attacks the elitism that encouraged some composers to ignore audiences and the commercialism that prompted others to write for the lowest aural denominator. Boulez and Lloyd Webber are given a rough ride, Martinu and Bernstein are rehabilitated, Hartman and Petersson are rediscovered. The book contains dozens of important composers who have never appeared in an English dictionary. Norman Lebrecht has also written "Mahler Remembered", "The Maestro Myth" and "Music in London".