Know It All Classical Music: The 50 Most Significant Genres, Composers & Forms, Each Explained in Under a Minute

From the classical music of the Middle Ages to today, Know It All: Classical Music is your guide to understanding the foundation of this incredible movement in music.

Do you know a capella from zarzuela, or your major from your minor? Can you distinguish between a serenade and a symphony? If you have only one minute, there is time—using Know It All: Classical Music—to understand the creative journey taken by classical music from the Middle Ages to the modern era. Our early ancestors understood pitch and rhythm and the basic tools that have been worked and ordered by composers and performers over the past 400 years into an extraordinary body of music written for soloists, chamber musicians, and entire orchestras.

From plainsong to program music, appreciate the magnitude and majesty, the passion and the pathos of sounds that have the power to stir our emotions to great joy, or infinite sadness. Here's music to your ears. The Know It All takes a revolutionary approach to learning about the subjects you really feel you should understand but have never gotten around to studying. Each book selects a popular topic and dissects it into the 50 most significant ideas at its heart. Each idea, no matter how complex, is explained in 300 words and one picture, all digestible in under a minute.