I acquired this biographical compendium while I was in undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin. It was my introduction to the lives of some of the composers I already knew both from listening to and playing their music. But it was also a doorway to new names like Palestrina, Gluck and Weber. Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock blend the lives and achievements of the greatest of composers with the context of their times in short readable essays. Only slightly detracting from the value of this collection is the absence of the great twentieth century composers. For that I would recommend Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise. Brockway and Weinstock's work remains a classic reference work for the essential lives of the greatest classical composers. ( )