Audio recording by BBC Audiobooks, Ltd., produced in 2007.

"The Landmark BBC Radio Series"--Container.

James Naughtie 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. 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.