The Rough Guide to Classical Music is the ideal handbook, spanning a thousand years of music from Gregorian chant via Bach and Beethoven to contemporaries such as Thomas Ades and Kaija Saariaho. Both a music buyer's guide and a who's who, the guide includes concise biographical profiles of more than 200 composers and informative summaries of the major compositions in all genres, from chamber works to operatic epics.

For novices and experts alike, this fully-updated fifth edition features contemporary composer Helmut Lachenmann and Widor, the 19th century organ composer of "Toccata" wedding fame, as well as dozens more works added for existing composers. You'll find a new "Top 10's" section with accessible introductory listings including the Top 10 operas and the Top 10 symphonies, plus new essays on topics such as "Baroque — a style or a period?" and "The clarinet comes of age."

The Rough Guide to Classical Music features fresh and incisive reviews of hundreds of CDs, selecting the very best of the latest recordings and reissues, as well as more than 150 illustrations of composers and performers, including a rare archive of photos.