Includes index.

The what and why of music -- Shadows of an ancient dance -- The poet sings -- Improvising to the lute -- Music as mediation -- The eternal sound of gongs -- Rhythm and community -- Spirits of the ancestors -- Dance and harmony -- Chanting in the church, singing in the streets -- Reason it out, write it down -- Old corruption, new thinking -- Composers spread their wings -- Lutes and keyboards -- Reforming the Church, educating the people -- Conquest and re-conquest -- Sing the words, speak the music -- The appeal of dramatic music -- Instruments and the rise of the orchestra -- Star singers and the opera market -- A composer's life at court and in the Church -- Enlightenment and revolution -- African slaves and fashionable Europe -- Storms, on the stage and in the mind -- Becoming 'classical' -- The artist as priest and visionary -- Grand and light, sublime and witty -- Women playing at home and abroad -- Finding the audience -- Longing for my own country -- Westernising and modernising -- Into the darkness -- Reaching for the light -- From blues and ragtime to jazz -- From big band to bebop -- Reacting to repression -- Just rattle your jewellery -- From protest to pop -- Music in the 'global village' -- Yesterday, today and tomorrow.