The Vintage Guide to Classical Music (Jan Swafford, 1992)

I've said many times here that I really know nothing about classical music and if you are using me for advice, you are probably making a big mistake. Deciding to combine my passion of reading-to-learn with my nascent interest in the artform, I turned to this book for a helpful overview, and it was indeed very helpful!

The book's primary strength is in its biographical essays of key composers, beginning with a traditional overview of the composer's life, followed with advice on how the interested listener should approach their work. It is very heavy on the Romantic and Modern era composers, but I think that's largely because we know so much more about the composers of those eras.

Interspersed among these essays are sidebar essays about topics like counterpoint, sonata form, and atonality, to help the novice listener identify the various components of classical pieces.

In the end, I think I may have even more questions than answers about Western classical music, but at least now when I see a name attached to a piece of music I have a lot more knowledge to work from in my understanding of the genre thanks to having read this book.