An unlikely pairing of writer William S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan produced a successful Christmas show. They reunited four years later to produce the hit operetta, "H.M.S. Pinafore," and then the pair collaborated on eleven operettas before parting ways.

Here are the life stories of such diverse figures as Vivaldi, Mozart, Scott Joplin, Nadia Boulanger, and Woody Guthrie. Readers will learn of both their musical natures and the personal, humorous characteristics that make their lives so fascinating. Living, breathing anecdotes--the stuff of which the best biography is made.

Not one of some seventy plays written by the most popular playwright of the English stage in Victoria's time is known to anyone but archivists today. That same fate befell the works of England's most honored composer of the period. His oratorios, odes, symphonic music, an opera--are all but silent now, save two incidental pieces (you have heard of them: "The Lost Chord" and "Onward Christian Soldiers"). But rarely have the serious works of contemporary...