Discover Early Music is part of a series covering the history of Western classical music, from medieval times to the present day; each volume contains two CDs and a booklet of about 100 pages, mostly given over to a historical essay keyed to the selections included. One may wonder, when looking at these discs, why no one has done this before, especially in view of book publishers' inability to come up with a good single-volume history with any kind of readability and flair. The reason is that it would be difficult for any ...
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Discover Early Music is part of a series covering the history of Western classical music, from medieval times to the present day; each volume contains two CDs and a booklet of about 100 pages, mostly given over to a historical essay keyed to the selections included. One may wonder, when looking at these discs, why no one has done this before, especially in view of book publishers' inability to come up with a good single-volume history with any kind of readability and flair. The reason is that it would be difficult for any label other than Naxos, the plucky Hong Kong-based outfit that has gleefully proved all the doubters wrong by expanding while everyone else was contracting, to pull it off; only Naxos has the vast and varied catalog to make a full-fledged survey of especially the early periods possible. One effect of this project's origins on Naxos is that the medieval period is somewhat underrepresented; we get only eight pieces on the first CD to cover the entire period from Gregorian chant to the...
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