With a lifetime of encounter, profound knowledge and understanding, and heartwarming appreciation, an internationally celebrated conductor and teacher answers the questions: Why must i pay attention to classical music? How can I get the most from the listening knowledge?

A protégé of Leonard Bernstein–his colleague for eighteen years–and an eminent conductor that has toured and recorded all around the globe, John Mauceri assists us to reap the joys and pleasures classical music has to offer. Quickly, about For the Love of Music: A Conductor’s Information to the Art of Hearing we learn how a musical tradition born in historic Greece, embraced from the Roman Empire, and consequently nurtured by affects from across the globe, gave shape towards the traditional music that came to be embraced by cultures from Japan to Bolivia. Then Mauceri examines the music itself, assisting us understand what it really is we hear whenever we listen to traditional music: how, by some sort of sonic metaphor, it expresses the deepest recesses of individual feeling and emotion; how each piece bears the traces of its background; the way the concert experience–a unique one each and every time–allows us to discover music anew. Unpretentious, elegant, instructive, that is a book for the aficionado, the novice, and anyone seeking to have the love of music fired within them.