Giorgio Pestelli examines one of the crucial periods of musical history, the transition from the middle of the eighteenth century to the era of Beethoven. This was a time of great cultural, technical and social changes. The free professional composer, in direct contact with the wide musical public, replaced the dependent court musician. Instrumental music became the centre of new developments, and sonata form, the cornerstone of nineteenth-century musical architecture, dominated its language. With the decrease in private patronage came the birth of the public concert; there was a vast...

The Tailor never travelled further than Scotland, yet the breadth of the world could not contains the wealth of his humour and fantasy. All human life is here - marriages, inquests, matchmaking, wakes - and always the Tailor, his wife and their black cow.