The Quintessential Composers Try this. Play for someone a random selection of classical music and ask him or her to identify a given piece. Now do the same with Joy to the World by Johann Sebastian Bach, The Messiah: Hallelujah Chorus by George Frederic Handel, and The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Ama...

Dante's Beatrice and Petrarch's Laura Dante Alighieri's Beatrice and Francesco Petrarca's Laura influenced the lives and writings of these two great authors. Francesco Petrarca, better known to the literary world as Petrarch, met the woman who would become the driving force b...