"This book investigates the complex (and frequently hushed up) ancestry of the Western classics. It examines Renaissance lute tunes, Gypsy dances, Viennese waltzes, Italian opera, Wagner, Debussy, the early blues, and much else, always with an eye to similarities rather than differences. Roots of the Classical is primarily a study in musical evolution, like Peter Van der Merwe's previous book, Origins of the Popular Style, to which it is in many ways a sequel.

Readers will find the same delight in the affinity of the incongruous, the subtlety of the commonplace, and the hidden simplicity of the complex. Only the subject matter is different in this case, some of the greatest - as well as the most trivial - of Western music."--Jacket.