Steinberg, program annotator for the San Francisco, Boston, and New York Philharmonic orchestras, describes some 50 works for accompanied chorus. For each, he begins with the composer's statistics, continues to the voices and instruments in the piece, sketches its genesis and first performances and how it fits into its creator's compositional history, and leads the reader through its sections, noting what to listen for. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, and Stravinsky are represented by their major works, but the less-well-known works such as John Adams' Harmonium, based on poems by Donne and Dickinson; Luigi Dallapicola's Canti di prigionia, settings of writings from prison by Mary Queen of Scots, Boethius, and Savonarola; and Arthur Honegger's Le Roi David, the story of David and Saul, also appear. Steinberg's most personal essay is on Sir Michael Tippett's oratorio A Child of Our Time, whose genesis lies in the Kristallnacht of 1938, and whose structure is based on Handel's Messiah.