This book presents a comprehensive and easily accessible history of literature for all stringed keyboard instruments, focusing on mainstream works in the current concert repertoire for pianists. It describes and catalogs the literature, examining the basic structure and the key features of each major composition, and outlines important schools of composition, trends in the history of keyboard music, and influences on composers and individual compositions.

Commentary on every major composers is provided, with special attention to the piano repertoire of the late eighteenth centuries, and published sources for the works discussed. The book begins with a survey of the development of keyboard instruments, moving on to a survey of European and English keyboard music to the end of the Renaissance. Individual chapters discuss the Baroque in general, and the compositions of Handel and J. S. Bach in particular.

A chapter is devoted to the galant style, followed by chapters on Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert that feature individual discussions of all the piano sonatas written by each of these composers. For the later nineteenth century, chapters are devoted to Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms. For the early twentieth century, chapters examine Debussy, other French composers, and the nationalistic schools of Spain, Russia, and other European countries.

Two final chapters survey the keyboard literature of the later twentieth century in Europe and North America. The book includes an extensive bibliography.