The excellent series has already produced ultra-readable volumes on composers as far apart as Gershwin. They are, in effect, compilations skilfully chosen and knitted together, made up of reminiscences, criticism, anecdotes, even interviews, which collectively reconstruct the personality and lifework of the composer concerned. In the case of these four, the personalities could hardly be more disparate - Mahler the highly strung, complex Moravian Jew who died before he was fifty one, after raising the Vienna Opera to its highest point yet managing to compose ten symphonies; Bruckner the Austrian provincial and devout Catholic whose music, however, is anything but provincial; Debussy elusive, unruly, almost chauvinistically French, a sensualist and hedonist with a hypersensitive disposition; and Ravel civilised, reserved, ultra private in this lifestyle and a taxing perfectionist in his art and teaching. There are plenty of good illustrations to back up the texts, which are all sensitively edited and annotated. A musical layman such as myself can simultaneously enjoy and learn from all four.