Everyone loves romantic music: the sweet melody of a Schubert song, the heroine dying of love in an Italian opera, the ecstatic orchestral composition of a Tchaikovsky symphony. However, as Stephen Walsh - author of the highly acclaimed work "Debussy: A Painter in Sound" - points out in this deeply engaging study, there is infinitely more romantic music than it seems. "Beloved Vision" serves as a complete, entertaining, and uniquely readable reference to the entire phase of music history that has become the foundation of the 20th and 21st-century concert and opera repertoire, with a little help from earlier eras. The narrative begins in the 18th century, with C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, and the literary movement Sturm und Drang, considered a reaction of the individual artist to the certainties of the Enlightenment. The windows are wide open, and all aspects of style, form, and even technique are exposed to the emotional and intellectual weather conditions, impulses and preferences of the individual composer. Risk-taking - the courage to face the unknown - was certainly an important part of what composers wanted to do, as true for Chopin and Verdi as it is for Berlioz and Wagner. It is a fascinating, colorful story, told with passion but also with the precision and clarity of detail for which this author is so widely admired.