A Young Person's Guide to Classical Music is a fast-paced, highly readable basic primer for those young persons interested in classical music or who want to develop an interest in it. It's a layperson's guide to standard musical terms, instruments, selected composers, influential works, the styles, form, and structure common to classical music. It presents a capsulized history of the different periods in classical music's evolution.

It includes many important compositions from different periods of the music's evolution as recommended listening. There are factoids about the best-known composers, the instruments, and their works.

Classical musical audiences are getting older, and older. If they are not replaced by a new crop of younger listeners that means more empty seats, and even less revenue. At the same time, costs to run an orchestra, pay staff and management, and the musicians, aren't going down. Eventually, there's a break point. The result could be staff cutbacks, fewer concerts, and in some cases orchestras folding completely.