The Naxos Spoken Word Library is truly the unique treasure of our online libraries offering over 600 works and stories from Naxos Audiobooks. Focusing largely on literary classics, timeless authors and playwrights come alive through these spoken texts.

Naxos’ Spoken Word Library includes content ranging from medieval times to the twentieth century. Many newer texts supplement an always expanding range of non-fiction. Users may browse both abridged and unabridged titles from Shakespeare, Joyce, Austen and numerous others.

The database also includes valuable educational products, which focus closely on opera libretti and the lives of the great composers. Educators will find the database invaluable for literature courses and music appreciation.

Most of the selections are also available to listen and follow on screen text providing a comprehensive presentation of the literature. Because of this feature, the Spoken Word Library is an outstanding language-teaching facility. Many institutions incorporate the database into programs for individuals who are learning English as second language.

The most valuable collection of literature in history, constantly expanding content and countless educational possibilities sum up the priceless package that is the Naxos Spoken Word Library.

We focus on the great composers and what they produced, but we have to remember that they worked within a very complex and competitive music society.

Mozart listened to Haydn, but he also listened to composers such as Dittersdorf; Bach walked miles to hear Buxtehude; the radical 20th century Viennese composers like Schoenberg and Webern had their roots in the late 19th century composers such as Zemlinsky.

In the 20th century, transnational listening made the world smaller and the music more complex: Takemitsu in Japan influenced composers in the United States, Penderecki in Poland influenced composers in Germany, Maxwell Davies draws his inspiration from sources as disparate as the middle ages and the moderns.