Once upon a masterpiece

Suggests how the death of a friend, Victor Hartmann, inspired the music of Modest Mussorgsky in St. Petersburg in the 1870s.

After learning that he is going deaf, Beethoven is determined to write a great symphony using the heroic deeds of Napoleon as his initial inspiration.

Seventeenth-century composer Johann Sebastian Bach helps young organist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg by giving him lessons and by presenting him with a composition which came to be called the Goldberg Variations. Includes historical notes.