In this magisterial volume, Harvey Sachs, author of the highly acclaimed biography Toscanini, takes readers into the heart of ten great works of classical music—works that have endured because they were created by composers who had a genius for drawing music out of their deepest wellsprings. These masters—Mozart and Beethoven; Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi, and Brahms; Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky—communicated their life experiences through music, and through music they universalized the intimate.

By expanding our perceptions of these ten pieces—composed in the years between 1784 and 1966—Sachs, in lush, exquisite prose, invites us to consider why music stimulates, disturbs, exalts, and consoles us. He has lived with these masterpieces for a lifetime, and his descriptions of them and the dramatic lives of the composers who wrote them bring a heightened dimension to the musical perceptions of readers who may be casual listeners, students, professional musicians, or anyone in between.