Truth or invention? These texts walk the narrow path between the two, examining excerpts from the lives of five composers: Johann Sebastian and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Fanny Hensel.

Lively and informative dialogues shed light on the protagonists characters and problems, acquaintances and environment. Gaps in previous musical research are insightfully filled.

The question of what is truth and what invention constantly accompanies the reader and is explained in appendices - particularly valuable in the case of the ten posthumous letters which Fanny Hensel wrote to her brother after her death (ignored here), of course in the literary style of 1847.

The circumstances of the origin of the title Sinfonia Eroica might also cause amazement in their approximation of the truth.