For critic and composer Stephen Johnson, there have been moments when music has confronted him with life-changing insights. Some of these have been hard to accept, but once accepted they have opened up new possibilities of thinking, feeling and living. Through an exploration of seven pieces – by Anton Bruckner, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Johann Sebastian Bach, Lili Boulanger, Richard Wagner, Jean Sibelius and Ludwig van Beethoven – Johnson considers the lives and the intentions of the composers who created them, and how they have affected him personally.