Beginnings. How I fell in love with music ; Preliminary : the professor's legacy -- Creators. Another word for Mozart ; Thinking of Robert Schumann ; The sacred, the profane, and the gritty affirmations of music ; Franz Schubert, a rich possession ; Encountering Brahms ; Schoenberg, Brahms, and the great tradition ; First-rate second-class composer ; Sibelius and Mahler : what more could there be? ; Remembering Rachmaninoff ; Erich Wolfgang Korngold : a meditation ; Tchaikovsky's Mozart (and others) ; On the trail of W.A. Mozart ; What they saw ; A short life of J.S. Bach ; Stravinsky's ear-stretching, joy-giving legacy -- The recent scene. A visit with Lou Harrison ; George Perle : composing a way of life ; A quintet for American music ; Three American composers in pursuit of the white whale ; A century set to music -- Missionaries. Making America musical : a salute to Theodore Thomas ; Sigmund Spaeth, someone you should know ; Isaac Stern on music and life ; B.H. Haggin the contrarian -- Affairs to remember. Loving memories of movie music ; Vienna trilogy : vignettes from the city of music ; Music, true or false ; Why we are here -- Postlude. The sounds we make.