"What Beethoven said in his late quartets might be the most important message to humanity ever expressed in music." Professor Wilhelm Altmann is fighting expulsion from the Conservatory for his unconventional lectures about classical music. In his final months, the aging professor is determined to solve a mystery that has haunted him for years. He schemes to draw four gifted but troubled music students into his plot to decipher the meaning of Beethoven's late string quartets--a code that he believes should have altered the course of music history--and which may contain the most important message to humanity ever expressed in music. The young musicians soon find themselves plunged into an old feud between the Tonalists and Modalists. They struggle with the concepts of perfection and beauty, knowledge and wisdom, rationality and spirituality. Can they decipher the code before their own fledgling music careers end in disaster? Enjoy stories about Haydn the wagon maker, Mozart the interior decorator, Beethoven the blind sculptor, Schubert the picture framer, Brahms the lighthouse keeper, Schumann who swallowed his own credo, Mendelssohn who lost his genius and couldn't find it, Saint-Saens who thought of himself as a genius, Chopin who took the piano apart, Debussy the jeweller, Ravel the other jeweller, whose gemstones didn't have the same fire, Liszt the impostor, Tchaikovsky the pathetic one, Berlioz who stripped on stage, Bruckner the hot air balloonist, Stravinsky the barbarian, Wagner who forgot the organ needs to be silent when the preacher speaks, Schoenberg who cut off his ear, Glass the window cleaner, Tonality where friendships between notes are not mutual, Modality where fruits and vegetables grow organically, J.S. Bach on the golf course, and solve the mystery of Beethoven's late string quartets. .................................................................... Jerzy Chwialkowski is the author of The Da Capo Catalog of Classical Music Compositions published by the Da Capo Press. A brand new signed copy of the Catalog can be ordered at www.jchwialkowski.webs.com"