"I am flattered by the applause of connoisseurs... but mortified by the ignorance and mistakes of copyists." At the age of 45, François Couperin decides to take his fate - his edition - into his own hands

We will probably never know precisely for whom, for what, for where, or for when Mozart wrote his Symphony No. 40. Sandwiched between the positive Symphony No. 39 and the dazzlingly positive Symphony No. 41, it is the central seasoning of the triptych, in the shadow of its two major sisters and beneath the surface of Viennese polish.

A married woman can find many good reasons to slam the door of the house. But the most irrefutable of all is the one that Eurydice leaves on the table in "Orpheus in the Underworld": "I am leaving the house because I am dead."

Berlioz always made a drama out of everything. As an adolescent in the south of France, he was already rolling on the ground and tearing daisies with his hands that had done nothing to him. He already felt that "obviously life is outside of me, far, very far away..."

1922. As he approaches his 77th year, Gabriel Fauré worries: "I don't have two notes in my head that are worth writing. Have I reached the end of my resources?" Not yet! And a score that summer will prove it. And like other summers, that summer, Fauré goes to Haute-Savoie.

Brahms, when he didn't have the opportunity to submit his new scores to the judgment of his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, was quite disturbed. "For once your eyes and ears have failed me - he writes in such cases - and when that happens, I do not feel satisfied."

In 1877, Tchaikovsky receives a letter from a former student, Antonina. She is madly in love with him. She wants to marry him. Problem 1: he absolutely doesn't remember her. Problem 2: he is gay and sad about it. Problem 3: she doesn't know it. Yet.

At the beginning of his career, Alexander Scriabin is not far from pastiching Chopin, that's true. However, somewhere else awaits him. "Here below I am not at home. But I perceive calls, I catch a glimpse of a sublime universe of spirits. A dream universe. Existence is entirely different there."

1820. While Paris is in full restoration, Vieuxtemps is born in Verviers - future Belgium. A violinist, Henri already reaches a professional level before puberty. With his sound, he conquers the world. But he also wants to compose.

At the age of 14, Jean Sibelius becomes passionate about the violin. The love at first sight is only relatively reciprocal. 10 years later, he auditions for an orchestra (unsuccessfully), breaks down, and cries. This aborted ambition of becoming a violinist will be the soil in which the roots of his one and only violin concerto will anchor.

Presenting him with an illustrated novel that recounts the life of a free and impertinent little vixen, the (Czech) governess of the (Czech) composer Janacek suggests to him: "You, who hear nature so well, could you not make a beautiful opera out of it?" The master says nothing. But the idea has not fallen on deaf ears...

" My husband wouldn't even recognize a lark in real life! " his wife will later exclaim. Nevertheless, rather than one chirping or singing, in "The Lark Ascending," Vaughan Williams makes us hear a precise lark that goes trill-lill-lill.

In a surprisingly modern sense, Fortune is a happiness resulting from pure money. But in the Middle Ages, Fortune is a more general luck, and as the wheel turns, it turns the world.

As early as 1925, the brilliant Russian engineer Vladimir Israilevich Levkov dreams of a vehicle that lifts off from ground friction. But two years before Levkov dreams of air cushions, Prokofiev, in his Violin Concerto No. 1, had already successfully overcome - in music - the constraints of gravity.

In 2012, Mason Bates composed "Liquid Interface," a symphonic score on water enriched, thanks to the interface of his laptop, with discreet electronic beats. Mason Bates sets out to traverse, in four movements and with an obvious ecological reach in the score, all states of water from solid to liquid to gaseous.

1719. Bach travels to Berlin to purchase a harpsichord. He pays a visit to the Margrave of Brandenburg. Two years later, he sends a kind of spontaneous application... adorned with 18th-century circumlocutions.

For whom did Beethoven write "Für Elise"? This question could be likened to that of the color of Napoleon's white horse, and yet...

Joseph Weyl is a humorous official in the Vienna police. His path is destined to cross with that of Johann Strauss Junior. However, the sensibilities of the two men are not really going to align...

If it's not a testament, it is certainly a culmination. In Brahms' fourth and final symphony, the long sobs of the violins in autumn rub shoulders with the legends lurking in the depths of the forests and the legacy of the great masters...

The English horn has nothing of a horn except the name. It's not a horn. More like a kind of oboe, lower-pitched, with a protuberance. And it's its sound, mournful and... protuberant, that Gustav Mahler desires to open one of his most beautiful melodies.

"When you can't afford to travel, ... you have to compensate with imagination." This is what Debussy said before writing his 2 books of preludes for piano.

Masses of solid rocks, gas, or molten rocks, planets care little about the character traits that humans attribute to them. Nevertheless, English composer Gustav Holst became passionate in 1913 about an astrology book.

In Francis Poulenc's only major tragic opera, young Blanche de la Force, filled with weakness, chooses to enter a convent during the French Revolution. She will embody our own unresolved mixture of faith and frailty... and that of the composer.

In 2012, a fading in the form of a nebulous cloud of strings allows a chirping that sounds both familiar and yet new. Vivaldi's little birds, sequenced, restructured, fly here in a loop...

The ears of every composer are now subjected to a thousand influences. Guillaume Connesson embraces this reality. From his multifaceted mind emerges a jumble of scores featuring imaginary cities, lost Eastern horizons, but also funk, disco... or techno.