For the occasion Williams translated a selection of entertaining and informative passages by Beethoven. He also selected contributions from ordinary German men and women around 1800. For the BBC programme these stories were performed by actors.
In the programme, Seán spoke about cultural life in this era of great German music, poetry, and philosophy. The readings included a woman's first visit to a concert, for example – from a text that is part of Seán's specialist module at Sheffield, Luxury and Liberty, about the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.