Bonn, 1779: Eight-year-old Louis van Beethoven (Colin Pütz) grows up in provincial Bonn and is considered a musical prodigy. His father Jean's (Ronald Kukulies) attempts to teach the boy fail. The singer and actor Tobias Pfeiffer (Sabin Tambrea) and the Bonn court organist Christian Gottlob Neefe (Ulrich Noethen) take care of the young genius and shape him in very different ways. Ludwig learns to go his own way, which creates a scandal in society.

A momentous encounter with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Manuel Rubey) in Vienna and the political upheavals of the time, which culminate in the French Revolution, awaken in the young Beethoven a freedom-loving spirit that wants only to serve art, but no master. The missed love for the young noblewoman Eleonore von Breuning (Caroline Hellwig) as well as a series of family tragedies almost make Ludwig give up until he moves to Vienna in the winter of 1792 after all to apprentice with Joseph Haydn.

The narrative is embedded in a frame story in which the elder Beethoven (Tobias Moretti) stays at the estate of his brother Johann (Cornelius Obonya) and his wife Therese (Johanna Gastdorf) shortly before his death in 1826. Despite his great musical successes, most recently the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven is at odds with himself because his late work completely overwhelms his contemporaries. By now completely deaf, he looks back on missed opportunities and asks himself the question about the right life.