One evening Ludwing van Beethoven
and a friend were taking a walk.
As they were passing through a narrow and dark street,
they heard music coming from a little house.
“Hush” Beethoven said.
“it is from one of my most beautiful pieces.”
Suddenly a voice said,
“I cannot play anymore- it is so beauty!
How I wish I could hear
that piece played by someone who could do justice to it.”
Without a word,
Beethoven and his friend entered the houde.
It was the home of a poor shoemaker.
At the piano sat a young girl.
“Pardon me,” said the great composer.
“I am musician.
I heard you say you wished to hear
someone play the piece you have just been playing.
Will you permit to play it for you?
“Thank you very much,” answered the girl,
“but our piano is very old.
And we have no music sheets.”
“No music sheets!
How did you play, then? Asked Beethoven.
The young girl turned her face toward the great master.
Looking at her more closely,
he saw that he was blind.
“I play from memory,” she said.
“Where did you hear the piece
that you were playning just now?
“I used to hear a lady practicing near our old home.
During the summer evenings,
her windows were open,
and I walked to and fro outside to listen to her,“
she answered.
Beethoven seated himself at the piano.
The blind girl and her brother listened with raptured
to the master’s playing.
At last the shoemaker came near
and asked, “Who are you?
Beethoven made no answer.
The shoemaker repeated his questions,
and master smiled.
He began to play
the piece which the girl hads trying to play.
The listeners held their breath.
When the playing stopped, they cried,
“You are the master himself! You are Beethoven!”
He rose to go, but they held him back.
“Play for us once more- only once more,” they pleaded.
He seated himself again at the piano.
The brilliant moonlight was shinning into the bare little room.
He looked thoughtfully for something
at the bright skies lit up
by the moon and the twinkling stars.
"Please ask me for something," he said.
as thinking that they will ask for something financial.
The girl's answer is this;
"I have never seen moonlight,
will you tell me the moonlight?"
Influenced by this situation,
Beethoven seated at the piano,
“I will compose a sonata to the moonlight,” he said.
In low, sad and sweet strains,
he played his new piece.
Then his fingers moved
over the keys of the old and worn piano.
and composed the masterpiece as known Moonlight Sonata.
Finally, pushing back his chair,
and turning towards the door he said,
“Farewell to you.”
That was
how Ludwing van Beethoven’s famous
“Moonlight sonata” was composed.
