Sounds of Moonlight

originally published in The English Reader for Senior High School: Book Three by The Far East Books Co., Ltd. 原文引自遠東高中英文第三冊課文。

In the middle of his life, Ludwig van Beethoven, the German musician, slowly began to lose his hearing. Beethoven was afraid he would have to stop writing music. People tell the following story about how he found the courage to continue. No one knows to this day whether the story is true or not.



It was a cold winter night in 1801. The city of Vienna, Austria, lay sleeping under a full moon.

A young man hurried home through a strange section of the city. He was Ludwig van Beethoven, a famous writer of music.

Suddenly Beethoven stopped. From a nearby cottage came the sound of a piano. In fact, Beethoven recognized one of his own works. But it was not being played very well.

After a moment the music stopped. Then he heard the sound of crying. “I can’t get it right,” sobbed a girl’s voice. “I’ll never get it right.”

Beethoven knocked at the cottage door. A young man opened it. Inside, the room was lit by only a few candles. Beethoven could barely make out an old piano and a girl sitting in front of it.

“I heard music and then crying,” said Beethoven. “Can I help in any way?”

The girl sighed. “I have been trying all night to play this piece of music. But I’m afraid I’ll never get it right.”

The girl was embarrassed. She told Beethoven that she and her brother had little money for music lessons. But she had gone to a concert and had heard this music. She and her brother knew that she would never play well unless she could hear good musicians play.

Beethoven smiled. “Would you like to have a concert now?” he asked. “I am a musician also.”

“That is very good of you, sir,” replied the girl. “But the piano is old and we have no sheet music.”

This surprised Beethoven. “No sheet music?” He asked. “But you were playing…” Then he was silent. He suddenly understood why the piano was in the dark. The girl was blind. She couldn’t read a note from a sheet of music. She was playing his music from memory.

Beethoven’s eyes filled with tears. He sat down at the piano and began to play. He played all the pieces of music that he knew. He played with all the feeling and skill that he had.

Finally the candles burned out. Beethoven went to the window and swept back the curtains. Moonlight flooded the room. It covered the bare floor and furniture with silver light. Then Beethoven started to play something new. He tried to describe for the girl what the moonlight was like. The notes filled the room with flowing sound. He had never played so well. The music grew softer. When it finally stopped, the girl whispered, “You must be Beethoven. No one else could play so well.” Her brother added, “We will never forget this kindness.”

That night Beethoven went home and finished the music he had played. It came to be called the Moonlight Sonata and is still played today. A few years later Beethoven started to grow deaf. Soon he could hardly hear. Sounds seemed to be coming through a blanket that got thicker and thicker.

Finally Beethoven could not hear a single note. But still he kept on writing music. He heard the notes in his head. Some of his greatest works were written after he’d become deaf. It may be that the blind girl’s struggle to play the piano that night gave him the courage not to give up.