One moonlit evening Beethoven was walking in a street when he suddenly stopped outside a little house. “What is that? It is from my Sonata in F. How well it is played!”
    There was a sudden break. Then came a voice of sobbing. “I can't play any more. It is so beautiful. I wish for once in my life to hear some really good music.”
    “Ah, my sister,” said a young man, “but we are so poor.”
    Beethoven knocked at the door, and it opened. A young girl was sitting before a piano and a young man was making shoes by the table.
    “Pardon me,” said Beethoven, “but I heard music. You wish to hear...” He paused. He found the girl was blind. “Excuse me. Then you play by ear? But where did you hear the music?”
    “I used to hear a woman practicing near us. Her windows were often open and I walked outside to listen to her.”
    Beethoven said no more. He sat down before the piano. The moon shone brightly in through the window. He looked up thoughtfully to the sky and stars. He said to himself, “I will improvise a Sonata to the Moonlight!” Then his hands dropped on the keys and began to play.
    The young man laid away his work. The girl, with her head bent slightly forward, and her hands pressed tightly over her breast, sat silently near the piano listening...
    This was the origin of the Moonlight Sonata.