This morning I read Beethoven Lives Upstairs to Elizabeth. It's historical fiction about the time during which Beethoven wrote his 9th Symphony, told through letters between a young boy, named Christoph, and his uncle. Christoph's young widowed mother rents the second floor of their home to Beethoven himself.
Through his letters, the uncle encourages Christoph to be empathetic toward the very noisy and moody deaf man of a difficult history, who often wakes his family with his excessive pounding. The end is so touching I had to swallow back tears to not cry like a baby over the last two pages!
We listened to the finale (all I had available on cd) after finishing the story. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to be in that hall in Vienna in 1824, to listen to such beautiful music, written by a man who did not even know that the audience was on their feet applauding his work, because he could not hear them.
Remarkable
And it sure choked me up today.
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