"A piece of music is a queer thing when you come to think of it, isn't it? Beethoven sits up, deaf, and the music of the "Moonlight Sonata" sings itself in his head. He takes wood pulp and some black liquid and a bit of steel, and makes blobs and lines and scratches on it. He dies, gets buried, and my friend comes into the drawing room and sits down at a big lump of wood with some wires and hammers inside; he pulls out a music book, looks at it, beats the notes that work the hammers and there floats out upon the air the same stream of delicious sounds that sang themselves in the brain of Beethoven, and I sit here and see again moonlight on still water shining, and hear the rippling of a little stream and feel the touch of summer air, soft velvet like a woman's cheek."
G. A. Studdert Kennedy
