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Aubert, Georges – 03 Third Epoch – 05 Dictating a sonata
Identifier
028618
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Our despair was great not to be able to keep any of these pieces. As we complained, one day Beethoven told my father that he was going to dictate a sonata to him, note by note, bar by bar.
This work was done in this way: Beethoven played a whole bar in the tone, movement, style he wanted; then, very slowly, while keeping exactly the value of each note, he repeated it until my father managed to transcribe it.
It was a thirteenth work of Hercules; for if my father was a talented singer and musician, he did not know Harmony any more than I did.
However, after an extremely long and tiring period of hard work, he succeeded in writing the entire sonata (about 600 bars) that Beethoven wanted us to have.
Shortly afterwards, a second was dictated to us.
Later, it was Mendelssohn who noticed my father working with a romance without words.
That was all.
Unfortunately, of these pieces that I loved so much, all I have left is the Andante of the first Sonata.
Everything else disappeared when my father died, without me ever being able to know what had happened to it.