Unaccompanied Sonata - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

A child is brought up to be a musical prodigy. He is raised alone in a cabin by unsinging servants, in order to guarantee that his only musical influences are natural. He plays on a complicated instrument capable of a wide range of sound, but is absolutely disallowed from hearing the music of others, for, he is told, that would corrupt his originality and make his work derivative. At some point he is, against the wishes of his keepers, introduced to the music of Bach, and when this is discovered by a "Watcher", he is uprooted from his composition at the age of thirty, and is then barred by law from ever again making music. The story then follows him as he struggles to repress his desire for musical expression.

Read more about this topic:  Unaccompanied Sonata

Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:

    Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)