NCERT Book Class 9 English (Beehive) Chapter 2 Wind; The Sound of Music

2. The Sound of Music

Part I
Evelyn Glennie Listens to Sound
without Hearing It

BEFORE YOU READ
• “God may have taken her hearing but he has given her back
something extraordinary. What we hear, she feels — far more
deeply than any of us. That is why she expresses music so
beautifully.”
• Read the following account of a person who fought against a
physical disability and made her life a success story.

1. R U S H hour crowds jostle for position on the jostle: push roughly
underground train platform. A slight girl, looking slight: small and
younger than her seventeen years, was nervous yet thin
excited as she felt the vibrations of the approaching
train. It was her first day at the prestigious Royal
Academy of Music in London and daunting enough daunting: frightening
for any teenager fresh from a Scottish farm. But
this aspiring musician faced a bigger challenge than aspiring musician: a
most: she was profoundly deaf. person who wants
to be a musician
2. Evelyn Glennie’s loss of hearing had been gradual.
Her mother remembers noticing something was
wrong when the eight-year-old Evelyn was waiting
to play the piano. “They called her name and she
didn’t move. I suddenly realised she hadn’t heard,”
says Isabel Glennie. For quite a while Evelyn
managed to conceal her growing deafness from
friends and teachers. But by the time she was
eleven her marks had deteriorated and her
headmistress urged her parents to take her to a