Mr. Beethoven
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize
Based on the German composer's own correspondence, this inventive, counterfactual work of historical fiction imagines Beethoven traveling to America to write an oratorio based on the Book of Job.
It is a matter of historical record that in 1823 the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston (active to this day) sought to commission Beethoven to write an oratorio. The premise of Paul Griffiths’s ingenious novel is that Beethoven accepted the commission and traveled to the United States to oversee its first performance.
Griffiths grants the composer a few extra years of life and, starting with his voyage across the Atlantic and entry into Boston Harbor, chronicles his adventures and misadventures in a new world in which, great man though he is, he finds himself a new man.
Relying entirely on historically attested possibilities to develop the plot, Griffiths shows Beethoven learning a form of sign language, struggling to rein in the uncertain inspiration of Reverend Ballou (his designated librettist), and finding a kindred spirit in the widowed Mrs. Hill, all the while keeping his hosts guessing as to whether he will come through with his promised composition. (And just what, the reader also wonders, will this new piece by Beethoven turn out to be?)
The book that emerges is an improvisation, as virtuosic as it is delicate, on a historical theme.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Music critic, librettist, and novelist Griffiths (let me tell you) delivers a masterly and witty historical fantasy of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). In 1833, Beethoven makes a transatlantic voyage to Boston, Mass., where he's been commissioned to complete an oratorio about "the sufferings and the patience of Job." Once he arrives, a teenage girl named Thankful from the signing community on Martha's Vineyard teaches Beethoven, who has lost his hearing, sign language. Not only can she hear, she has an extensive musical education, and aids the maestro in auditions, rehearsals, and social situations. The author treats the novel itself as a work in progress (in places, an irreverent, impatient modern voice demands the author hurry up and get to the point). There's plenty that happens, including a close friendship between Beethoven and a widow, and tension with the fussy minister who wrote the libretto, but the most exciting part of the story is the imaginary oratorio. Everything feels authentic musically and historically, due to the author's wise use of primary sources, including Beethoven's own letters. Griffiths incorporates music criticism, send-ups of convoluted 19th-century prose, excerpts from letters, and even auction-catalog descriptions of correspondence and autographs. This wild quilt of styles brings a very human giant of the Classical and Romantic periods vividly to life.
