Mr. Beethoven
by Paul Griffiths
Narrated by Paul Griffiths
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Pub Date Oct 19 2021 | Archive Date Nov 03 2021
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Description
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 and delightful novel is that Beethoven accepted the commission and traveled to the United States to oversee the first performance of the work.
Griffiths grants the composer an additional lease on life of several years, and starting with his voyage across the Atlantic and entry into Boston harbor, chronicles his adventures and misadventures, his happy surprises and frustration, in a new world in which, great man though he is, he finds himself a new man.
Relying, apart from the initial conceit of the novel, entirely on historically attested possibilities to develop his plot, Griffiths's novel not only shows Beethoven learning a form of sign language pioneered on Martha's Vineyard, 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 time keeping his hosts guessing as to whether he will in the end 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 not only an affectionate portrait of an unusual man, but a fascinating picture of the United States in its early years, a meditation on what we can and can't know about others and the past, and an improvisation, as virtuosic as it is delicate, on an historical theme.
Advance Praise
The great composer pays a visit to Boston in this high-concept novel about Old World musical genius and emerging American society....Stylistically rich and thoughtfully conceived historical fiction.” —Kirkus, starred review
“Paul Griffiths’s Mr. Beethoven is a novel about interpretation: about how a writer might go about interpreting the life of one of the most well-known—and well-chronicled—composers who ever lived, but also about the role interpretation plays in creativity of all kinds. It is also, like much of Griffiths’s work, a riddling, playful, and often very funny investigation of literary form.” —Jon Day, Music and Literature
“What would Beethoven have done with another seven years of life, and where, in the 1830s, might he have gone? The answer, in this audacious but exacting extension of the composer’s late period, is America, where an oratorio, Job, is completed (and performed) in Boston. Suffering and revelation are the subject-matter, but in Paul Griffiths’ hands, the Biblical sorrow undergoes a lasting modulation into a new key of delight in friendship, communication, and creativity.” —Will Eaves
“A formidable display of fantasy scholarship.” —Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian
Available Editions
| EDITION | Audiobook |
| ISBN | 9781664991903 |
| PRICE | $18.99 (USD) |
| DURATION | 6 Hours, 56 Minutes, 8 Seconds |
