Musica Ficta?
A recent query about John Suchet’s novels caused me to look over my collection of “fictional” works that feature Beethoven and I was surprised to find I had quite a few of them. Leaving aside Suchet’s books which are more fact than fiction, there are quite a few total fabrications, but, at least, they don’t claim to be anything else.
The earliest memory I have of the name Beethoven was a story in my school reader; I must have been nine or ten at the time but I can remember it clearly. B and a friend were out walking one evening when they heard the sound of a piano from an open window. (I am assuming that B heard it, anyway). They investigate and find a blind girl playing beautiful melodies. Ludwig is touched and inspired by this (blind girl, deaf composer, get it?) and sits himself down at the piano. “I will compose a sonata unto the moonlight,” he intones and then launches into the jolly old C sharp minor opus. The true story is a bit of an anticlimax after all this!
No less a person than Richard Wagner wrote a short story entitled “A PILGRIMAGE TO BEETHOVEN” which must rank as the first work of fiction about B (unless you include Anton Schindler’s book). It was first published in two parts in November and December of 1840, and it is a very entertaining piece about a young composer who travels to Vienna in the hope of meeting Beethoven. He succeeds eventually and gets on well with the maestro, but both of them are very much annoyed by an English composer who presents B with one of his compositions, asking him to put a cross wherever a correction should be made. B obliges by putting one huge cross from one end of the manuscript cover to the other. (Is this part of the story lifted from an actual anecdote, I wonder? It sounds like something that could have occurred.)
On the strength of this tale, I wish Wagner had written more fiction. (Who said: and less music?)
TENTH SYMPHONY by Mark Aldanov is a book of five short novels, each one dealing with a famous historical personage, for example Mussolini (!) and Michelangelo. The title story is the longest and deals with you-know-who and the first performance of the Ninth. One unforgettable scene has Beethoven visiting a travelling zoo where he sees a boa-constrictor being fed. The trapper informs the audience that the boa-constrictor can sing, thus arousing Beethoven’s interest, but the composer flees when he sees a rabbit being swallowed whole. Again, the whole story is so convincing that I am wondering if there is any incident on record of B seeing a boa-constrictor in action?
In the “Collected Short Stories of E M Forster, there is one called “CO-ORDINATION” which features Beethoven high up in heaven looking down on a music teacher, Miss Hadden, who has an orchestra of “maidens of the upper middle classes who perform the Eroica in her presence every day and all day ………” And that’s enough about that, I think.
THE ASSASSINATION OF MOZART by David Weiss came out in 1970, a follow-up to his earlier book, “Sacred and Profane” which is a biographical novel about Mozart. I wonder if John Suchet has read it because it is similar in style to the “Last Master”. The sequel, however, is completely fictional, and involves an investigation into the death of Mozart undertaken by an American musician, Jason Otis and his wife. They visit Beethoven, Schubert and Salieri. Though the author is firmly in the Mozart camp, Beethoven is portrayed vividly and convincingly. I won’t reveal who murdered Mozart as somebody may come across this book. Needless to say, it was not Salieri!
Most of the above-mentioned are not bad at all, but now the rot sets in.
I picked up THE BEETHOVEN CONSPIRACY in the bargain bin. The author is Thomas Hauser and I’ll just quote the blurb: “ Three people have been brutally murdered, the only clue – a scrawled note: Beethoven. As detective Richard Marritt and Judith Darr move through the backrooms of police HQ and the glitter of the classical music community trying to unravel the puzzle, they uncover an increasingly bizarre tale of musical megalomania – beneath it lurks one formidable, breathtaking question: has Beethoven’s Tenth been discovered?”
Enough said. This masterpiece was published in 1984, before Barry Cooper's version of the Tenth became public.
Lastly, two totally off-the-wall novels. The first, VIOLIN, is by Anne Rice (yes – the vampire interviewer). I can’t give a summary of this because I could hardly follow the plot. It concerns Stefan, the restless tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat and Beethoven hovers in an out of the story, a surreal and rather sinister figure.
But the weirdest story of all has to be LUDWIG: A SPIRITUAL THRILLER by Leslie Kenton, daughter of the jazz musician Stan Kenton. Best known for her books on health, this is quite a departure for her, and is based on a dream she had in her mid twenties. It came out in 1993 and I haven’t read it since, and, quite frankly, I haven’t worked up the energy to read it again so I’m a bit vague about the plot, but it deals with spiritual possession, Schindler, the Immortal Beloved and the C.I.A. (Yes – the C.I.A.) I was going to give an extract but I’m tired, and so, I’m sure, is everybody else.
In fairness to Rice and Kenton, both seem to be genuine Beethoven-lovers. In a TV interview, Leslie Kenton drawled: “Before writing this book, I listened to every god-damned work of Beethoven …….”
Er, yes.
I have one last treat in store for myself, a grubby second-hand paperback spy-thriller, which I haven’t read yet, called “The Fidelio Score”. Who knows, it might be the greatest of them all.
Has anybody else come across any Beethoven fiction? Does anybody have a first edition of “Beethoven Goes Hang-Gliding”, for example?
Michael
[This message has been edited by Michael (edited 02-15-2002).]
The earliest memory I have of the name Beethoven was a story in my school reader; I must have been nine or ten at the time but I can remember it clearly. B and a friend were out walking one evening when they heard the sound of a piano from an open window. (I am assuming that B heard it, anyway). They investigate and find a blind girl playing beautiful melodies. Ludwig is touched and inspired by this (blind girl, deaf composer, get it?) and sits himself down at the piano. “I will compose a sonata unto the moonlight,” he intones and then launches into the jolly old C sharp minor opus. The true story is a bit of an anticlimax after all this!
No less a person than Richard Wagner wrote a short story entitled “A PILGRIMAGE TO BEETHOVEN” which must rank as the first work of fiction about B (unless you include Anton Schindler’s book). It was first published in two parts in November and December of 1840, and it is a very entertaining piece about a young composer who travels to Vienna in the hope of meeting Beethoven. He succeeds eventually and gets on well with the maestro, but both of them are very much annoyed by an English composer who presents B with one of his compositions, asking him to put a cross wherever a correction should be made. B obliges by putting one huge cross from one end of the manuscript cover to the other. (Is this part of the story lifted from an actual anecdote, I wonder? It sounds like something that could have occurred.)
On the strength of this tale, I wish Wagner had written more fiction. (Who said: and less music?)
TENTH SYMPHONY by Mark Aldanov is a book of five short novels, each one dealing with a famous historical personage, for example Mussolini (!) and Michelangelo. The title story is the longest and deals with you-know-who and the first performance of the Ninth. One unforgettable scene has Beethoven visiting a travelling zoo where he sees a boa-constrictor being fed. The trapper informs the audience that the boa-constrictor can sing, thus arousing Beethoven’s interest, but the composer flees when he sees a rabbit being swallowed whole. Again, the whole story is so convincing that I am wondering if there is any incident on record of B seeing a boa-constrictor in action?
In the “Collected Short Stories of E M Forster, there is one called “CO-ORDINATION” which features Beethoven high up in heaven looking down on a music teacher, Miss Hadden, who has an orchestra of “maidens of the upper middle classes who perform the Eroica in her presence every day and all day ………” And that’s enough about that, I think.
THE ASSASSINATION OF MOZART by David Weiss came out in 1970, a follow-up to his earlier book, “Sacred and Profane” which is a biographical novel about Mozart. I wonder if John Suchet has read it because it is similar in style to the “Last Master”. The sequel, however, is completely fictional, and involves an investigation into the death of Mozart undertaken by an American musician, Jason Otis and his wife. They visit Beethoven, Schubert and Salieri. Though the author is firmly in the Mozart camp, Beethoven is portrayed vividly and convincingly. I won’t reveal who murdered Mozart as somebody may come across this book. Needless to say, it was not Salieri!
Most of the above-mentioned are not bad at all, but now the rot sets in.
I picked up THE BEETHOVEN CONSPIRACY in the bargain bin. The author is Thomas Hauser and I’ll just quote the blurb: “ Three people have been brutally murdered, the only clue – a scrawled note: Beethoven. As detective Richard Marritt and Judith Darr move through the backrooms of police HQ and the glitter of the classical music community trying to unravel the puzzle, they uncover an increasingly bizarre tale of musical megalomania – beneath it lurks one formidable, breathtaking question: has Beethoven’s Tenth been discovered?”
Enough said. This masterpiece was published in 1984, before Barry Cooper's version of the Tenth became public.
Lastly, two totally off-the-wall novels. The first, VIOLIN, is by Anne Rice (yes – the vampire interviewer). I can’t give a summary of this because I could hardly follow the plot. It concerns Stefan, the restless tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat and Beethoven hovers in an out of the story, a surreal and rather sinister figure.
But the weirdest story of all has to be LUDWIG: A SPIRITUAL THRILLER by Leslie Kenton, daughter of the jazz musician Stan Kenton. Best known for her books on health, this is quite a departure for her, and is based on a dream she had in her mid twenties. It came out in 1993 and I haven’t read it since, and, quite frankly, I haven’t worked up the energy to read it again so I’m a bit vague about the plot, but it deals with spiritual possession, Schindler, the Immortal Beloved and the C.I.A. (Yes – the C.I.A.) I was going to give an extract but I’m tired, and so, I’m sure, is everybody else.
In fairness to Rice and Kenton, both seem to be genuine Beethoven-lovers. In a TV interview, Leslie Kenton drawled: “Before writing this book, I listened to every god-damned work of Beethoven …….”
Er, yes.
I have one last treat in store for myself, a grubby second-hand paperback spy-thriller, which I haven’t read yet, called “The Fidelio Score”. Who knows, it might be the greatest of them all.
Has anybody else come across any Beethoven fiction? Does anybody have a first edition of “Beethoven Goes Hang-Gliding”, for example?
Michael
[This message has been edited by Michael (edited 02-15-2002).]
Comment