Paul Griffiths should be well-known to any lover of classical music. On both sides of the Atlantic he has been a keenly perceptive critic, speaker, and writer of articles and program notes. Those with an interest in contemporary music will appreciate the libretto he wrote at Elliott Carter's request for that composer's only opera, What Next?
I'd enjoyed Griffiths' previous book let me tell you — in which Ophelia gives her own views of the Hamlet story, using only words that she has spoken in Shakespeare's play.
Mr. Beethoven, likewise, is an imagining of what might have been, and again uses an OuLiPo technique: everything Beethoven says in the book was actually said by him. (Even, I presume, his expletive "Fish oil!")
The plot is this. Beethoven has survived until 1833. He's been invited by a Boston music society to compose an oratorio on words by a local preacher. He travels to America and spends the summer among musicians, snobs, common people and the occasional Massachusett native. He finds the libretto awful and connives to have it improved, though we can perceive that it remains ludicrous. He relaxes in good humor, however, and produces a great musical work ... or does he?
Griffiths prepared for the writing of his book with a tremendous amount of research, not only in Beethoven's letters but also in catalogues of his scribbled musical ideas, poems by Goethe, the detailed history of 1830s Boston, an 1829 dictionary of the Massachusett language, biographies of many Americans who might have been there (such as Herman Melville), and collections of sermons by New England clerics of the time. To this are added Griffiths' own perceptions about Beethoven's music and his speculation on what a "fourth period" might have been like, had Beethoven really survived the additional seven years he's been granted. On top of all that is a great helping of whimsy; lovers of Ulysses will enjoy the comical switching between points of view and styles of writing.
Great efforts, almost entirely successful, have been made to employ American spellings and usages. So people wear pants rather than trousers, and "Mr. Beethoven" includes a period (or full stop) to acknowledge the presence of an abbreviation. Of course British readers will understand why it was necessary to accord with American norms, whereas American readers might have become defensive if it were too obvious that a foreigner were poking fun at the hapless inhabitants of the young republic. (Twenty players will constitute the orchestra, missing parts being played on the organ.)
I can understand why the (very clever) design of the book cover shows a map of the lower 48 states even though more than a quarter of that area belonged to Mexico at that time. No quibbling here; it is a first-class effort. Just to pick up the book feels like one is picking up an object of art.
And that hints at what I most like about the book. It's not a Barbara Cartland or J. K. Rowling story that keeps readers turning pages by following well-worn rules and traditions. It's an attempt to create an art work that has its own rules. The reader has to adjust to the sudden changes of tone, the dalliance between historical fact and obvious fiction and the author's knowing winks about the dalliance. (Maybe even knowing winks about the knowing winks.)
Recommended.