Mr. Beethoven

Starred review from August 23, 2021
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.

Starred review from August 1, 2021
The great composer pays a visit to Boston in this high-concept novel about Old World musical genius and emerging American society. The fourth novel by Welsh music critic and librettist Griffiths imagines Ludwig van Beethoven sailing from Europe to America in 1833. This is peculiar, considering that Beethoven died in 1827. But Griffiths wants to explore what might've happened if the composer had followed through on a commission he was once offered to write an oratorio for the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston. Moreover, Griffiths restricts Beethoven's dialogue to documented statements from his papers. That makes for a novel that feels engagingly authentic while also working as a self-aware feat of metafiction. Griffiths plays with footnotes, point of view, musical notation, and historical records to develop his story while also putting Beethoven at the center of a range of lively relationships. He develops a gentle rapport with Thankful, a woman who teaches the deaf composer sign language, parries with the officious reverend who's written a dreadful libretto for the oratorio based on the book of Job, and tests the patience of the society members concerned the maestro won't meet his deadline. (A young Herman Melville also makes a brief, amusing cameo.) In the process, Griffiths spotlights a country that's anxious to establish its cultural standing while still tethered to its stiff Puritan nature. In that regard, Beethoven is both a unifying force and a means to expose the fault lines. And though the Oulipian strictures might've suggested stiffness, the novel feels like the best kind of historical fiction, open-minded while honoring facts. Stylistically rich and thoughtfully conceived historical fiction.

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