Mr. Beethoven A Novel

Paul Griffiths

eAudio - 2021

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... more