|
Mark Austin  The identity of Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” has been a source of fascination ever since a letter to this unidentified woman was found in the composer’s desk after his death. Unsent, or perhaps returned, the anguished message was dated only “Monday 6 July”, which meant it could only have been written in one of a few years. Biographers soon advanced a number of candidates for the intended recipient. In the 1950s watermark analysis showed that the letter must have been written in summer 1812, and thus that Beethoven must have been in Teplitz. Recent scholarship has further narrowed the field, but the identity of the woman has never been conclusively determined.
The mystery surrounding Beethoven’s love - a love which pervaded his whole being - has proved an enduring ornament to the Romantic myth of the unfathomable genius. Sensing instead the potential of resolution in fiction, Jessica Duchen has chosen her woman - Josephine Brunsvik (“Pepi”) - and laid out the evolution of a great and destructive passion. Immortal takes a grand historical sweep, following the Brunszvik family and their aristocratic circles as events unfold across Europe from the 1790s until Beethoven’s death in 1827 and beyond. Central figures such as Beethoven - “Luigi” - or Josephine’s rakish brother Franz are deftly plotted alongside cameos for familiar names such as Franz Schubert or the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, who premiered many of Beethoven’s quartets. The story unfolds through the eyes of Pepi’s sister Therese Brunszvik, who in old age writes letters to her niece. As Duchen's chosen response to Beethoven’s searing original, this device shapes the reader’s experience considerably. A thoughtful, rational person and a talented musician, Therese is dedicated to girls’ education; she seems particularly animated by her encounters with the pioneer of pedagogy Johann Pestalozzi. We gradually realise that Therese is the cautious Sense to Pepi’s impetuous Sensibility, and this has a strong influence on what we are permitted to glimpse in the novel. Each chapter quickly comes to life as events overspill the letter form, but the distancing effect of Therese’s personality remains. The overall impression is one of calm detachment, and despite the subject the narrator’s tone never reflects what Edward Said called the “intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction” of Beethoven’s late music. Indeed, Therese admits during the narrative that she has personally known little of love, sexual longing and suppressed desire. Her emotional life has been shaped by the suffocating restrictions Viennese patriarchal society placed on women, here described in painful detail. Some of the most successful passages in the novel are descriptions of music, as Duchen draws on her considerable expertise in this field as author of excellent biographies of Fauré and Korngold. Therese’s precise, unadorned style proves itself well suited to a convincing paraphrase of Beethoven’s music. The second section from the Allegretto of Symphony no. 7: “A clarinet melody like a hymn, singing perhaps of idealism and hope; other voices shadow it while the rhythm treads on beneath. An interruption, a blockage; what next?…The strings bicker, while the woodwind keep a trajectory of beauty and eloquence.” The use of metaphor and vivid description here belong to the powerful tradition of emotionally-sensitive musical commentary exemplified by Donald Francis Tovey. In the afterword, Duchen set out her aims in writing this book. She sought to bring the Immortal Beloved to life for the general reader, and to tell the story principally through the eyes of its female characters. While the second of these aims inevitably limits the text’s ability to depict its most significant figure, on her own terms she has succeeded admirably. The result is an engaging novel which will appeal to readers with an interest in Beethoven or more generally in historical romance. Duchen’s rare ability to evoke the spirit of music in words will also encourage readers to listen to the works described when reading. In fact the text sometimes seems to expect this, and indeed exposure to the intensity of Beethoven’s compositions may be what is required to offset the calmness of the narrative voice. In the end, Beethoven’s music is the most direct channel to the anguish and joy he experienced with his Immortal Beloved.
0 Comments
Review: 'For the Love of Music - A Conductor’s Guide to the Art of Listening' by John Mauceri2/1/2021 Mark Austin Conductor Sir Roger Norrington has described how for him music is not a matter of life and death; instead it’s the most wonderful game. His miraculous escape from a rare cancer may have something to do with this. He is a master of his sport whose performances exude a wonderful sense of fun and experimentation. Another elder statesman of conducting, John Mauceri, takes a very different view in his compelling new book. For the Love of Music is the product of a lifetime immersed in performing, teaching and writing. Mauceri expresses a deeply held view that music offers the possibility of spiritual and philosophical reflection on the human condition. This does not mean his writing is intimidating. It would be hard to imagine a more accessible and enjoyable book about music. Mauceri offers brilliant insights and listening advice on every page, writing in an enjoyably unpretentious style. A former pupil of Bernstein (whose presence haunts this book), he subscribes to the latter’s idea that classical music is defined by the “inevitability” of every note, and it is a tribute to his skill as a writer that we feel similarly about the way the text unfolds. The knowledge required of a listener is refreshingly modest. “Do you need to be able to take apart and rebuild your toaster in order to enjoy the toast it makes?” No, of course not. (We can still imagine Mauceri taking out a screwdriver to satisfy his own incurable fascination with what makes things tick.) Music can be experienced and felt on many different levels. It is good to be reminded how astonishing it is that Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé can depict a sunrise in music. “This is not something you should take for granted. It is miraculous.” There is much here both for the experienced listener and the novice alike. Even detractors of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier will admire Mauceri’s take on its “porno-acoustic” opening. On the importance of structure, Mauceri straddles the distance between composer and listener with ease. Drawing on a wealth of metaphors, he discusses the differences between architecture and emotional narrative in music while pointing out that structures are necessary to create music in the first place. The discussion of opera overtures as an illustration of how music relates to memory is dazzling. Mauceri’s open-mindedness as a conductor distinguishes this book from other similar volumes. Eschewing Barenboim-like mysticism, Mauceri offers honest insights into what it is like to conduct the famously ambiguous finale of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5, poised between apparent triumph and ironic despair. Likewise, his retracing of the thoughts and practicalities behind concert programming will interest anyone who has ever wondered about this process. The author leaves himself vulnerable to criticism with his relatively dogmatic statements about the classical canon, although he insists he follows public opinion. His belief that classical music consists of great works composed between 1700 and 1940 is clearly open to challenge. Given Mauceri’s belief in classical music as a profound social and cultural mirror, the determination to avoid a more fluid sense of canon seems misplaced. What has happened to the conductor as champion of the unfamiliar? He has little to say about the institutions and structures which have cemented the canon as it now stands. The relatively late adoption of Mahler into the musical pantheon is seen as an anomaly rather than an interesting model for future development. All of this sits awkwardly in the context of his description of music as a living, breathing art form. Perhaps it is not at the end of a lifetime that one should be expected to point the way for the future. This book is a magnificent tribute to the spirit of a certain age still incarnate in a small number of elder maestri such as Muti, Haitink, Mehta and Mauceri. Their unshakeable belief in the importance and vitality of classical music is perhaps so strong that it cannot really grasp the very real possibility of diminishment. The next generations must take up the baton. |