Review: 'Immortal' by Jessica Duchen

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.