Republic of Consciousness Class of 2021: Mr Beethoven by Paul Griffiths (Henningham Family Press)
Between March 8th and March 19th we will be posting ten pieces on our blog celebrating the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021 longlist. There will be interviews, extracts and articles, with each piece focussing on a longlisted book.
Today we have a chapter of Paul Griffiths’ historical novel Mr Beethoven, which imagines the composer on a trip to America to create a biblical oratorio for a group of amateur musicians. Griffiths’ novel is already highly acclaimed, having been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize.
13 – An Infinite Conversation
The Reverend Ballou, minister, huffing, puffing, up Belknap towards Myrtle Street, huffing and puffing because he is late, having been unable to break off the conversation to which he was summoned by Samuel Richardson, huffing and puffing because he is twenty pounds overweight or perhaps even thirty, huffing and puffing because he is anxious about this meeting face to face with the Orpheus of the age, huffing and puffing because he is lolloping uphill, huffing and puffing because the afternoon is sultry, huffing and puffing because he has no idea why he has been asked to take tea with the great man at two o’clock, which is already eight minutes ago, and the gradient is not slackening, and something Mr. Richardson said is slowly coming to bother him, and he really ought to cut out his housekeeper’s nut cake, or at least take a smaller slice, or a good helping only every other day, comes Hosea Ballou.
There would be no need to relate how the Reverend Ballou, minister of Second Church, on School Street, arrives at the house to be admitted by Bobby and taken up to the waiting composer, who had no doubt informed Lowell Mason and thereby the household that this visitor was to be expected. We may, rather, go straight to the distinguished visitor’s room. Once the Reverend Ballou has entered, the distinguished composer, alerted by Thankful, rises from his desk and, the custom by now well learned, shakes his librettist by the hand. It is not clear if this is their first meeting. If it is, then the great master is assuming a good deal of common ground, and even of connection, simply because he has for many months been working with this man’s words before him and in his head. Of course, that raises the question of the esteemed composer’s knowledge of English, a language he had never set before, his only preceding works with English texts being folksong arrangements, where, of course, the setting of the words was a given. The newspaper report of ten years before mentioned an “American consul” through whom the commission from Boston was imparted. But was there still such a consul in Vienna when the great composer turned from his eight third-period quartets, someone who could examine the growing draft and offer advice on matters of stress, rhythm, and vowel quality? The first permanent U. S. ambassador to the Habsburg court was appointed in 1838, too late for us. Perhaps the role of sounding board fell, then, to the British ambassador, Sir Richard Wellesley, who was in Vienna from 1823 to 1831, difficult as it may be to imagine a British aristocrat, the Duke of Wellington’s younger brother, being able to read a late manuscript of the composer’s and comment usefully on matters of musical setting. But you never know.
This matter has, however, left the great composer and Ballou shaking hands for far longer than necessary. Even if, presuming this was indeed their first meeting, a certain amount of gladsome exchange of greetings would be natural.
“The rooms look out on the garden,” the composer said, turning a little to his right and raising his right arm toward the window.
Ballou, a scholar, having no trouble with the composer’s mellifluous German, at once replied: “How very pleasant” – and of course Thankful was there to convey his remark efficiently to her gentleman, with a twist of one hand in another and a sweep of three fingers along the forearm, perhaps adding an ironic flourish all her own. Ballou was of an age with the composer, just four months younger. It may be less relevant that he was among the most formidable Unitarian divines of the period, and a proponent of universal salvation, his collected sermons, recently published at the time, stoutly defending that position.
“Yet garden air is just the very worst air for me,” the composer said, having turned back and now facing Ballou directly. Flustered, the reverend sir shuffled with his coat and sat down on one of the sofas. As the great man remained on his feet, however, and had offered no invitation to sit, after a brief moment Ballou abruptly stood up again, to be motioned with an abstracted air to resume his seat. When he had done so, the composer, too, sat down, in his armchair. Ballou waited.
“Well, on the whole it is not at all bad,” said the composer.
Ballou considered – hoped – that the composer would expatiate on this, and so maintained his silence.
And indeed the composer did go on: “Except the first act, which is rather insipid, it is written in such a masterly style that it does not by any means require a first-rate composer.”
Ballou opened his mouth, and hesitated. How was he to take this? A negative remark – that word “insipid” (fade) stung, but perhaps, he tried to tell himself, it was just an unfortunate choice, on the part of a man whose forte was notes, not words (after all, he might have thought by now, that was why he, Hosea Ballou, was there) – and then what could have been construed a compliment, though it might be a double-edged one, all depending again on a single word that could, once more, have been hastily and ill chosen: “require” (erfordert). Was the paramount master really telling Ballou that his libretto was so fine that any numbskull musician could make a great work of it, that the words would lend their luster to the music, no matter how mediocre the latter? Or was he implying, all this about “masterly style” ironic, that Ballou’s text did not rise to the peaks that a first-rate composer would expect, to stimulate and support music of the greatest moment?
Well, Ballou could not sit there forever with his mouth open and the great composer staring at him in expectation of some response – and this girl, too – and so he closed it again before, having swallowed, opening it once more to speak, but was stayed now by the composer turning in his chair and leaning back to pick up three or four sheets of paper from the desk behind.
“Why did you do so?” said the composer, pointing at a particular line or pair of lines with his left forefinger as with that hand he passed the page to Ballou.
Ballou, who had read through his libretto several times during the morning in preparation for this meeting, recognized the episode but could not immediately think how to respond to the question. One has many reasons for writing as one does. The original Biblical text, of course, one keeps always in sight, also the need to interpret that text for an audience in Boston in 1833, to give it a certain Unitarian inflection, to follow a very simple verse form, to maintain a sufficiently elevated language, to write something one considers, from one’s knowledge of the hymnal, will sing well. What precisely was the great composer questioning?
So long was Ballou taking to respond that the muses’ champion spoke again: “I really can’t get the hang of this.”
That was not good, definitely not good, no question about it. Ballou looked again at the lines seemingly under dispute. There seemed nothing complicated or difficult about them, but he could not continue to sit there in silence with those two pairs of eyes – the composer’s increasingly perplexed and demanding, the girl’s turning to a hapless sympathy he might have felt even more discouraging, given her age and status – waiting for him.
“I think the point here,” he began, and having begun found himself speeding up, his words cascading, almost beyond his control, “was for the character to express, to be expressing, or at least to seem to be expressing, some mixture or amalgam, if I might put it so, of feelings, as wonder and contempt, or hope and, as it might be, anxiety as to the outcome of that hope, or the possibility of that hope’s having a positive outcome, however that might be judged, or even the desirability, or perhaps more exactly in this case —”
There a quick glance from Thankful asked him to stop, or at any rate slow down, since the language of signs could not keep pace with this verbal torrent.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “To you. I mean, to you. I’m sorry.”
“Say no more!” said the composer, and now they were both silent, until Ballou decided the injunction need not prevent him trying another tack.
“The number is in two verses,” he ventured. “The first is in D major, the second in E flat major,” the composer divulged.
“Indeed,” said Ballou, not quite sure what to make of this, but determined to proceed, somehow. He looked at the text and then back at the composer, who was shaking his right hand and blowing through slackened lips.
This done, the composer spoke again: “A good deal will have to be altered.” And he added: “That is what is holding me up at the moment.”
Ballou stared again at the sheet of paper in his hands, and, still looking down, began “The words here —”
The composer cut him off: “It is very beautifully written.”
This was good.
“But it is all in vain.”
Not so good.
What was the problem, though? It piqued him that this number was one he was proud of. Within its short space, in his view, he had allowed the central character to express his whole moral outlook.
“Could we, I wonder,” he said, “go through the number line by line? You see, it was my hope that in this piece we could allow the central character to express his whole moral outlook.”
“The devil take you,” said the composer, “I refuse to hear anything about your whole moral outlook!” Ballou fell silent once again. The composer – the great composer, the universally acknowledged master of the age, his composer – sat there, leaning forward, fury in his face. How had this come about? It would be game of Ballou now to go on. “I believe I can see,” he began carefully, “how the first line –”
“‘What comfort can I give you?’” the composer quoted, before adding emphatically: “Fish-oil!” Then his fury suddenly turned to furious good humor, and he was still laughing as he went on: “I am sorry,” he said, “for both of us.”
“But please give me some indication,” said Ballou, “of what should be altered.”
“I leave that to you to decide,” the composer replied, and stood up, at which Ballou did the same. The master took a step forward and seized Ballou’s hands in his.
“Think of me when writing your poems. Do what you can.”
Having said that, he turned and shook his fist at the window.
Ballou, aware that the interview was concluded, withdrew.
– Except that we might want to have him come back, because it could all so easily have gone a different way.
“The rooms look out on the garden,” the composer said, turning a little to his right and raising his right arm toward the window.
The reverend sir looked that way, too, and sniffed, at which the composer, seeing a twitch out of the corner of his eye, turned back to face him directly.
“Yet garden air is just the very worst air for me,” the composer said, motioning his ally to sit. “Thank you,” said Ballou. Then, when they were both sitting and looking at each other, the composer went on.
“Well,” he said, “on the whole it is not at all bad.” Evidently, the composer was now opening the discussion, and Ballou waited for him to continue, as he did.
“Except the first act, which is rather insipid, it is written in such a masterly style that it does not by any means require a first-rate composer.”
“Thank you,” said Ballou warmly. Let us suppose he had heard “fade” as “Pfade” (paths), and drew the conclusion he was being complimented for breaking new ground. Or perhaps he did not hear the questionable word, or unconsciously suppressed it, to smile on the phrase that followed.
“Thank you, indeed,” he might well then have said. “I cannot tell you what a joy it is to me, my dear sir, to hear such words from you, for I have to tell you that when I was first approached in this matter, by Mr. Richardson, I hesitated. Indeed, I hesitated a good while.”
“Why did you do so?” asked the composer.
“Because,” Ballou replied, “you are who you are. You are – well, you are the author of pianoforte sonatas I have studied and admired from my youth. You are the master of the Septet that I and a group of my friends got together to play again only last week – I wish you had been there.” Suddenly realizing his faux pas, he rushed on to his crowning apostrophe: “You are the genius of the symphonies to which the world resounds!”
The muses’ champion raised his left palm toward Ballou, then turned his head away and sighed. “I really can’t get the hang of this,” he said. “Say no more.”
Ballou paused. “Forgive me,” he said. “May we then proceed, my very dear sir, to the libretto? I had a question about the two arias for the protagonist in the opening act.”
“The first is in D major, the second in E flat major,” the composer divulged.
“I see,” said Ballou, not quite sure what to make of this. “I was rather expecting,” he continued, “a minor key for the second aria. Possibly F sharp minor in that case, with the mediant relationship…”
The composer nodded. “A good deal will have to be altered,” he said.
“The choice of keys,” said Ballou, “is so important.”
The composer nodded again as he spoke: “That is what is holding me up at the moment,” and he reached back to pat the stack of loose sheets on the desk behind him, perhaps a hundred or more, saying as he did so: “It is very beautifully written.”
His hand came to rest. “But it is all in vain.”
“Oh, my very dear sir,” said Ballou, “do not say so! We may not always understand where our artistic genius is leading us, but we have to trust it, put our faith in it as the scintilla of the divine that is placed within us. Indeed, that is central to my whole moral outlook.”
“The devil take you,” said the composer, “I refuse to hear anything about your whole moral outlook.” Ballou was silent. How could he bring solace to this troubled soul?
After a full two minutes, he spoke again, very softly: “What comfort can I give you?”
The composer, whose head had been sunk, raised it again to look at his interlocutor. “What comfort can I give you?” he said.
“It is a comfort, my dear sir,” said Ballou, still very quiet, “to be sitting here with you.”
The composer’s reply was almost inaudible: “Fish-oil.”
Ballou could say nothing. The composer reached back again to put a hand on the pages of his manuscript. “I am sorry,” he said, “for both of us.”
“Would it help,” Ballou began, with more energy. Could he say this? “Would it help if we were to begin all over again, my very dear sir, with a fresh libretto, perhaps on a different subject?”
“I leave that to you to decide,” the composer replied, and stood up, at which Ballou did the same. The master took a step forward and seized Ballou’s hands in his.
“Think of me when writing your poems. Do what you can.”
Ballou gently pulled his hands away and left.
– Except that we might want to have him come back, because it could all so easily have gone a different way.
“The rooms look out on the garden,” the composer said, turning a little to his right and raising his right arm toward the window.
“And my friend Mason’s famous delphiniums will now be at their peak,” said Ballou.
The composer looked across at him uncomprehending.
Mr Beethoven is available to buy here on the Henningham Family Press website.