Beethoven’s missing 10th Symphony surfaces in a novel
A man walks into an auction house bearing a cedar box holding a very old document. He claims it’s the longlost final symphony of Ludwig Van Beethoven, and, on close inspection, it appears he may be right.
The news is explosive, and in no time, academics, music scholars, conductors, Swiss and German representatives and a mysterious Asian millionaire engage in a frenzied bid for a piece that will change the history of music. Is it authentic? What is it worth? Who can claim ownership? And can it — should it — be performed?
It’s an audacious premise, but in “Beethoven’s Tenth” (Rare Bird Books, $26.95,
398 pages), Richard Kluger makes it seem like recent news — which was the Berkeley author’s goal from the novel’s inception.
“The idea of finding a lost Beethoven symphony tickled me,” Kluger explained in a recent interview at the North Berkeley home he shares with his wife, Phyllis. “But to make it work, it had to be plausible.”
Part mystery, part history and part contemporary social satire, the novel begins as hapless New Jersey hardware store manager Jake Hassler arrives at the New York offices of Cubbage and Wakeman with the manuscript. Under grilling by the auction house honchos, Hassler explains that his late grandfather, who lived in Zurich, had acquired the score and stored it in his attic. Signed by Beethoven and titled “Wilhelm Tell: Eine Dramatische Symphonie,” it’s dated 1814.
The year is significant, says Kluger — a time when Beethoven, already well into the hearing loss that would leave him deaf, had traveled to Zurich. Kluger believes that the composer would have been panicked — “like a painter who can’t see, a chef
who’s lost his taste buds” — and, in two months at a spa in late summer, he may have been “on a mission to save his hearing.”
As for the “William Tell” title, Kluger says it’s a tribute to German poet Friedrich Schiller.
“Beethoven loved Schiller’s work,” he says, noting the composer had set texts from Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” in the final movement of his Symphony No. 9, “Choral.”
And the idea of William Tell — the Swiss revolutionary who fought for independence from the Hapsburg empire — would have been tailor-made for Beethoven.
The book also makes sly reference to Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, whose own William Tell opera, “Guillaume Tell,” premiered in 1829. Kluger draws a connection between the two composers, who met in Vienna in April 1822. Although historical evidence suggests that Beethoven resented the younger composer’s success, Kluger opines that Beethoven — “by then, a cranky old man” — may have been a collaborator of sorts in Rossini’s opera.
Kluger is perhaps best known as a nonfiction writer — his “Simple Justice,” about the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, and “The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune,” were both National Book Award finalists, and “Ashes to Ashes,” his engrossing social history of the cigarette industry, smoking and health, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. In recent years, though, he’s moved into historical fiction. “Beethoven’s Tenth” is his seventh novel, following fiction works including “Members of the Tribe” and “The Sheriff of Nottingham.”
The author insists he’s not a musicologist, although “I sort of became one in the research for this book,” he says. Indeed, “Beethoven’s Tenth” took the author on a search for Beethoven letters, scores and ephemera — some of which were contained nearby, at UC Berkeley. In all, he spent 15 years on the book, which underwent four drafts before it went to print.
Completely invented are the novel’s contemporary scenarios depicting peevish scholars, rapacious collectors, dealers and sleuths. Kluger relishes the thought of such a priceless score coming before the public today. “One can only imagine how it would be exploited in our world of instant gratification,” he said. “It would be worth zillions!”
Kluger, who was born in New Jersey and grew up in New York, spent much of his life on the East Coast. He attends San Francisco Symphony concerts at Davies Hall and enjoys Cal Performances events at Zellerbach Hall, a short walk from his home. “It’s a very vibrant scene,” he said.
Needless to say, programs featuring Beethoven are high on his list.