The Economist - USA (2020-11-21)

The EconomistNovember 21st 2020 Books & arts 77

2 moved online. Yet “audience numbers
grew and grew. It became like a snowball,”
says Mr Boecker. The “Beethoven Pastoral
Project”, inspired by his bucolic Sixth Sym-
phony, became a virtual network of artists,
already reaching a global audience of 30m.
The composer would have winced in
recognition. The chronic insecurity faced
by musicians today is “very close to the sit-
uation in Beethoven’s time”, Mr Boecker
notes. War with France raged with little re-
spite from 1792 to 1815; inflation shrank
earnings; publishers, promoters and pa-
trons went bust. Laura Tunbridge, profes-
sor of music at Oxford and author of a new
biography, “Beethoven: A Life in Nine
Pieces”, underlines her subject’s role as
“one of the early freelancers”, a hard-nosed
jobbing professional.
Lurching between court and market,
prosperity and penury, he worked on the
cusp between the old musical regime of
noble and royal patronage, and the new or-
der of commercial publishing and concert
promotion. Between 1809 and 1812 he
earned 6,000 florins a year, six times an av-
erage civil-service salary. But he ran
through it fast and complained that “I have
not a farthing left.” His grandest pieces,
such as the Ninth Symphony and “Missa
Solemnis”, are timeless monuments to ge-
nius. They were also properties that Beet-
hoven pitched aggressively (and often si-
multaneously) to rival publishers. Those
two went to Schott and Sons of Mainz for
1,600 florins.

The one and only

He let the snobby Viennese presume the

“van” in his Flemish surname denoted no-

ble descent. (It didn’t.) But he despised

most aristocrats and, embracing his celeb-

rity status, was not shy about telling them.

“Of princes there have been and will be

thousands,” he wrote to Prince Lichnow-

sky, one of his patrons, after a quarrel. “Of

Beethovens there is only one.” When he

and Goethe encountered Austrian royalty

at a Bohemian spa, Goethe doffed his hat

and bowed; Beethoven strode on, telling

the superstar author, “You did those yon-

der too much honour.” Like many other

children of the Enlightenment, he was

filled with hope, then rage, by Napoleon’s

ascent from the chaos of post-revolution-

ary France. Famously and furiously, he

scratched out the dedication of the “Eroica”

to Napoleon when the Corsican declared

himself emperor.

Like America’s Founding Fathers, Beet-

hoven was a republican idealist, not a mod-

ern democrat. He once said that he “never

believed” in the dictum “Vox populi, vox

Dei” (“The people’s voice is the voice of

God”). To the ears of posterity, though,

Beethoven’s music means heroic liberation

and human solidarity. The ominous blows

that launch the Fifth Symphony became

the Morse-code “V” for victory during the

second world war. Leonard Bernstein con-

ducted the Ninth in Berlin as the Wall came

down in 1989.

Now, with massed choirs banned on

health grounds, such barnstorming show-

pieces remain unstageable in Europe. In

place of the towering icon, an intimate, in-

formal Beethoven has flourished during

his plague-hit jubilee year. Ms Tunbridge

notes the vogue for small-scale arrange-

ments of his music. Igor Levit, a pianist,

has gathered a worldwide audience for

concerts streamed from his flat in Berlin.

On December 17th—the date of Beetho-

ven’s baptism in 1770—Daniel Barenboim

is due to conduct the West-Eastern Divan

Orchestra in Bonn; bthvn250hopes that

this flagship concert can go ahead, now as a

prelude to delayed commemorations rath-

er than a climax. Suntory Hall in Tokyo still

promises several performances of the

“Daiku” (Number Nine), which German

pows introduced to Japan in 1918. But as an

anniversary anthem in these queasy, iso-

lated times, Mr Boecker recommends not

the ecstatic joy of the Ninth but the hum-

bler “Heiliger Dankgesang”—the heartfelt

“song of thanksgiving” from a late string

quartet, composed during convalescence.

Fate has amplified Beethoven’s voice not as

a struggler, but as a healer. 7

T

hiseccentricnovelcouldnotbe

more different from Jane Smiley’s

best known book and her most recent

ones. “A Thousand Acres” (1991), which

won a Pulitzer, was an audacious retell-

ing of “King Lear” featuring an Iowan

farmer and his three daughters. “Some

Luck” (2014), “Early Warning” (2015) and

“Golden Age” (2015), known collectively

as the “Last Hundred Years” trilogy,

tracked the fortunes of another Iowan

farming family across several gener-

ations. In “Perestroika in Paris” Ms Smi-

ley swaps the Midwest for France and, for

the most part, people for animals.

This Perestroika is not a Soviet policy

but a racehorse—Paras for short. After

finishing first at Auteuil racecourse, the

“curious filly” trots out of her open stall

and gambols off into the City of Light.

She encounters Frida, a streetwise Ger-

man short-haired pointer, lonely since

the death of the busker who owned her.

They bond with a polyglot raven called

Raoul, who takes them under his wing

and off to the green expanse of the

Champ de Mars where they pool re-

sources and live in peace.

Gradually, humans intrude. Pierre is

head gardener of their urban idyll, Anaïs

a baker who keeps Paras in oats. Étienne,

an eight-year-old orphan, gives the

animals refuge at his great-grandmoth-

er’s house as snow falls and Christmas

approaches. But when Étienne’s aged

relative dies and Paras is reunited with

her groom and trainer, the future looks

uncertain for the ragtag group of friends.

Ms Smiley has employed anthropo-

morphism before. “Moo” (1995) lam-

pooned academia; “Horse Heaven”

(2000) sent up horse-racing. But “Per-

estroika in Paris” is no satire, nor a foray

into surrealism or magical realism.

Rather it is an immersive fable. Through

the unlikely alliance and beguiling ad-

ventures of her runaway horse, stray dog

and know-it-all raven (plus two rats and

a pair of mallards) Ms Smiley explores

themes of diversity, loyalty, fellowship

and freedom. Along the way her animals

wryly comment on the oddities of hu-

man behaviour: “Quite often they flock

together in large, bright rooms,” Raoul

explains, “and then they plume them-

selves and establish rankings.”

Deeper undercurrents of menace or

moments of panic would have given the

yarn more edge. But in general Ms Smiley

avoids excessive whimsy and senti-

mentality to deliver a comforting read at

the end of a difficult year—a winter’s tale

full of wit, warmth and charm.

Four legs good

Anthropomorphic fiction

Perestroika in Paris.By Jane Smiley.

Knopf; 288 pages; $26.95

Don’t frighten the horses