Beethoven's Tenth

by Richard Kluger

  Descending the dilapidated stairs, Rossini “retained of my visit to this great man an impression so painful—thinking of this destitution and shabbiness—that I could not repress my tears.” But Carpani, who knew Beethoven well enough, tried to brace Rossini by remarking, “Ah, that’s what he wants. He is a misanthrope, cranky, and can’t keep friends.”

  Rossini, however, was not to be denied his compassion. That very evening, while attending a gala dinner at the palace of Prince Metternich, by then the prime minister and de facto ruler of Austria, Rossini could not rid himself of that dolorous “un infelice” Beethoven had uttered, and the Italian grew melancholy when he considered the kindness with which he was treated “by that brilliant Viennese assembly” compared with the way the city neglected its venerable icon. His distress led him, as Rossini told Wagner thirty-eight years afterward,

  …to say loudly and without mincing words all I thought of the conduct of the Court and the aristocracy toward the greatest genius of the epoch, about whom one bothered so little and whom one left in such distress. The answer was identical with Carpani’s. I asked whether nevertheless Beethoven’s condition of deafness was not worthy of the deepest sympathy… I added that this would be very easy by means of subscriptions for a very small amount, if all the rich families pledged themselves, to assure him of an annuity large enough to place him for the rest of his life beyond real want. This proposition obtained support from nobody.

  After dinner, the resplendent gathering retired to hear a concert, which included a recently published Beethoven Trio. Although the assemblage paid the maestro’s new work almost religious respect, Rossini could think only of Beethoven laboring away in his decrepit attic on a new composition that would “initiate into sublime beauties” the same sybaritic aristocracy that excluded him and “did not worry about the misery of him who had furnished the[ir] pleasures.”

  Rossini persisted during the remainder of his stay in Vienna in trying to raise money to buy Beethoven a house. While he collected several promises to contribute, “the final result was very meager,” and he had to abandon the project. He was told over and over, “You do not know Beethoven. On the day after he finds himself the owner of a house, he will sell it…”

  Such a touching tale. And so unflattering to Beethoven, so ennobling of Rossini. That sharp disparity aroused Clara’s suspicion. Had Rossini been as achingly sincere as he let on? Or was he perhaps awash in false sympathy and artfully applying the back of his hand to “the greatest genius of the epoch” for having disparaged him as a mere musical buffoon? Why else bother so many years afterward to portray Beethoven to the listening Wagner as an insensitive and improvident boor? Wasn’t Beethoven entitled to more respect than that? Or had something else gone on between them? The question persisted maddeningly for Clara. But the more she mulled it, the further a neat explanation receded from her.

  When she awoke the next morning, she lay in bed letting her refreshed and roving mind free-associate for a few minutes. And all at once, it was there, whole and obvious. And for her the Beethoven-Rossini puzzle was solved.

  Eight years after discarding the William Tell Symphony, more from cowardice than conviction, Beethoven—Clara now persuaded herself—must have deeply regretted what he had done. The work, whatever its imperfections and need of refinement, had been conceived as an anthem to liberty, especially in places like imperial Austria and the German confederation, where its absence was being enforced by repressive rulers. But so long as he remained a fixture on the Viennese scene, however much a social pariah and political outsider, Beethoven could not risk resurrecting his Tell. The departure from his quarters of the gallant young Rossini, however, had—understandably—stirred anguish in Beethoven, Clara theorized. He was not so devoid of sensitivity that he failed to recognize on reflection the unkind cut, thoughtless rather than intended, that he had dealt his idolizing visitor. Nor was Beethoven by any means bereft of friends, confidants, and hangers-on who brought him the gossip of Vienna. A choice morsel that would surely have been reported to him was word of Rossini’s efforts on the maestro’s behalf, aimed at improving the material conditions of his existence—a benevolent act that would likely have left Beethoven moved as well as embarrassed. How might he have best responded to this piece of news? The answer sprang full-blown inside of Clara’s supple mind; she composed it on her word processor with almost no hesitation.

  My dear Rossini,

  Word has come to me of the great kindness you have done in the course of your social rounds in this city. They say you ask subscriptions so that my impoverishment may be relieved. This gesture is most generous. Nevertheless, my noble young friend, I must ask you to cease your efforts in my behalf. My circumstances may appear to you less than luxurious, but they suit me well enough. I am, please be assured, in no need of any charity.

  Further, I ask your forgiveness for the manner in which my well-intended advice to you—about directing your very considerable talent only toward the creation of opera buffa—may have been spoken. It was wrong of me to have offered the summary opinion that no Italian is by nature capable of a deeper form of musical composition. Your own body of work is proof to the contrary. As evidence of my grief for having offended you, my good Rossini, I attach to this note a leaf that recreates some passagework from a symphonic piece I embarked on a few years ago but set aside for reasons of no interest now. It had begun life as an operatic version of Friedrich Schiller’s drama, Wilhelm Tell. It is a task I shall never have the strength or resolve to return to—but one all the more in need of being done these days, and you of all composers, with your popular following, must be the one to accomplish it. Do as you wish with my little offering, given in prayerful hope it may help bend you to the endeavor.

  Take pains to destroy this note, and do not trouble to reply, for I am the one who is the more indebted. Know that you have all good wishes, most honored Sir, from your sincere admirer—

  —Beethoven

  That Rossini would have disposed of such a letter as instructed was entirely understandable, Clara decided. And he seized upon the few dozen measures that Beethoven had delivered to him and transmogrified them, then and there, in Vienna in the spring of 1822, as the liner notes to her CD of Rossini overtures had stated, into the quick-step march that would over time become the most familiar passage in his entire oeuvre, i.e., the Lone Ranger signature theme. But out of due reverence (not to mention fear of disclosure), Rossini chose not to develop and present the full version of his own William Tell until Beethoven had been pushing up daisies for two years—and never revealed the secret genesis of the opera and the climactic theme of its overture. Oh, yes.

  Rereading her text with satisfaction, Clara printed it out and told herself it was surely more rooted in reality than fantasy. And the longer she contemplated the sequence of the documented historical events during Rossini’s visit to Vienna, the more plausible she believed her invented resolution to them to be. An hour after Mitch’s return from London the next day, she briefed him on the circumstances she had ferreted out of Rossini’s interview with Beethoven and its aftermath. Then, with barely contained excitement, she handed him her imaginary letter from the older to the younger composer, which she identified as her English translation of the original. “And you’ll never believe where I found it!” she said with a slight theatrical touch.

  Mitch scanned the fictive letter with steadily widening eyes. “My God—this is amazing! It all makes perfect sense now.” He planted a devout kiss on Clara’s beaming mouth. “Okay, hon,” he asked, suddenly leery of the perfection of the document, “where did you find it?”

  “It was just sitting there in the Columbia music library’s Rossini archive, in a folder of miscellaneous papers I was going through not very hopefully.” Her eyebrows wagged on cue.

  “It was?”

  She paused, the broke into a sheepish smile. “It wasn’t—I cannot tell a lie, not to you, anyway.
Not about this, at least. I didn’t find it.”

  “Then what—your fairy godmother appeared with it in her hot little hands?”

  “I wrote it.”

  “You wrote it? How? Why? I don’t believe it—it reads absolutely authentically.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” she said proudly. “Because it’s entirely possible that’s just what happened. And guess what else?” She had gone back to the Columbia library and delved further into the Rossini biographies. “It looks as if Archduke Rudolph was onto something when he urged Ludwig to abandon Tell.”

  Even twenty years after Beethoven had supposedly put aside his own effort, Rossini’s operatic version of Schiller’s Swiss saga of liberty felt Metternich’s icy hand when it was first mounted at La Scala in Milan, still under Austrian rule along with most of northern Italy. The opera’s subject, Clara reported, was deemed so politically sensitive that the Hapsburg-friendly censors required the story’s setting to be shifted from Switzerland to Scotland and the hero’s—and the opera’s—name changed from William Tell to Guglielmo Wallace.

  “Wow.” Mitch’s wonderment morphed almost at once into a frown. “Or is all that also just another invention of your fertile bean?”

  “No,” she said as solemnly as she knew how, “I swear.”

  A few hours later, after she had fixed Mitch a ham and mushroom omelet for a late supper, he asked Clara to write up a memo on everything she had learned about the Beethoven-Rossini interaction; in the morning he would email it to Mac Quarles for dissemination to his confreres on the authentication panel. “But please leave off your clever letter—okay?”

  “And why is that?” she asked with a trace of irritation.

  “Because it’s not real. It’s fun and ingenious, but it’s—it doesn’t settle or prove anything. It’s strictly—speculative.”

  “I’d call it highly suggestive. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch—in fact, hardly at all.”

  “Clara, sweetie, you’re letting this thing carry you away. You made up the letter—it can’t be shown to a panel of experts as evidence of anything except your informed hunch.”

  “It’s more than a hunch. It’s…it’s an insight. We can tell them that—blame it on me.”

  “There’s no blame involved because I can’t dignify it as a serious document, suitable to be shown to eminent authorities.”

  “If they’re so damn eminent, how come none of them have ever mentioned the Beethoven-Rossini encounter to you?”

  “It probably slipped their minds or something. Maybe they are unaware of it, which is why I want your memo on what we know really happened for sure. Listen, it’s a judgment call, and my judgment is your letter is OTT.”

  “Then I’ll send it to Mac on my own.”

  “You don’t work for Mac—you work for me, just like he does, and I decide—”

  “I don’t work for you—I work with you. And I’m thinking maybe I won’t anymore.”

  “Clara, you’re being petulant.”

  “I’ll have your memo in an hour,” she said acidly. “It’s three-quarters done already.”

  .

  whether emil reinsdorf was a naïve academician or a sly manipulator was a question hotly debated around Cubbage & Wakeham’s offices. There was no dispute, however, about the salutary effect of the German musicologist’s self-serving remarks upon joining the company’s panel of Beethoven experts. Once his premature and unauthorized disclosure of the name and nature of the newly discovered work was reported in Der Spiegel and relayed around the world, inquiries about the William Tell Symphony—in particular about when it would be available for inspection and performing—arrived at the auction house at the rate of seven or eight a day, mostly from philharmonics, recording companies, and other enterprises in the entertainment industry. “At least,” Harry happily told his colleagues, “we’ve captured their attention. Dr. Reinsdorf may be a snake but also our best publicist.”

  This mood of glowing expectations was dimmed by a missile landing at the United States District Courthouse downtown on Foley Square. The weapon took the form of a motion to enjoin any effort by Jake Hassler and/or C&W to sell or otherwise dispose of any or all rights to the Tell manuscript and to require its immediate transfer to the Swiss government pending final disposition by the courts of its legal ownership. The moving party in the action, Gordy advised his colleagues, was neither the Swiss government nor the Erpf family doing business as Limmat Realty, holders of the lien against Otto Hassler’s estate, but the Erpfs’ aging enfant terrible and gifted but volatile dropout, Ansel.

  His legal papers identified Ansel as “the discoverer” of the Tell manuscript and holder of 24.5 percent of the stock of the Erpf family’s Limmat Realty firm, which, under Otto Hassler’s will, the suit insisted, was entitled to ownership of the work. Accordingly, the Erpfs had promised to donate the composition, tentatively attributed to Beethoven, as a national treasure to the people of Switzerland under an agreement with the Swiss government. In a collateral action filed in Zurich, Ansel had also asked the Swiss courts to probate Otto Hassler’s will “in a timely fashion and end the dilatory tactics being illegally pursued” by his government’s Cultural Ministry.

  Ansel’s US court papers, which characterized Jake Hassler’s seizure of the manuscript as “an egregious act of international thievery, not to be condoned by civilized nations,” noted that legal action contemplated by the Swiss government and the Erpf family to retrieve Tell had been withheld “pending efforts to authenticate the manuscript in question.” But recent reports in the media, Ansel’s complaint continued, suggested that the rogue holder of the manuscript and the auction house serving as his sales agent had apparently decided to proceed with the sale of the Tell composition “like a boatload of camshafts or any other commodity of trade.” The US courts were thus obliged to intervene and prevent “an intolerable case of cultural pillage.”

  “Not to worry,” Gordy Roth advised. “We’ll move for a summary dismissal—which should be granted promptly.” The reasons, he said, were that (1) Otto Hassler’s will had not yet been probated, so Ansel Erpf had no legal standing in the matter; (2) Ansel was a minority stockholder of the family company and had probably not been officially authorized to act on its behalf; and (3) C&W had not determined when or whether the manuscript would be auctioned, so there was no legitimate reason to issue a prior restraint order enjoining the firm from doing something it had not yet decided to do.

  Before Gordy’s reassuring words could be put to the test, Johnny Winks rang in from Geneva with the news that Ansel Erpf had held a press conference the day before on the steps of the Zurich Opernhaus to denounce everyone in sight—Jake, C&W, the Swiss government, his own family, and “rampant, predatory American capitalism”—and announced the immediate formation of a protest movement circulating petitions at all Swiss centers of higher learning and cultural institutions to demand “an end to this gross affront to our nation’s honor.”

  “His piggy little face is on TV twice a day,” Johnny reported. “He may call for a declaration of war any minute now, claiming it’s about time the Swiss flexed their military might.”

  With Gordy listening in, Mitch phoned Ansel’s sister, Margot Lenz, to try to learn if his legal action had been sanctioned by the rest of the Erpf family or in defiance of it. “Some of both, to be honest,” she replied with a renewal of her earlier civility. “I’m not sure whether he’s angrier at your concern and Jacob Hassler or at us and the Cultural Ministry.”

  “Angry at you for what?”

  “For not raising the roof with the American authorities—as if we could. Meanwhile, he’s making quite a spectacle of himself here as a rabble-rouser and having the time of his life.”

  “Is all that good for his…emotional stability?” Mitch asked.

  “We’re not sure—it’s not actively antisocial, at least,” Margot said a
lmost jauntily. “To be frank, I’m afraid you’ve rather brought this on yourselves by not properly crediting Ansel for his part in finding the manuscript. He’s become very proprietary about it—and is furious at being ignored till now, which may explain why he’s taken to posing as a national culture hero.”

  “If it would be of any consolation to your brother,” Mitch offered, hoping to sustain an amicable tone between them, “we plan to give proper acknowledgment of his role in the discovery—once he stops trying to steal the manuscript from Jake Hassler—which, I’m afraid, is what all this outburst on his part looks like from our side of the water. Ansel’s claim is based on what children call ‘finders keepers’—and unfortunately, the grown-up world doesn’t subscribe to that.”

  Margot weighed Mitch’s probe.

  “Yes, well, there’s always been a childlike element in some of Ansel’s behavior. I confessed as much when you visited me, hoping that you would understand him better. Just now, though, my family isn’t ready to pull the rug out from under him, even if he may be acting somewhat extravagantly.”

  “You mean spending the family’s money on lawyers?”

  “No, no. I thought you understood—well, perhaps you don’t, and that’s why you’ve rung me. Ansel’s taken these legal measures on his own—he’s not impoverished, by any means.”

  “Well, did you try to discourage him?” Mitch asked.

  “To be sure. Our family lawyers told him his lawsuit would probably be thrown out of the American courts and that, at any rate, annoying you people in this way would hardly improve the chances of a friendly compromise if the manuscript were found to be legitimate. But he’s got the bit between his teeth.” Margot sighed. “We’ll do our best to monitor him—and who knows—perhaps your judges will surprise us all.”