Beethoven's Assassins

Beethoven's Assassins is a novel by Andrew Crumey, nominated by publisher Dedalus Books for the 2023 Booker Prize.[1] It imagines Beethoven being commissioned by a masonic lodge to write an opera about the Order of Assassins, called "The Assassins, or Everything is Allowed". The opera's subtitle comes from "Nothing is true and everything is allowed", which was the Assassins' secret doctrine according to Beethoven's acquaintance Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall.[2][3]

Beethoven's Assassins
Cover
Cover
AuthorAndrew Crumey
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreLiterary fiction
PublisherDedalus Books
Publication date
2023
Pages511
ISBN9781912868230
Preceded byThe Great Chain of Unbeing 

The novel has multiple storylines set in different time periods with real-life characters including Therese van Beethoven (wife of Nikolaus Johann van Beethoven), Anton Schindler, J.W.N. Sullivan and Katherine Mansfield. The storylines vary in tone from comic to serious.

The first storyline is narrated by Beethoven's sister-in-law Therese and is comic. The second is narrated by a modern-day professor writing an article about "Beethoven and Philosophy". His work is interrupted by the pandemic and he starts writing about the troubles of his elderly parents during lockdown. After the pandemic he goes to a writing retreat in a Scottish country house where he resumes the Beethoven article.

There are other storylines set in the same house at different times. In 1823 the house is owned by a retired colonel connected to the masonic lodge who commissioned the opera. In 1923 the house is a psychiatric hospital visited by J.W.N. Sullivan, who in real life was an expert on Beethoven and physics. Sullivan investigates a woman able to recall past lives, and learns about the opera.

In Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, Sullivan argued that art is a kind of knowledge, different from scientific knowledge and complementary to it.[4] Beethoven's Assassins develops this theme. The plot involves meserism, clairvoyance and psychic healing, mentioning Beethoven's connections with practitioners such as Johann Malfatti and Ludwig Schnorr.

Reception

The Historical Novel Society says "This is a book to appeal to readers who enjoy time-travel, mystery, illusion – and no clear-cut answers."[5]

The Crack says "Beethoven's Assassins is a huge knickerbocker glory of a novel that weaves together history, art, science, music, and more. Philosophical, but funny with it."[6]

Ruth McKee wrote in The Irish Times: "a deliciously intellectual, ambitious book that explores time, metaphysics, narrative and pretty much everything, all at once."[7]

The Financial Times described Beethoven's Assassins as "an ambitious, entertaining novel full of comic brio", concluding, "Beethoven’s Assassins is impeccably ambitious, reliably entertaining and a little over the top."[8]

The Scotsman called it "a brilliantly well-informed 200-year history of philosophy, science, music and mysticism, touched with an edge of Da Vinci Code hocus pocus," and remarked on "the sheer fun and narrative energy of Crumey’s writing, the skill and insight with which he conjures up each of his narrators from the repellent to the poignant, and the huge ingenuity with which he interweaves their stories."[9]

The Herald (Glasgow) commented, "Beethoven's Assassins may be a gloriously multi-faceted puzzle-box of a novel, but even those anticipating a dense, abstruse intellectual exercise of interest only to literary theorists will find themselves drawn in by its well-drawn characters and emotional weight... Beethoven's Assassins is that refreshing thing, a novel of ideas with all the intrigue and momentum (and occasional red herring) of an absorbing mystery, underscored by a dark, ironic sense of humour."[10]

Paul Griffiths wrote in Literary Review, "Crumey gives each of his chapters its own period and central character, and flips from one to another with the dexterity and humour of a champion juggler. Matters of art, science and philosophy are deftly discussed and sometimes linked to each other within the narrative."[11]

The Spectator judged Beethoven's Assassins "great cerebral fun, with its quantum physics, telepathy, time travel and fraying of fact and fiction. But all this is its own misdirection... The writing here about the soul-grinding nature of the bureaucracy surrounding illness and death is chillingly good. The questions the novel poses about science and aesthetics (is Einstein as good as Beethoven?) pale in comparison to the rawness of the loss it depicts with the same scrutiny as an equation or a late quartet."[12]

Connections with other books by Crumey

Beethoven's Assassins features the Coyle family (Joe, Ann and their son Robert) from the fictional town of Kenzie. The same names appeared in Sputnik Caledonia, but with different storylines. The writer Heinrich Behring figures in Beethoven's Assassins as a disciple of George Gurdjieff, having previously appeared in Mobius Dick and The Great Chain of Unbeing. Beethoven's Assassins also mentions the encyclopedia of Jean-Bernard Rosier, first mentioned in D'Alembert's Principle and Mr Mee. The discussions of music in Beethoven's Assassins echo similar thoughts in Music, in a Foreign Language and The Secret Knowledge. Timothy C. Baker has said of Crumey's novels that they "do not amount to a sequence, nor is the relation between events in them ever straightforwardly causal. Instead, each novel covers similar ground in a series of overlapping folds, while remaining narratively distinct."[13] Crumey has stated, "There is no consistent whole – the 'story of everything' is self-contradictory."[14]

References
  1. @dedalusbooks (5 May 2023). "Booker Prize Entry for 2023" (Tweet). Retrieved 11 June 2023 – via Twitter.
  2. Hammer, Joseph von (1818). Die Geschichte der Assassinen: aus morgenländischen Quellen [History of the Assassins: from Oriental Sources] (in German). p. 84.
  3. Solomon, Maynard (1983). "A Beethoven Acquaintance: Josef von Hammer-Purgstall". The Musical Times. 124 (1679): 13–15. doi:10.2307/963881. JSTOR 963881. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  4. Sullivan, J.W.N. (1960). Beethoven: His Spiritual Development. New York: Random House. pp. 15–16. ISBN 9780307823748.
  5. Johnson, Helen (August 2023). "Beethoven's Assassins". Historical Novel Society. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  6. "Cult Authour In Our Midst". The Crack. Newcastle upon Tyne. August 2023. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  7. McKee, Ruth (19 August 2023). "Beethoven's Assassins by Andrew Crumey: A deliciously intellectual and ambitious book". The Irish Times. Dublin. Retrieved 19 August 2023.
  8. Self, John (9 June 2023). "Beethoven's Assassins by Andrew Crumey — everything goes". Financial Times. London. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  9. McMillan, Joyce (1 June 2023). "Book review: Beethoven's Assassins, by Andrew Crumey". The Scotsman. Edinburgh. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  10. Mabbott, Alastair (5 June 2023). "Beethoven's Assassins, by Andrew Crumey. Review". The Herald. Glasgow. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  11. Griffiths, Paul (1 July 2023). "Demonic Variations". Literary Review. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  12. Kelly, Stuart (1 July 2023). "Ghosts From The Past". The Spectator. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  13. Timothy C. Baker. Harmonic Monads: Reading Contemporary Scottish Fiction through the Enlightenment. Scottish Literary Review , vol. 9 , no. 1 , pp. 95-113. (2017)
  14. Crumey, Andrew. "Research Themes and Scholarly Interests". Northumbria University. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
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