Forgetting Beethoven (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780996658805)

Bonn, Germany, 1789. Before he knew he was great, Ludwig van Beethoven, the Classical German composer, starves to create enchanting music. One night, he nervously plays before a large crowd. The audience is left slack jawed: they have never heard anything like this before. His muse is in he crowd, she is proud of him. Without haste, Beethoven finds himself performing for the best salons in Austria, getting paid handsomely in exchange. In lust of fame and glory, he soon loses his passion for music.

Attempting to write music one day, he receives a letter from home: his elderly father is dying. He is angered by the news, but only due to the inconvenience of having to travel to Germany. After a brief encounter with his father, he decides to drink and make merry instead of visiting his fiancé who has long been awaiting him. She discovers his whereabouts and heads for the inn, where Beethoven is drunk playing the piano with a waitress on each lap. After making eye contact, a long chase through the dark woods commences. Finally reaching her, he hands her a diamond ring the size of Austria, but she tosses it into a pond and tells him to go after what he truly cares for.

Beethoven jumps into the pond without hesitation and is miraculously transported to the year 2289, where mankind has finally acquired peace on Earth, but at a cost: a loss of passion. People have become robotic, stale, homogeneous, and colorless.

Trapped in a colorless world of callous robots, dull music, and a heartless mayor, where the only food served is a synthetic paste called "slop," Beethoven soon realizes that this world represents his own transformation, an emotionless entity.

Through his music, with the help of a new friend and his pet robot, Beethoven must rediscover passion in humanity, and ultimately, in himself.