MUSIC

Musicology may take a major step forward (or backward) in London on Oct. 18, when the only surviving movement of Beethoven’s 10th Symphony- written on his deathbed in 1827--will be played in public for the first time. The Sunday Times of London reported that the movement has been “painstakingly and brilliantly reconstructed” from fragments of Beethoven’s original manuscripts by Barry Cooper, a lecturer in music at Aberdeen University in Scotland. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Walter Weller, will perform the symphony’s first movement at Royal Festival Hall. Beethoven had promised the 10th symphony to London audiences eight days before his death and had assured a London friend that sketches of the new work were “already in my desk,” the Sunday Times said. But repeated efforts to unearth the music have proved fruitless until five years ago, when Cooper found a set of sketches in a West Berlin library that matched biographical accounts of the opening movement.