Symposium
(POSTPONED) Beethoven and Beyond: A Symposium

03/28/20
11:00am-6:00pm
Goethe-Institut New York

With Beethoven we deal not merely with a maker of great music, but also with a figure of profound cultural, historical, and philosophical significance. In Beethoven and Beyond, a one-day symposium co-presented by Carnegie Hall and Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, leading scholars, critics, and artists will gather to discuss both Beethoven’s transformational impact on Western music, artistry, and sensibility, and the intersections of music and politics, literature, class, and theory more broadly. Across a series of panels, live-performance listening sessions, and workshops, we will ask: What explains Beethoven’s extraordinary singularity? From what cultural, political, and philosophical sources did Beethoven draw? What is “late style?” What is Beethoven’s musical legacy—and in what ways, good or ill, does he help shape modern performance and composition? Was Beethoven the original “modern” artist and celebrity—and why does he stand, to this day, as a symbol of artistic autonomy and mercurial “Genius”?

Participants will include BISR faculty, Susan Buck-Morss, Scott Burnham, Bora Yoon, Du Yun, Kate Wagner, Elaine Sisman, Olivier Glissant—with more to be announced. A complete event schedule will be shortly forthcoming.

The event is free and open to the public; please RSVP.

Beethoven and Beyond is being held in conjunction with Carnegie Hall’s Beethoven Celebration. Also included in Beethoven Celebration is the four-week course Music, Revolution, and Romantic Culture: an Introduction to Beethoven, which starts Monday, March 2.