03/04/2024
THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR BEETHOVEN RESEARCH
presents
“BEETHOVEN’S NINTH SYMPHONY: A 200-YEAR PERSPECTIVE”
ALL-DAY CONFERENCE, MARCH 27, 2024
at Boston University’s Hillel House
213 Bay State Road, Boston MA 02215
The premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony took place in Vienna two hundred years ago this spring, on May 7, 1824. A review published a few days later stated:
“Beethoven has long shown through his symphonies so high a level of artistic creation in this branch of composition, that since then it has become difficult for any composer to succeed in the wake of this Helicon. This newest symphony, however, is certainly the greatest work of art that Beethoven, with his full Titan's strength, has brought into existence.”
Wiener allgemeine Theater-Zeitung 8 (May 13, 1824), 230-31.
Still today this composition is regarded as “one of the supreme masterpieces of the Western tradition” and “an international symbol of unity and affirmation.” (Cook, 1993.)
There is no more iconic a piece of music than Beethoven’s Ninth. It has been played at the Olympics to embody international cooperation. Performances of the Ninth with thousands singing in the chorus mark the New Year throughout Japan. Wagner performed it in 1872 to mark the beginning of construction on his opera house at Bayreuth. In 1972, the music of the Ode to Joy was adopted as the Anthem of Europe by the Council of Europe and subsequently by the European Union. It is said that in 1980 the size and duration of the compact disc was settled upon so that a single disc could contain an entire 74-minute performance of the Ninth Symphony. And in 2001, Beethoven's autograph score of the Ninth Symphony, held by the Berlin State Library, was added to the United Nations Heritage list, becoming the first musical score to be recognized in this way.
Researchers and audiences continue to find new insight and meaning in this remarkable work, and new discoveries are reported all the time. In 2020 a completely new critical edition of the whole score was published in Munich. This conference at Boston University brings together the latest findings by the most distinguished Beethoven scholars of our time.
SPONSORED BY BOSTON UNIVERSITY’S SCHOOL OF MUSIC, COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS, AND THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES
Participants
Julia Adams, Fellowship Advisor, formerly Professor of Music, Franklin and Marshall College, author of Musical Humor and Antonín Dvořák’s Comic Operas.
Mark Evan Bonds, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina and author of Beethoven: Variations on a Life and The Beethoven Syndrome: Hearing Music as Autobiography.
Beate Angelika Kraus, Resident Scholar, Beethoven Archive, Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, and editor of the new Ninth Symphony critical edition for the Complete Works.
David Levy, Professor Emeritus, Wake Forest University, and author of Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony.
James Parsons, Distinguished Professor, Missouri State University, and editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Lied.
Christopher Reynolds, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of California at Davis, and author of Wagner, Schumann and the Lessons of Beethoven’s Ninth.
Elaine Sisman, Anne Parsons Bender Professor of Music, Columbia University, author of Haydn and the Classical Variation.
The conference will take place in the second-floor lounge of Boston University’s Hillel House, which is a comfortable and intimate space. A performance of Liszt’s extraordinary arrangement of the Ninth Symphony for solo piano and singers will take place in the evening of March 27 at Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center.
PROGRAM
Hillel House, Boston University, 2nd-Floor Lounge
8:00AM CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
9:00AM Jeremy Yudkin: Welcome
9:15AM Beate Angelika Kraus: “Beethoven's Ninth Symphony – On the Edition of a Magnum Opus and its Multiple Manifestations.”
10:00AM Mark Evan Bonds: “Second Thoughts”
10:45 COFFEE/TEA BREAK
11:15AM David Levy: "The Ninth Symphony: Vision, Illusion, or Delusion?"
12-2PM LUNCH (ad libitum)
2PM Elaine Sisman: “A Lexicon of Humor in the Molto Vivace of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: Composition and Reception.”
2:45PM James Parsons, “What the Choral Fantasy Can Tell Us About the Choral Finale.”
3:30-4:00 COFFEE/TEA BREAK
4-4:45PM Christopher Reynolds: “The Narrative and Musical Debts of Wagner’s Ring to Beethoven’s Ninth.”
5-6PM BREAK (come sopra)
6-7:30 PRIVATE DINNER FOR PARTICIPANTS AT THE BLUE RIBBON BRASSERIE (at the Hotel Commonwealth, Kenmore Square – ten minutes’ walk)
8-10PM CONCERT (Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue – ten minutes’ walk)
PROGRAM
(A possibly world-premiere performance of Franz Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for Solo Piano with Choral Finale.)
Tsai Performance Center, Boston University, 8PM, Wednesday, March 27, 2024
***
Julia Adams, “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: Liszt’s Formidable Transcription for Solo Piano.”
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphonie No. 9 avec choeur finale sur l’ode de Schiller “An
die Freude,” S. 657 FRANZ LISZT (1811-1886)
Chengcheng Ma, piano
Boston University Chamber Chorus
Conductor, John Black
