Switched on Pop - THE 5TH — MOVEMENT IV, What Beethoven Would Have Wanted

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

When we listen closely to the Fifth, we hear a testament to self-expression and determination. Which means that we get to decide how to honor this symphony today, whether that means taking a break from Beethoven to commission new works from underrepresented composers, bringing new audiences into the fold by staging concerts in communities outside of the concert hall, or re-writing Beethoven’s works to make them reflect our present moment.  Featuring: Anthony McGill, Clarinet Andrea Moore, Musicologist Deborah Borda, CEO and President David Lang, Composer Jaap van Sweden, Conductor Leelanee Sterett, Horn Sherry Sylar, Oboe Music Featured: Carlos Simon, Loop Tania Léon, Stride David Lang, Prisoner of the State Recoding of Beethoven Symphony 5 by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Jaap van Sweden used by permission from Decca Gold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In the first two movements of our series, we celebrated how Beethoven's Fifth Symphony rewrote the rules of classical composition to create this four-movement drama that inspired the world in its triumph over adversity. Yes, we did. In the third movement, we heard how the innovations of the Fifth Symphony created this new culture of focused, reverence, listening. Yeah. And with it, a rigid system of etiquette and behavior that often turn the concert hall into this space of belonging and exclusion. Right, right. That's a culture that still permeates classical music today, because I don't know about

you, Charlie. Even I feel sometimes uncomfortable at classical concerts. Like I don't know the rules or like even if I'm listening the right way. Totally. Yeah, I hear you. And all of this leaves us in 2020 on Beethoven's 250th birthday. day with a question, how do we reckon with this brilliant, rule-breaking symphony and the classical legacy it played a role in creating? I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And this is the fourth and final movement of Switched-on-Pop, the fifth. Beethoven's fifth is all about overcoming adversity. So what could that look like today? One answer would be tackling systemic inequality within the world of classical music. Beethoven would definitely be down for that, right? It used to be that orchestras did represent their community, back in the 1840s, perhaps. You know, but now you can't argue that that is the case anymore. That's the Philharmonics clarinetist Anthony McGill,

and he loves Beethoven's music, but he also worries that the prominence of symphonies like the Fifth in concert halls can crowd out listeners who don't feel represented by European classical music. If orchestras are going to state publicly that they value equity and diversity and all of these things, they're going to have to start figuring out how does that look when I'm programming this music? So I think Anthony raises a really important question here. Every year, symphonies across the country decide what music they're going to perform that season. And those decisions create an image of who represents classical music. And usually it's people like Beethoven because Beethoven's fifth is in constant rotation.

So how do we make space for new composers who reflect the world that we live in? The musicologist Andrea Moore proposed a radical solution in an article that she wrote for the Chicago Tribune titled, Beethoven was born 250 years ago to celebrate, how about we ban his music for a year? Anniversary years, rather than always reverting to doing more of the same, more Beethoven, offer us the opportunity to really think in different ways about these composers' legacies. So there are two basic proposals. One is that we somehow create a year-long worldwide moratorium on live performances of Beethoven as part of marking the anniversary year. And the other is that we then fill that space with the sort of greatest breadth of new music as institutions and individuals can possibly find. What do you think of this idea, Charlie?

For a Beethoven's birthday present, we say, we're not going to hear from you for a whole year. Well, I kind of feel like inadvertently, that's the birthday present that Beethoven got because there really aren't many operating orchestras anywhere in the world right now. So Beethoven is silent this year. That's true. The pandemic has put orchestras, musicians everywhere, really, in a perilous position, which is why these questions of programming might be more important than ever. And in this respect, Andrea said that she got a lot of really positive responses to her piece, but also received a lot of anger at the suggestion that we even take just a break from Beethoven. The outrage was real.

I think it's a sense of being under siege that we see in other parts of social and civic life right now. A sense that Beethoven being replaced even for a year, even for, and evening is somehow the downfall of Western civilization and all that it stands for. A sense that something that people believe in very strongly is deeply, deeply threatened. Wow. So the backlash to the backlash. Yeah. Why do you think people have such a virulent reaction to the idea that we pause on performing Beethoven? Like, we've performed Beethoven probably a million times. why is it so controversial?

Obviously, this is unfortunately resonant with so many other issues of how we ought to remember our history and what monuments should be shown and what should not. There's a widening recognition in the world that in order for there to be greater equality,

resources might not be distributed in a win-win scenario. Some people might have to give something up. In this case, I don't think that if we stopped playing Beethoven for a year that I would forget, It's in there. It's not going anywhere. Yeah. In fact, for Andrea, it might actually help us to better appreciate Beethoven's work.

We could all use a pause from Beethoven in the interest of enjoying Beethoven, right? In the interest of facilitating an ongoing relationship with Beethoven, a year-long moratorium on live performances where we just hear a. million other things might in fact give us a way into hearing the music new again. I mean, if there were, if there were a year-long moratorium on Beethoven and then they were selling tickets for December 17th of that year, which I think is his birthday, right? And you could go and just get your ears blown out by a live performance of the fifth. I'd buy a ticket for that. It's kind of how like I did an order take-up for six months and when I finally had some dumplings,

that totally changed my life. I think that's cool. Because even though the impact of the fifth might have been putting the class into classical, it's not as if this work isn't also utterly brilliant and influential to music since that point. And so the things that we hear today, they're interwoven with Beethoven. Giving him a little break, might even highlight a bit better, what kind of impact his music has had on the positive side. I agree. You know, Andrea's idea may seem provocative,

but organizations like the New York Philharmonic have come to a similar conclusion. At the Philharmonic, we decided since every single other orchestra in the United States and indeed the world seemed to be playing the complete Beethoven symphonic cycle of all nine symphonies that was probably a year we didn't need to do it. That's Deborah Borda, the CEO and president of the New York Philharmonic. And for her, turning away from Beethoven is an instance. and perhaps, you know, kind of tongue-in-cheek solution to the systematic inequality that's reinforced through classical music.

Right. And actually, right now is a time when institutions like the Philharmonic are undertaking a lot of internal reflection to find solutions to exclusion in the concert hall. So there are multiple ongoing conversations like ending blind auditions so that orchestras can be as diverse as the communities they represent. to rethinking what repertoire gets studied in conservatories, to moving beyond outreach and literally going into communities, much like the Philharmonic is doing with their bandwagon series.

We have an amazing composer, Carlos Simon, who just won the Sphinx Award, and he's written a piece just for this weekend. So here is the world premiere of Luke. So we've gotten a truck. and it is going to drive around the city of New York with musicians from the New York Philharmonic. And they are going to do, you would call them pop-up concerts. We're going to call them pull-up concerts.

And we're going to pull in in Crown Heights. We're going to pull in in Staten Island. We're going to pull in in a story. We're going to go around the city. And we're going to give these crazy little concerts. And while we're doing it, we're also going to have a representative there that's going to help people to sign up to vote. We're hoping that we'll have somebody there.

from the census, which is just critical. So in our own way, we're standing up for democracy. We're standing up for the United States, and we're standing up and driving around for music. That's really fun. I love it. I wish I could stop by that pickup truck. Yeah, I was really moved when I heard this because at the top of the episode,

we heard the clarinetist Anthony McGill say that orchestras need to meet their communities where they are. And this feels like a way of literally doing that by showing up with a truck full of classical musicians and playing music in the places where people actually live. Yeah, I imagine all of the various classical music etiquette will also potentially get to be thrown out. Like, time to clap. Wear whatever you want.

Yeah, hoot and holler. B-Y-O-B. Another way that Debra and the Philharmonic are trying to reach new audiences is by following Andrea's lead and commissioning new works through a series of special projects. One is called Project 19. This is the 100th anniversary of women, at least white women, having the right to vote in the United States. It's only 100 years. So we undertook the single largest commissioning program ever for women composers.

And we commissioned 19 remarkable women to compose pieces that would have their world premiere by the New York Philharmonic. One of my favorites of these new commissions is by Talia. Leon. Her piece Stride is inspired by the life of Susan B. Anthony and it features these jagged string passages that are immediately followed by

stoic melodies from the brass. That's rad. Right? It's like, okay, maybe we step back from Beethoven and give some other people the mic, so to speak. Yeah. You know, if you've been to any orchestra before and you look at the music that's being played,

And for real, very rare that you see a female composer on the list. Yeah, your feeling there isn't off, Charlie, because of all the pieces programmed by major symphony orchestras last year, only 8% were composed by women. Oh my gosh, there's so much work to do. There might be one other way to think about dealing with Beethoven's legacy in 2020. There's the idea of kind of pressing the pause button and bringing in other voices into the fold.

Yeah. But what about the idea of actually tackling Beethoven head on, rewriting and rethinking the very works that we continue to play today? I mean, if you're saying we're going to play the disco versions of Beethoven in the concert hall, I'm totally down for that. This is a little different. Rather than just throwing Beethoven out, the Philharmonic is also thinking about ways that his work can be reimagined.

We actually commissioned a work inspired by Beethoven. And we had David Lang, an American composer, wonderful American composer, write a piece based on Beethoven's Fidelio. So what's it like to rewrite the granddaddy of classical music? In the second half of our final episode, we talked to David Lang about what it feels like to confront Beethoven head on. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.

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Charlie, let me introduce you to a composer I've been listening to since I was three years old. I'm David Lang. I'm a composer. I write music. And a lot of what I do is I think about things that classical music could do that we don't do for some reason. I try to figure out why we don't do them. And then I try to figure out if they're worth doing. And then I try to do them.

Okay, fun. Very experimental way of going about it. It feels right, too. I do know that Beethoven was famous for constantly rewriting, scratching things out. All of his manuscripts were almost impossible to read. So I feel like David Lang's continuing in that tradition. I think so. He told me that he had been wanting to rewrite this Beethoven opera ever since he first saw it.

And he felt like while he loved it, it just didn't go far enough. Prisoner of the State is my version of Beethoven's opera Fidelio. I saw this opera when I was, you know, in my early 20s, and it's something where Beethoven comes out with what is essentially a kind of political statement, a humane and political statement about how we need to pay attention to how our society is organized, we need to pay attention to political prisoners, and yet there are all sorts of handcuffs that he puts on his ability to go as far with this idea as we, you know, contemporary listeners may want him to go.

So I remember when I was in my 20s thinking, here is this thing that's supposed to be this great statement about prisoners, and I can tell that it's pulling its punches. What would this piece be like if it didn't pull its punches? What would it be like if we actually spent more time with the prisoners, if we really examined the state? On the one hand, we feel Beethoven's incredible desire to do something very humane.

and which is very courageous. And yet I feel like we need him to go farther. Wake up, wake up, prisoners. We need more courage in order to actually change the world we live in. Wake up, wake up. And that's how I began my peace. So cold. So cold.

So dark. So dark. So still. So still. So silent. This is a neat clip because I feel like the typical timbers of the orchestra have been recast to have almost a live action like quality. It sounds as if these prisoners are being beaten. While these sounds are familiar, they're being used in new ways to tell a story that is unfortunately very timely.

Yeah. If Beethoven's original piece is like this. comic opera and he's trying to slip in these subversive political messages, David Lang is stripping away the comic artifice and just going to the heart of what matters to him, which is this question of like, how do we deal with the reality of living in a carcoral state? And what does that sound like? I love this idea that you can have a piece that you've loved and respected for a long time that has this message about political prisoners that you feel like isn't strong enough. And rather than just kind of go, oh, well, too bad, you're like, no, I'm going to get in here.

And I'm going to turn this into a new piece that says what I wish the original actually did. Yeah, totally. I feel like we should invite the reimagining of all of the epic stories of history and all the epic composers of history, as is always done, right? In film, plays, so on. We recycle old storylines to put them in the present. Why not do the same thing with this material, which is so broadly known and re-contextualize it?

I agree, and it raises this question, you know, how do you go further than Beethoven? How do you recompose a classic? So I added extra things. The evil governor in the original Fidelio is just a cardboard character of a stock evil guy. But in my experience with the world, the evil people actually pay more attention to the system than everybody else. And sometimes it seems like they have the evil figured out more than the good people have the good figured out, you know.

So I added this aria for the evil governor where, you know, he sort of steps to the edge of the stage and looks at the audience. And he sings you this paraphrase of Machiavelli's famous section from the prince where he says, it is better. to be feared than to be loved. Than to be loved. So what I was trying to say, whenever the evil governor gets to speak in my opera, he's somebody who actually knows how the system works. He tells you why we live in the world we live in. He tells you why it's possible to imprison people,

why it's possible to take advantage of people. He tells you how you can take advantage of people. advantage of the laziness and the lack of focus of people who are just trying to live their ordinary lives and that's where his strength comes from. If you can't be feared. This is our contemporary Panopticon turned into music. It's a really haunting piece and you know for David honoring Beethoven's legacy means not being afraid to deal with his work directly.

In fact, for him, that's what Beethoven would have wanted. I think it's really important to recognize that our idea, our whole modern notion of what a composer does, of what a composer can do, what a piece of music should be able to accomplish, that all comes from Beethoven. This idea that a composer has the ability and the right, to look at society, to think about it, to make a piece of music which is big and meaningful

and deals with how we relate to each other. Beethoven basically invented that idea. So the fact that I can say, I wish I had an opera which dealt honestly with politics, that would not be possible without Beethoven. It makes me think about how the fifth was entirely about this triumph over time. darkness, that whole narrative is an invitation for us to think about what is the darkness in our world today and how do we make commentary on it? How do we fight it? How do we make a more equitable world? Whether that's through writing a new opera, changing the makeup of an orchestra,

changing where we play, and commissioning new and different works from people who might not be represented in that space. Totally. I mean, in that, you, it's not like Beethoven and his work need to be protected to honor him. Right. To honor him, we need to mess with it. We need to rethink it. We need to change it to reflect the world we live in. And like you said, and David would agree, this all comes back to the Fifth Symphony. This idea that you have something that happens at the beginning of the piece that you have to hold onto as a listener for an hour, that's a revolutionary idea. And what he does with it is insanely committed and powerful.

Beethoven invented that. And we take it for granted now. So I think there's a way in which everything that we do, including me writing a piece that challenges something from the past, which shows that we have inherited this legacy from Beethoven. That's what's so cool about. the fifth. It's more than a museum piece. It's an active testament to self-expression and determination, which means that we get to decide how to honor this symphony, whether that means taking a break from

Beethoven to commission new works from underrepresented composers, or bringing new audiences into the fold by staging concerts in communities outside the concert hall or rewriting Beethoven's works to make them reflect our present moment. But we don't necessarily need to rewrite Beethoven's fifth for it to matter today. What's important is that when we listen to it, we listen to it deeply and knowledgeably and create our own meanings from it. Right? Like that's what we've been trying to do in this podcast series.

to listen to the symphony with fresh ears. It's the same thing that keeps the musicians of the Philharmonic, Yop von Sveden, Anthony McGill, Leleney Sterrett, Sherry Seiler, it keeps them coming back to this piece again and again. It surprises me every time I conduct this piece, because the beauty of this piece is that every day, if you are eager, you are... Walking in a forest and you think you know all the trees

and then every time you discover new trees. With other words, there is always something to discover. There is always something, what you can do different than the day before, than the week before, then the month before, and then the year before. This one, it wears well. That's what we say in the business because it's like that old sweater you get sick of. on so many times, but this one looks good. It keeps its shine, I think.

When you're on stage with, what is it, 60, 65 people, kind of anything could happen. You're surrounded by all these individuals and these artists who are bringing a different interpretation to their own parts each time. So I feel like I'm still learning things every time I play this piece or I'm able to sort of process more information, appreciate more what's going on on stage.

So the piece is very much alive. much alive for me still. And it's not just the musicians who experience the symphony differently every time they play it. It's the audience who hear it through new ears. And I think that's especially true when you see it live, which is something that Deborah Borda really stressed. When I experience the Beethoven Fifth Symphony live, I am experiencing it with, a thousand other people who are sharing that moment with me. And if they're like me, when you're coming to the end of the symphony,

when there are these crashing chords, you're on the edge of your seat, you're wondering, my gosh, is somebody going to come in wrong? Because you don't quite know. They change rhythm up on you, and you're there. And when it's over, you just want to jump up and yell because you're with other people. If you're at home, are you going to do that? I don't think so.

There's nothing like a live performance. It makes me miss it. So there's the CEO of the first. Philharmonic giving you permission to yell in the concert hall, first of all. I dig it. And I think she's getting at something that the violinist, Frank Huang, also talked about, that this symphony will mean something different depending on who you are. And the strength of it is its capacity to hold these different interpretations.

You know, the thing with classical music is there's no words. You don't really know other than the character of the music what the composer is trying to say. But that's so cool in my mind because if we do our jobs right and we get the emotional content and the character across, everyone in the audience is reflecting on something personal in their lives that connects them to this music. So maybe this piece is whatever we make it. And if we want to honor the legacy of the fifth, we should do whatever we want with it. As long as it's new, as long as it's bold. and most importantly, as long as it tells our story.

And by that, I don't mean your story or my story, Charlie. I mean R with a capital O, as in everybody, nobody excluded. And this might be what we're missing during the pandemic, why we need the arts, why we need to support the arts, why we need to insist that arts institutions keep adapting, keep changing, because we need these collective expressions of our psyches and souls. We need pieces like Beethoven's Fifth. to read ourselves into these works and understand who we are.

And doing so doesn't tarnish Beethoven's legacy. In fact, I think it celebrates the composer who wanted us to break all of the rules in pursuit of a better world. I'll never hear, dun-d-d-dun-dun the same way again. Switched on Pop is made by Nate Sloan and me, Charlie Harding. We're produced by Megan Lubin, Bridget Armstrong, and mixed and engineered by Brandon McFarland, social media by Abby Barr and illustrations by Iris Gottlie.

Our executive producers are Nishak Kerwa and Liz Kelly Nelson, and we're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Many thanks to Jen Luzzo, Adam Crane, and the New York Philharmonic. Throughout this series, we've been listening to Yop van Svaden conducting the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony by permission from Deca Gold. You can find this fabulous recording of the fifth on every major streaming service. And you can listen to all episodes in our series,

the 5th on our website at switchedonpop.com slash the 5th or anywhere you get podcasts. We'll be back again next week with your regularly scheduled programming. And until then, thanks for listening.