Lecture Series: Why Beethoven?

Presented by Camerata Pacifica

Lydia Goehr, author of the book that lends this discussion its title, talks with Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, about concert hall culture and the conditions that impact how music is made, heard, and packaged for a public.

Goehr’s opening provocation was that “Bach did not intend to compose musical works,” to show that the idea of musical works fully emerged in the period after Bach: namely, with Beethoven. If to add to the provocation, concert hall experience today still holds to the Beethoven paradigm, would we say that the concert-going public is lagging far behind the times? Or should rather we better rethink the entire thesis?