Beethoven researcher Jeremiah McGrann of the Boston College Music Department. (Lee Pellegrini)
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of an icon: German pianist and composer Ludwig van Beethoven, widely considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. The milestone has spurred celebrations and honors around the world, and Boston College joins in the global tributes wth a series of events collectively dubbed “Beethoven 2020: The Ninth.”
Beethoven researcher Jeremiah McGrann, assistant chair and associate professor of the practice in the Boston College Music Department, has originated and organized a series of lectures this month related to performances of the epic Ninth Symphony in April. A second set of events in the fall will focus on other works by Beethoven.
“We think we know the Ninth Symphony—the melody is recognized anywhere on earth—but the related presentations will be a chance to explore it,” McGrann said.
On March 15 at 3 p.m., McGrann and German Studies Chair and Professor Michael Resler will present “The Ninth Lecture One: Schiller’s Ode-Beethoven’s Ode,” a discussion about Schiller’s “An die Freude” (“Ode to Joy”) and its use in the Ninth Symphony.
“The poem itself is fascinating, but best known because of Beethoven’s setting,” said McGrann. “A line of Schiller’s text makes it into Beethoven’s opera ‘Fidelio,’ in 1805, and around 1812 Beethoven makes a cryptic entry in one of his sketchbooks about a Schiller Overture and writes out a melody for the first lines of the ‘Ode to Joy’—but not the melody we know."
How it ended up as a symphony is problematic, he said, and will be the focus of a second lecture, “The Ninth Lecture Two: If Joy is the Answer, What is the Question,” on March 29 at 3 p.m., at which McGrann will give a presentation on the composition and interpretation of the Ninth Symphony.
A March 23 concert titled “Beethoven, Students and Admirers” will feature Beethoven’s song cycle “An die ferne Geliebte,” Robert Schumann’s “Fantasie,” and works by Beethoven’s students. The 8 p.m. performance will feature McGrann and Slavic Languages and Literatures faculty member Tony Lin on piano, and tenor Michael Burgo, a part-time Music Department faculty member.
The above events all will be held in Gasson 100.
A depiction of Beethoven in stained glass by Earl Edward Sanborn in Gargan Hall of BC's Bapst Library.
The culminating performances of the Ninth Symphony will be presented by the BC Symphony Orchestra and University Chorale, under the direction of John Finney, on April 17 at 8 p.m. and on April 19 at 2 p.m. at Trinity Chapel on Newton Campus. There is a nominal charge of $5; tickets will go on sale March 24 through bc.edu/tickets or at 617-552-4002.
These concerts mark the first time that the Symphony and Chorale will perform the entire work without benefit of a hired orchestra.
A self-described “Beethoven person” who has owned a statue of the prolific composer since he was eight years old, McGrann calls himself “privileged” to be among the few Americans co-editing a new critical edition of Beethoven’s works.
Beethoven is “an icon in world culture and popular culture,” he said, noting that John Belushi played Beethoven in a set of “Saturday Night Live” sketches, Billy Joel used the melody of the slow movement of the “Pathétique” piano sonata in his song “This Night,” and the rap group Wu-Tang Clan sampled Beethoven for their song “Impossible.”
“The BC community is enormously blessed to have Jeremiah McGrann as its resident Beethoven guru,” said Music Department Chair and Professor Michael Noone. “Not only is he a fabled teacher and an accomplished pianist, but he is also a first-rank scholar of the great icon. Beethoven courses through McGrann’s veins and in this carefully curated series of concerts, lectures, and discussions, we are offered a unique opportunity to get to know better both this colossus of the human spirit and his music.”
Fall semester events will include a series of four concerts focusing on Beethoven’s string quartets performed by the Boston-based Lydian Quartet, one of the country’s superior chamber groups. Included, according to McGrann, will be a lecture/recital of Beethoven’s most enigmatic work, the “Grosse Fuge” (“Great Fugue, op. 133”), and a talk by preeminent American Beethoven scholar Lewis Lockwood, who was McGrann’s teacher.
“Beethoven 2020” events are sponsored by the Institute for the Liberal Arts, the Music Department, and the University Chorale of Boston College. More information can be found on the University Calendar.
Rosanne Pellegrini | University Communications