When Jindong Cai first heard Ludwig van Beethoven’s music, it was on an old vinyl 78 turntable. For the teenager living under the strict rules of China’s Cultural Revolution and listening to forbidden records in secret, Beethoven became an inspiration to study classical music as well as a symbol of freedom.
40 years later, Cai, an associate professor in the music department and conductor of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra decided to produce all nine symphonies and five piano concertos by the iconic composer. Mini-lectures delivered by graduate students in musicology and talks with artists flank performances by students in Stanford’s symphony and philharmonia orchestras (with special appearances by award-winning pianist Jon Nakamatsu, ’91, MA ’92). Celebrating the Bing Concert Hall’s inaugural season, the Beethoven Project’s interdisciplinary reach extends across campus.
In February the Stanford Arts Institute and the Seminar for Enlightenment and Revolution presented an all-day symposium exploring the theme of heroism in Beethoven’s work. A winter quarter freshman seminar and a lecture course through Continuing Studies provided historical and theoretical contexts for concertgoing. And Stanford Libraries collaborated with the Ira Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University to produce a digital exhibition of Beethoviana.
“Beethoven has an enormous presence in classical music culture and in popular culture,” says Stephen Hinton, a music professor and faculty director of the Stanford Arts Institute. Not only is his work ubiquitous—a snippet of Ode to Joy programmed into every small electronic keyboard, as well as being heard in movie soundtracks from Dead Poets Society to Die Hard—but as a figure and character in works of historical fiction and nonfiction, his presence has been significant, Hinton says.
Even during his lifetime, Beethoven was recognized for his exceptional talent as a pianist and composer, and was perhaps the first whose works consistently remained in repertory following his death. He is credited with numerous innovations including changing the number and sequence of movements as well as their relationship in performance; expanding the size of the orchestra and introducing new instruments; titling and assigning meaning to symphonies; altering the audience’s experience by demanding silence and immersion in the music; and allowing for longer symphonies, like his ninth.
But it is the way in which Beethoven hovers between Enlightenment and Romanticism in his work, Hinton says, that “captures the imagination of a broad swath of music lovers, historians and cultural historians” to this day. The mythic image of the composer as “this staunchly independent, inspired, creative, stubborn, subversive individual . . . at once championing the cause of social equality and humanist, Enlightenment values, and [simultaneously] embodying the individualistic tendencies of romantic artists” continues to hold sway.
Despite the personal struggles Beethoven faced during his lifetime, his music conveyed hope and optimism, Cai says. “His music always gives you something encouraging, something hopeful, forward looking. . . .” The conductor hopes his students will be inspired, as he was, by Beethoven’s courage to compose and free music of its previous constraints.
The final four campus performances in the series take place in mid-May and early June. Following Commencement, the orchestras will depart for a two-week European tour visiting Bonn, Leipzig, Prague and Vienna, cities where the composer created his musical legacy. The Beethoven Project’s interdisciplinary and University-wide nature—successfully connecting performance with education—is already serving as a model for future undertakings, say Cai and Hinton. In years to come, other composers as well as thematic focuses may take center stage at Bing and in the classroom.
Stav Ziv, '11, will be a graduate student in journalism in New York City this fall.
