 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Vario, Archivist of the United States. It's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's special program, Beethoven in America. This winter, we joined music lovers around the world to mark the 250th anniversary of Ludwig von Beethoven's birth. Our featured document display on the National Archives Museum's website celebrates this anniversary with a close look at a piano score for Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The highlighted page of music is from the 1888 bound volume called Beethoven's Symphonies for Four Hands, which was a gift to President Harry S. Truman, a pianist and well-known music lover. Truman's personal music library featured an extensive sheet music collection and multiple recordings of Beethoven's compositions. To see the score and learn more about it, visit museum.archives.gov and click on exhibits. Now it's my pleasure to welcome tonight's panelists. Our moderator is Robert Aubrey Davis, the creator and host of Millennium of Music, heard on public radio stations nationwide, and host and moderator of WETA TVs around town. Our panelists are Michael Broyles, professor of musicology at Florida State University and author of the book Beethoven in America. Mina Yang, professor of arts and humanities at Minerva Schools at the Keck Graduate Institute. And author of Planet Beethoven, classical music at the turn of the millennium. And Ken Visloic, artistic director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. Thank you for joining us today. Well, I see faces. I assume we can all be heard and we can just start right in. I'm just going to go with that belief because I have a tremendous sense of joy and happiness at this experience. First, let me pay tribute to the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra and that wonderful recording from 1987. The late great Yop Shroeder and Kenneth will have a little chat about how 2020 started off in the worst possible way with the death of Yop Shroeder on January 1, 2020, believe it or not. Ken Visloic, of course, who directs as you just heard all the work that's done at Smithsonian, Smithsonian Chamber Music Festival and all that glory. We are joined thrillingly by Michael Broyles and by Mina Yang and the topic and a very, I have to say both interesting and amusing one is the tale of what happens when you have Beethoven come to our shores. But Ken, I want to grab you first if I possibly can because I want to, before we get any further, since we just had the chief archivist and we have, you know, Tom Nastic and Susan Clifton with us behind their backs while they're not paying attention. I just want to take one minute to say something that I think I know you would reinforce and that is that in the history of music. Without libraries, without archives, without the unbelievably unsung hard work of people like librarians and archivists who get no credit and no glory. We'd be almost nowhere wouldn't we? Certainly true and I would add to that museums, which are a little more public and visible in that sense but no less important in preserving sometimes very ephemeral artifacts that have to do with composers. Yeah, it is an extraordinary thing and before we launch him to talk about Beethoven coming to America because I've known you so long and I know you so well. I also know that you, while you have one or two books behind you with the words Beethoven on them. I also have one of the great collections of, well, I call it the Beethoven slides, a base that's what it is. I mean, you can actually take us on this amazing journey. And if I could presume upon you for a moment, if you wouldn't mind taking us on this journey, I'd be thrilled to go on it myself. Okay, I will try to compress it as much as possible. And I've chosen just a few highlights sprinkled in amongst many not all but many of the contemporary pictorial depictions of Beethoven. So we could start with the first slide, since we were just talking about museums and archives. This is the house in which Beethoven was born, now known as the Beethoven house in Bonn, and turned into a wonderful museum with all kinds of things relating to him. Now, please. Here, I should say that the museum has been largely redone for the 2020 celebrations of 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. But when I visited took this picture. This is in the room where this is before that happened I don't know what it looks like now but this is the room where Beethoven was actually born. The bust from the 1870s has been displayed on a pedestal at Beethoven's actual height, which some people have said was five feet two inches. Some others have given him an additional two inches, making it five four. But this giant of music was by modern terms a rather small man. Next slide please. Bonn was the electoral city, one of the electoral cities in the, in the Holy Roman Empire, and it was ruled by this man at the time of Beethoven's life there, Maximilian, who was the Archbishop as well as the elector. And he was the Archduke of Austria that means he was the youngest brother of Joseph the second who was known for his many celebrated reforms which included the emancipation of the serfs, secularization of church lands, tax and judicial reforms and like his other Maximilian cultivated enlightenment thought at his court from Rousseau and Montesquieu to Kant, Klubstock and Schiller. These ideals made a long lasting impression on the young Beethoven, as can be seen in many of his writings and also in work such as Fidelio, with its theme of freedom for the unjustly imprisoned or the ninth symphonies setting of scholars owed to joy which proclaims that all men will be brothers. November of 1792 Beethoven left for Vienna for an unspecified length of time. In fact, he spent the rest of his life there, but he was to receive in the words of one well-wisher, the spirit of Mozart from the hand of Haydn. Next slide please. Mozart had been dead for only. Next slide please. Yeah, had only been dead for a year or so. In the next slide please. And Haydn was just coming back from the first of his two trips to London, which made him in the words of one present day biographer, the most celebrated composer who had ever existed up to that point. Next slide please. Beethoven, when he went to Vienna was more known as a virtuoso pianist at first and as a composer. So it's hardly surprising that he chose to make his first opus published there. Three piano trios each in four movements very serious. And of course he eventually left us seven wonderful trios of major size, a number of smaller ones, five piano concerti and 32 piano sonatas. Next slide please. He also wrote, as we know nine symphonies, the first dedicated to Baron von Sweden, who had introduced Mozart and Beethoven as well to many works of your Sebastian Bach and Hendel. Next slide please. Also in the time around the turn of the century was at work on the first six quartets that string quartets he wrote his opus 18 out of the eventual 16 which spanned all the way from work in the very last years of the decades of the 18th century into just before Beethoven's death. They were dedicated to this man, Prince Lubkovits, who was a lifelong supporter as long as he could be. Next slide please. And now I'm coming up with first of a few pictures of Beethoven, this one from 1800. The next slide please. 1801, quite handsome there. Next slide please. In 1802 on the advice of his doctor, Beethoven spent some months in the summer and early fall in the town of Heiligenstadt, which was in the suburbs, now as part of the incorporated larger area of Vienna. Next slide please. And while he was there in October he penned a letter which was like the famous immortal beloved lever letter, never delivered and found and published only after Beethoven's death, but this letter in which he addressed his two brothers speaks of his encroaching deafness and apologizes if fear of having it discovered has made him seem misanthropic and confessed that only his art kept him from suicide. Next slide please. We have a few more pictures of Beethoven, this one from 1803, a little miniature. Next slide please. And this one from 1804, a rather posed image, Beethoven as Orpheus holding on to a lyre, a ruined tree over his left shoulder and his right hand held up as if he's about to tell us something very important and some ruins of Greek or Roman style just behind. Next slide please. This is Napoleon. We all know the story since we just heard the Eroica finale. Next slide please. Which is that Beethoven's pupil Ferdinand Rhys came in to tell Beethoven that Napoleon whom he had admired had just declared himself the emperor and Beethoven flew into a rage according to Rhys and scratched out below below Antonio Grande there in titulata Bonaparte and is said is Napoleon to nothing more than an ordinary human being. Now he too will trample on all the rights of man and only indulge his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others and become tyrant. So the next slide please shows a picture of Beethoven just a few years later in 1806. Next slide please is a plaster life mask taken in 1812 in preparation for a bus by the sculptor Klein. What plaster was lathered on and the subject had to breathe through straws inserted into his nostrils Beethoven couldn't stand it and broke the first mask before the plaster had completely set. And but that maybe accounts for some of the very severe nature of his mean at this point. Next slide please. This was a bust which looks like bronze but it's actually just painted plaster. Next slide please. This was a time when Beethoven was increasingly having trouble hearing, and the inventor met sell, we know as the inventor of the metronome made these various ear trumpets for him. This is a drawing from a step up point engraving I should say from 1814 which Beethoven thought was the best likeness that I've ever done of him, and he had many copies made and hand covered for distribution to his friends. Next slide please. This is is the brother, the older of the two brothers but still younger than Ludwig, who was called Johann he had been an apothecary. He eventually became a land owner near Cremes in Austria, and Beethoven once addressed him letter to him as Johann von Beethoven land owner from Ludwig von Beethoven brain owner, which I think is quite typical. Next slide please. Here we have a picture of Beethoven from 1815 the first of three portraits from that year. Next slide please. This one hangs in the widow pavilion at the Library of Congress you can win the libraries back open again you may go see it. And the next one also please. Also from 1815 and here we see what becomes typical in portraiture Beethoven about this time, which is often his eyes are looking up to heaven, as if seeking inspiration or communing with the God had somehow. Next slide please. Here are one of two very famous sketches by Klober from 1818. Next slide please. With the landing landing head of hair. Next slide please from 1819. Again with the eyes, looking heavenward. Next slide please. The official portrait from 1820, which was adopted as the official symbol for the Beethoven houses and Beethoven archives celebrations of 250th anniversary. Beethoven with the missus so that nice which he dedicated to his pupil, the Archduke Rudolph who was being elevated to become a cardinal. Next slide please. 1823. Next slide. Beethoven on the streets of Vienna where he was well known, or is rather eccentric walking in 1823. Also, the next slide please. Shows him from behind with his cudgel like walking stick directing conducting some music that only he could hear the next slide shows Beethoven on his deathbed in 1827. And the next slide shows the will, which he wrote three days before his death and a very spidery weekend leaving everything he had to his nephew, Carl. And the next slide please shows the plaster death mask taken. He's already rather sunken from not only the effects of the death but some medical interventions that were done. And the final slide is a picture of the next slide please of Beethoven's funeral, which to 20,000 people attended a very, very long cortege, and you might say this is the beginning of the posthumous Beethoven cult of which our classical music scene is still certainly a part. Thank you Kenneth for that and Michael if you roll that clock back quite a bit in that set of pictures. I was stunned that you revealed unto me the first time we heard Beethoven on our shores tell us about that date and how that happened. The first time was in 1805 and it was in Charleston, South Carolina. It was at the time one of the most sophisticated cities in the country. And it had a lot of wealthy people who informed what they called an academy where they, which is really a concert society. And we know that the first symphony or we believe it was the first symphony was played then it was called an overture but that was typical of the time to start a concert with something called an overture and it was usually a symphony. And in the process of elimination we can say it has to be the first the first movement of the first symphony. And that's about all we know about it, because it doesn't tell us anymore. We don't know where Eckard the conductor got the score because he arrived in 1776 I believe it was. And so, you know, it's a mystery, and we don't hear much about it except they repeated the same thing, or at least the Beethoven, the next year. Now, it's a mystery. When do we start getting Beethoven any more familiar way in this country. That's a good that's a very good point. For the next actually about 35 years, we have sporadic sporadic excuse me notices that something by Beethoven was played but not much, but starting about 1840. He becomes starts to become an icon in this country. And I think they're about two or three reasons fine. And the main reason believe it or not is the railroad. And the reason I say that is because one of the things that happened at that time is that European virtuosity started coming to this country. Because because of the railroad. For example, Baltimore to Philadelphia is 90 miles. Before the railroad it took about three days to make that journey. And today and not today, but by 1840 when the railroad came in, it was five hours. So it made traveling virtuosity possible. Let me add also that before 1840, nobody thought of music as art. It was entertainment. It was not one of the arts like, you know, literature or painting or sculpture or anything, but it was just pure entertainment. But when these virtuosity started to come, people started to rethink things. And the next thing that happened was in 1841 Boston founded an important orchestra not the later Boston Symphony but an important orchestra. And in 1842, New York founded the New York Philharmonic, which is the New York Philharmonic today. And they started playing Beethoven, especially the fifth symphony. And it's not an exaggeration to say the crowds went wild. They never heard anything like that before. And so those two things the virtuosity and the symphony and the railroad began the Beethoven cult in this country. And I mean, we can sort of pick up the story with sort of the cult of Beethoven, evolving and then kind of hitting a commercial aspect as well, right. Well, Oh, go ahead. Yes. And I would also add to that that Beethoven is also a story of immigration so we have in the 19th century the immigration of Germans into our into the US and bring in their love and their practice of playing Beethoven. And then we have the Jewish immigrants during the Holocaust, and they enriched the classical music scene in the US tremendously. And now we have a lot of Asians coming to the US and, you know, among a lot of youth symphonies you see just a preponderance of Asians who are continuing this practice. And then yes, the commercialization is a very interesting aspect of this. So we see with the growth of the recording industry Beethoven is a key player. You might know the famous story about how the length of a CD was determined by the length of the Beethoven Symphony. And we have more recently a lot of more commercial attempts to hit at what Beethoven stands for. So if you look at, you know, the children's music industry where a lot of classical music gets sold as being, you know, good for kids developing and so Beethoven has come to stand for a lot of things besides just his music. Yeah, and do let me say if you're watching on YouTube right now you want to ask a question put him in YouTube chat and if we have time at the end of all of this will we'll try and get around to it and Kenneth you've been doing this a while has Beethoven changed over the decades that you've been working in the vineyards over there at the Smithsonian. Well, certainly the idea of historic performance practices caught on in a big way. I remember when we began with the up shoulder the Smithson quartet in 1982 and we played nothing but hiding for two years. It was a wonderful way of learning that repertoire and learning to be a quartet hiding still one of my favorites. But at first, people were rather shocked because at that time. They're really with the exception of a quartet which he often had before the quartet or Esther housey that was really not much in the way of Beethoven of quartet music I should say, on period instruments, and the gradually people got to think that this is very good this is revelatory, but we wouldn't want to hear Mozart or certainly Beethoven this way. Well, after the second year we began to play more Mozart. Well, all right Mozart all right but not Beethoven, please. And we made eventually recording of the obis 18 quartets the first one period instruments, and we won prizes for this recording all over except in Germany. And the German critics thought this was horrible. This is not Beethoven as we know this is not our Beethoven. Well, that was originally made for EMI and gradually got sold and ended up back on Sony BMG and it was re released about 20 years later in Germany and all over the world in fact we got very many nice reviews from Germany. And I thought they thought well you know the wheels of justice grind slowly but they come around. So but but that is just indicative of the way that the period instrument movement has caught on not only for Baroque music where it might be said to have started but also not through the classic and even later. And you know Chris Haydn becomes that gateway between the broke and Beethoven and the perfect bridge because he learned from Baroque masters and was a great master and admired by all after him Beethoven, of course Mozart Schubert, who was attending that very funeral we saw the picture of there at the end. And Michael really from the middle of the 19th century we start getting kind of a little bit of a Beethoven cult. I was talking about the piano version of the Beethoven fifth well, you know when people didn't have record players or they were invented that's how people played Beethoven symphonies and the like is from these amazing transcriptions, you know, exactly. And we have so many transcriptions from the 19th century from, you know, ones that. Well, I'll use the word dilettantes could play or you know anyone could play to some rather elaborate ones that people like list played and, and this course is in Europe but nevertheless the music came over to this country, and a lot of virtuosi and as I say starting in the 1840s you have a lot of virtuosi including pianist like the Meyer tallberg and others. They would often play transcriptions, just because so many people that was the only way they could hear it, unless you were living somewhere where there was an orchestra and an orchestra they capable of playing Beethoven. You had no opportunity of course to hear it we're, we're so fortunate today. We're starting in the early part of the 20th century to be able to hear this stuff as it, you know, certainly, as I won't, I don't want to say as Beethoven wrote it because that would give us into a big argument with Kenneth about early music. But anyway, to hear it in, you know, and it's in its basic form. So transcriptions mattered a lot in expanding the Beethoven people's knowledge. Because really at the end of the 19th century at the cusp of the invention and perfection of the recording industry, you had piano rules, and a lot of that Beethoven because you know, the very earliest discs were, you know, really limited to three minutes at the maximum and generally genuinely had longer works on these piano rules and people spend a lot of money on this and player pianos and they would gather together and hear these works together as a communal experience. Yeah, absolutely. And let me just add a couple of things there. There was the standard player piano, and then there was the kind of player piano that tried to reproduce the nuances and Ampex was one and forget the other name. Yes, yes, thank you. Thank you. And, and so that really helped. I might also add that in from the days of the early 78s, they were trying to record these longer pieces. In fact, one of the things I've often wondered about Wagner's Tonhoiser the complete Tonhoiser was recorded in 1903. And it took 27 pounds of records to first one to hear the whole thing. So there was all sorts of attempts from the early days to get this music on. All those young people nowadays don't know what an album is an album is not a single recording is many, many, many, many discs together that make up one piece, and they were in an album, quite literally, which is amazing to think about and you think about from those early virtuoso days you talk about the early emigrations me enough but literally that that goes to the late 19th and very early 20th century as well we have emigrates coming in and bringing this music and both traveling and recording it at the same time. Yes. Yes. We also add when we talk about, you know, piano transcriptions of Beethoven's music, there's a famous piece by Charles Ives who is one of the, you know, the big composers from the native US composer, and he has a piece called the Alcots, which is supposed to be kind of an impression of what the cacophonous nature of domestic music making was like. And there are quotations of Beethoven's fifth throughout that movement which is quite wonderful. It explains life for Elisa is so doggone popular it fit that perfectly in that smaller format either a cylinder, or on a 78 the way that the humorous gift for shock got to be one of our greatest hits in American history in the early part of the 20th century, the perfect length. And some was a great tune, like for Elisa is as well, you know, and, and these are the kinds of things that, you know, we now have this weird differentiation and Kenneth and I have had this conversation and pre concert seminars for a million years about you know how now art music is separate from popular music and they cannot be joined but there was a time everybody, you know people for them hearing, you know, a humorous or for Elisa that was music. And I feel like somehow that was some different kind of a piece, you know, that was music and people love that music and I think we can all maybe more in the loss of that and hope it comes back again. There's something that I think we should mourn but we don't usually because the advantages are so much so strong that we seem to lose track of the disadvantages but that is that ever since the dawn of recording and particularly as it got better. So when we went to digital recording and things got smaller and smaller Walkman first and then the iPad and so I pod rather. Now we can have anything we want, just like that a touch of a button or click of a mouse, but up until that time, if you wanted music, as Michael said, you had to be in the presence of someone doing it or do it yourself and so that wonderful gift of the gods. The constitutes music and its reception early on has become something so ubiquitous that now we sometimes have to try to block it out in the elevators or supermarkets whatever. And I was thinking about this when I looked at the page that's up on the archive from Harry Truman's Beethoven fifth. It's a secundo part it's the part that played the bass stuff in the first moment of Beethoven fifth. And the accompanying Texas something everybody knows this piece whether they think they do or not it goes short short long. So just looking at that. It's of course a reduction and an arrangement, but you can see that rhythm pop up on pop up on pop up all over the place. And I think if you were actually to sit down and play it with your sister or whatever. You were playing that part you would have different and more vital experience about just how that that little motif permeates the whole thing. Then you do necessarily even going to a wonderful symphony recording and hearing it. So I'm more in the fact that the music is not more hands on experience for more people these days. Although maybe in the last year, more people are finding music that way which is a friend of mine who runs a piano store said he's never had such good. Exactly. You know, there's there's there may be some some positive things to come out of all of that. May I add something to this question of popular versus classical. I see that beginning to break down. Good. And you look at young composers, especially today, they are not making that distinction. And you know there's using as much rock as they do Bach. And so, and I think it's healthy. I think it's healthy. Part of it has to do with, you know, in the 19th century, we started this whole idea of sacralization where certain music has, and John S Dwight was the one that really pushed that there has some sort of sacred quality, even though it's secular music, and has a strong moral quality. And that has done a lot for classical music, but it's also, I think, hurt classical music in certain ways, because it creates expectations, especially for people who are not heavily into classical music. But now with young people, it's becoming, you know, just whatever music you like. You see this all the time in teaching, I teach graduate courses and students who are not music majors, and it's fascinating to see how they are thinking. And it makes me feel that, well, maybe I am as old as I am, or something like that. So, so it's an interesting thing going on. And even though Beethoven was a very serious man and wrote very serious music, and all of his contemporaries were maybe a little more playful with using dances and popular ditties. Beethoven certainly did, and you think about, yes, he was paid good cash money for it, but all of those English and Welsh and Irish and Scottish folksongs that kind of flowed out and all that kind of thing that he was writing, he was very prolific in that world. I know he got some friendship and support from Haydn for all that, Kenneth, but you know, literally you think about those people that incorporate in popular dances to the day. And I think Beethoven himself was rather defensive of his eighth symphony, which, you know, he called his little F major because it was considered too light and not profound enough. But I think he delighted in that sort of thing. I think he probably took action delight in the sixth symphony in ways he might not have taken in some of his other pieces. I think that was just a wonderful experience for him to write, maybe something a little lighter. Am I crazy? The last movement of the Eroica began as a dance. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. You know, and I think that's that is a very, very good point and mixing up all of those kinds of things together. I think it's good for for one and all. And by the way, I do think that that would be good for the next generations. Many were talking about young people and you know this whole idea actually through the recording Academy have worked extensively with the real universities doing research into what what music can do and different kinds of music for different kinds of people and the one thing that's universally true is that this music is good for almost everyone and somewhere the others hard to quantify. But whether you are old or you are young and maybe losing your faculties, maybe you have PTSD, maybe you've had a traumatic experience. One thing you can definitely say is that hearing this kind of music is a healing experience that you can prove, whether it's you know Mozart makes you smarter, maybe making you better is better than making you smarter. Does that make sense? No. There are some, there are some wonderful stories about that. Oliver sacks if you, if you've ever read his audio philia he has some wonderful stories about just, you know, the way that music works in the human brain it's it's very mysterious, and it does have these amazing healing powers. But people who've had accidents also lose some one aspect of their music making abilities. It's really fascinating. Yeah, it's incredible. Now Michael you sent me this quote which I'm dying to talk about we know Beethoven, but we don't really know Beethoven. I kind of agree with that but tell me why I agree with that. Well, if you talk about people that say aren't heavily into classical music. There are about what four or five pieces are fragments of pieces that everybody knows, of course, is the big one. And then pure lease which was mentioned earlier is another one. And some of the six symphony and a few other few other pieces of course the ode to joy. And if maybe a lot of people would know the second movement of the seventh symphony, although they wouldn't know that's what it is, because it's been used in quite a few commercials and things like TV commercials and stuff like that. And so beyond that, that's, you know, and we know and then of course the biography, all they know Beethoven he's that deaf guy. And that's essentially what they know. And they might add the image itself you know this, however you want to describe it, you know the square jaw with the skull and the bad hair and all of that stuff. His image is probably as recognizable as almost any person in American society, which is kind of ironic because here you have this German guy that lived 250 years ago. And, you know, if you guys, Kenneth was putting up the images of hiding and Mozart and other people. A lot of people that is people that are not classical music concert goers would not recognize those people but they would recognize Beethoven. So there's something ironic about that and of course we all know there's so much debate over beyond this handful of pieces or fragments. And actually a question from one of our viewers how much did Beethoven's work get influenced by whoever was funding him and who was commissioning these pieces we talked about that a little bit and it's actually kind of a good question because you know, we had a stretch for many centuries where you kind of wrote basically what your patron of the person paying you cash money wanted you to write. What about Beethoven. Beethoven is interesting because he certainly made use of the patronage system, but on his own terms that and there's some argument about how much he made use of the power how we made use of it but but basically he would not have ever have worn a uniform like hiding did. And he certainly was a revolutionary when it came to politics. And he sort of insisted that the princes that financed him, you know, treated him, not as obviously as an equal but as close as he could get. He actually once wrote a letter to, it was Prince Lysinowski, where he said, you know, you are a prince by birth and there will be many princes after you. After all, there is only one Beethoven. And later when he and Gerta, and this is an 1812 or so we're walking along the street in the emperor, so came by and Gerta sort of who was very much a diplomat. And then Gerta moved to the side and took his hat off with Beethoven refused to, to, you know, yield to the even to the emperor. So we have, we have that and somehow he managed to pull it off, which I think probably because so some of these princes were really afraid of what was going on in France. And I'm not sure they've had that it happened 10 or 20 years ago like in hide this time. I don't think he could have pulled it off. But, you know, that's counter factor. Up in anybody, anybody wants to think about that. I think that's quite, quite true. And that there was also such a high level of appreciation among the Viennese nobility for virtuosity instrumental virtuosity and also we think about car fluff a manual Bach, who wrote in the 1780s a number of publications that were designed. You cannot want to leave Habba for connoisseurs and amateurs amateurs in the sense of those who really love things so that the the, I have to say, that's the kind of audience that I hope to cultivate to the people who understand some of it Mozart of course famously father at one point to his three concerti which he had written had pleased everybody as he knew they would because he wrote things that would be immediately understandable and appreciated by anyone, but also would have in their kernels, things that only the Viennese on a circle to understand and therefore they seek that sort of thing out. So the level of appreciation was very high, and another famous thing was that Prince Lyfty with whom beta would live for a while when he came to Vienna had hoped that beta would every day and get dressed up for dinner and so on and beta I said no I refuse to do that, and the Prince let him get away with it, because of his appreciation for what he saw as his genius. I mentioned the historical context also. So I mean this is about the time when the commercial music industry is really starting to blossom so you know in hiding time it would have been very difficult for him to leave his patronage and to strike out on his own as you know, a viable freelance artist, whereas in Beethoven's time that became much more possible, and certainly Beethoven was part of the driving force behind that. And he very hard knows in his dealings with publishers, he made sure he got paid well. And so all the things that we think about classical music as being somehow transcendent of commercial concerns that that's not entirely true that you know a lot of people like Beethoven carried a lot about making money, and he helped to make the music industry something that could survive without noble patronage. It was a big deal the evolution of publishing and how that happened was a big Beethoven always was upset that he didn't get a court appointment. And so in 1808 when the younger brother of Napoleon, Jerome Bonaparte had been named King of Westphalia had his court at and invited Beethoven to come and be his resident composer. Beethoven was kind of a wedge to get three members of the upper nobility to grant him an annuity contract, so that if he stayed in Vienna they would pay him so much per year. And certainly the next years, next year of 1809 Napoleon was back living in Schoenbrunnen, things were quite terrible and the inflation has been calculated to be as much as between the late 1790s and the end of Beethoven's life as much as 42 times diminution in purchasing power. And that it was a hard effort to get that annuity restored or lifted up to another level. So Beethoven played both sides of the game you might say. And he had learned something from, although he claimed at one point that he never learned anything from Haydn, the music certainly betrays that, but also even Haydn once he was able to publish would often send off scores at the same time to be an English publisher, Parisian publisher, say, and they each thought maybe that they were getting exclusive rights but that wasn't the case. And both Haydn and Beethoven found themselves embarrassed when that ruse was discovered by the publishers. You had to get your money up front because copyright laws were a very different universe and so even not from the time of handle and trying to track down who was publishing his work that was a very tricky thing and I guess that gets better. That gets better in the 19th century, but that took a while. Well we talked about the value of archiving and what that means. Now we have to project, well 250 years from now or even a century from now if you want and what do we think Beethoven will be then and anybody wants to jump in. Mina maybe you can go first. Take us to the future. What would that be like? Well I imagine, as Michael mentioned earlier, there has been a lot of mashups of classical and popular genres. So I imagine that will become even more commonplace. I mean it's true that with streaming we're not participating in music in the same way as we used to actually making the music ourselves but I think a lot of people just grow up listening to just a huge range of music and so their sort of, you know, ingredients for how they make new music is quite different. It's just a lot more varied than what we grew up with. So I think they'll just be more and more mashups and Beethoven will be in there but we might not even, you know, hear big chunks of it as him. It's just maybe little snippets here and there. Although we do have that European Union ode to joy that's used everywhere and all the time from the fall of the Berlin Wall to every time there's a massively important event. So you certainly have the Ninth Symphony out there no matter what. Michael, come to the future. What do you think? Well, I have to agree with Menon about a lot of this. And if you also look at what symphony orchestras are doing today, they're trying, they're breaking down the barrier, mainly out of necessity, trying to get people to come in and get, you know, the younger audience, which is the future audience. And well, in 250 years, I won't go that far, but certainly in the future, I think, I think Beethoven is going to be around. But in, and I think that the, not the internet so much but just modern media communication has been using Beethoven in so many ways that he kind of kind of seeps in to our consciousness, not, not always when we're aware of it, or at least when most people are aware of it. I think that's going to continue. That music is not going to go away. And, and the more that happens, the more I think that people are going to say, yeah, oh, that's Beethoven and things like that. And if I can back in the 1970s, I remember hearing a late night commercial if anybody's, maybe the only one here old enough to remember the 1970s, but if they had these late night TV commercials that were God awful, and everything. And there was one that was trying to sell recording of the hundred greatest melodies. Do you hear that. It's the music of Borodin. That's exactly how they started that I remember very well. And the announcer actually said, I remember this vividly had said, now you can hear Beethoven's famous old to joy, without having to sit through an entire symphony. But hearing just hearing the old to joy, we'll make a few people curious enough, maybe, maybe they'll want to sit through an entire symphony or at least maybe an entire symphony movement. So things like that. So it's, he's going to, he's going to be around. It's just, we don't know exactly in what way. And, and because I mean who could have predicted the internet and the social media 30 or 40 years ago. So it'd be really interesting to see what communication methods are there. But I think that Beethoven's still going to be in all of it. And Kenneth there you are having to preside both as a musical person but also as a museum person and having to look to the present and the future, even trickier what what can you prognosticate for us do you think. So certainly, one of the things that as an instrument curator I'm always interested in is to see where there have been major collections of instruments and so our start very quintet for instance, when it came to museum several of my colleagues said well what does that have to do with American history, these 17th and early 18th century Italian instruments. And I said just follow the money. And I remember during the 19th century of the gilded age and so on. Now there have been one of the cellists in the National Symphony had a star very shallow which his parents had bought for him. He's a teenager showing great promise and he recently sold it, and it was sold to the Russian state. And so I was told by a dealer who had something to do with these things that gear gives orchestra now has four straggelos in it. So there is that but they're also then in relation to the Beethoven and the classical music in general, of course, many people have said you want to see the future of classical music look to the Orient. I might not Japan, Korea, where certainly still studied. And in my teaching work. We have seen over the last 30 years maybe Michael you've seen this too. So many first the Japanese students, then the Korean students, then the Taiwanese students and even some mainland China, Chinese students who are coming. And then we'll stay here but many of them are going back to orchestras in their own countries. So we have a question which we have to get to here. In the future of the US specifically how would you describe which rock star. These know it from 1965 to 19 to 2021 so you can expand forward, you think most closely relates to Beethoven in terms of both temperament and social disposition. That's a tricky thing because I mean on the one hand is the Billy idle types, but you also have to get the level of genius up so that's going to be a very tricky answer. Good luck everybody hop on in. I'm a hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar, let's say. Okay. I don't know if they've ever been compared together, but you know, somebody musician brilliant musician, you know very, very poetic in his text and music and and he has a very strong position in terms of his social politics. Interesting. Michael you want to jump in there. Okay. Well, this is going to be strange. I, I'm going to say Brian Wilson, who of course is the boys. Because I think he was one of the real musical genius that you know he did it did all the beach boys arrangements by going in and simply singing the part for each person which he worked out at his head, and then put it all together. And he, he was certainly had psychological issues, shall we say, if nothing else, but he was no question about my mind in my mind about him being a genius. And he wasn't, I don't know if he was the angry person that Beethoven was, but he clearly had lots of psychological factors that had affected his career. Yeah, maybe the Robert Schumann, Brian Wilson might be that that might be closer. I think you're right. Kenneth any any meditations on that you can say Mick Jagger was your favorite I know that I although I in the 70s was quite involved with the black music scene in Chicago commercial recording. I have left that behind. So I have really kept kept up. I would maybe turn the question around a bit and say what about people who are known for pop music, who still have a great love for Beethoven or Bach or I'm thinking for some Keith Jarrett, who made recordings of Bach off to the side. And I think a few of them I don't think they don't all come to. Well, Paul McCartney, for example, who went into choral music. I mean there's a whole body of these people Carl Jenkins who left rock and went into choral music there's a whole lot of people who left sort of the pop rock world and went into coral inspired by these people of the past, and they are still working. Yeah, which is wonderful, I think. Yeah. And some of them look back I mean very specifically sting. John Dowlin Robert Schumann but he also notates Beethoven is one of his influences so there you have that right there you know so yeah that's that's definitely one of the things you know. Well before we wrap up with that everybody have one last meditation or thought of minute. Ladies first what do you think. Generally, I think that it's been a very interesting year, and we were supposed to have a huge Beethoven celebration all year round and it didn't really happen because concert halls got shut down. So, I think it's really, I think, you know, we might want to spend a little bit of time thinking about Beethoven against the backdrop of the pandemic against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement. All of the things that happened this year and I think there's some relevance there. I think you know it's a good time to reassess what fate of a meeting our society and you know, is it going to continue to have that kind of meaning which we started to think about here. Yeah, Michael. I think men assess a very good things about 2020. And I won't repeat them exactly because I would not have said something differently. In terms of Beethoven. I think what's interesting here is that Beethoven has meant and continues to mean so many things to different people. And even in a time like this. I think he's been important. He's become sort of a symbol that traverses aesthetic preferences and even ethnicity. He's over every every part of popular music you'll find him rap, swing, country, everything. And in that sense, I think we can continue to see him as in some ways very much an inspiration just like you were talking about the ninth symphony and the European Union and things like that. So he'll be with us when we're the other. Yeah. I think that Beethoven was very much a man of the enlightenment. And as long as those moral and political ideals are still represented in our society, he has a lot to say to us. Also, although we are increasingly bombarded with shorter and shorter fragments and things are being sampled and used again. There is something to be said for the contemplative and maybe even the physically healing experience of listening to classical composition following the argument, if you will, as the same way that you might get a different piece of music that means reading a great 19th century novel than watching a television series. And so I hope that those people who want that experience will continue to have it in a way, you know, I think that that just like the great art collections. We have in town here exist. We can be visited by anybody can walk in free to the National Gallery and and look the same. There's something very democratic about the way that classical music and other high culture, which is not to integrate at all what what Michael was saying about the difference between high culture and low culture, but these high cultural things which do require a certain amount of effort. They're for anybody from any background who wants to put the time and effort into it. And I think that's, you know, if you think that Beethoven wrote for the nobility in many cases, certainly his processes did. And now it's available to all it's in my musicians myopia of a bit of part of the American dream. In fact, you know, some films about Beethoven, a mortal beloved and Beethoven's copyist and a few others, but we've never quite had, say the Amadeus of Beethoven and something that is so remarkable and so much larger as a representation of a great artist and I, maybe that might mean that be the next generation's gift to us all as kind of an examination of that that would be quite an extraordinary thing. And I think that would be a great gift for everybody, you know, put a plug in for a film that I like very much, which was a BBC film called the day music changed forever, I think it's called. It's about the Eroica Symphony and really pulls together in a way that most of these other films just mash up historical fact and fiction together. This I think there's a has some faux pas but it's pretty good. And has a wonderful performance of the Eroica by John Wagner's group and even the man who plays Beethoven conducts almost well not really believably they never do. They would do they but you know better than than than many so you can find that it gives some interesting relationship of just how revolutionary Beethoven appeared in 1805. Well, thank you all so very much. Thank you for watching along with all of us and of course thanks especially to the National Archives that incredible unsung heroic work that is done by the archives and by archivists is something without which none of us would be able to do the thing we do in the arts and letters and it is just a joy to share that with all of you and men and Michael and cannot thank you so much. Thanks to Susan everybody at the archives and well bless you all and we will see you for the next big celebration.