When Music Matters: Political Engagement Since the Enlightenment

When thinking about the many connections between music and politics, popular expressions may be what first come to mind. For example, popular music provided much of the youthful soundtrack to the anti-war, civil rights, and social justice movements of the 1960s. In this respect, classical music often seems detached from society, or is beholden to words (as in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony) or to dramatic plot (as in his opera Fidelio) for political meaning. Classical music is too often mystified, uncritically viewed as autonomous and separate from everyday life. As a result, it has become largely irrelevant, an occasional provocative headline notwithstanding, often dealing with glamorous performers rather than with actual musical works.

This talk considers the issue of politics and classical music since the Enlightenment through a series of examples and case studies, examining works by Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Shostakovich, Copland, and Reich. Christopher Gibbs argues for the considerable benefits of assigning music its proper place within a broader historical, contextual, and humanistic context.

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Christopher H. Gibbs is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College, Co-Artistic Director of the Bard Music Festival, and Executive Editor of The Musical Quarterly. He is the Vice-Chair of the Schubert Research Center, part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Gibbs edited The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, co-edited Franz Liszt and His World and Franz Schubert and His World, and is the author of The Life of Schubert, which has been translated into six languages. He is the co-author, with Richard Taruskin, of The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition. Since 2000 Gibbs has written the program notes for The Philadelphia Orchestra. He is a recipient of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and in 2022 won the Berlin Prize and was the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

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For more information, e-mail [email protected].

Time: 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: W15 Cafe at Bard College Berlin (Waldstrasse 15, 13156 Berlin)

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