Conference Agenda

In 1820, the Bremen musician Christian Wilhelm Müller (1752–1831) acknowledged that, for many listeners, Beethoven’s music was “incomprehensible and not arranged according to prevailing taste.” To make it more accessible to audiences, Müller devised a series of Family Concerts that combined music with multimedia interaction through poetry and visual art. In these performances, the Bremen writer Carl Iken (1789–1841) declaimed poetic interpretations of Beethoven’s works, several of which survive in manuscripts that Iken sent to the composer in 1819. According to Anton Schindler, the poems “arous[ed] the composer’s ire.” Despite evidence that Schindler fabricated this anecdote, it has circulated through the Beethoven literature to cast Iken’s poems as aberrant overinterpretations and to enlist the composer’s authority against poetic readings of instrumental music.

Reclaiming Iken’s texts from nearly two centuries of misrepresentation, this paper resituates them in the context of Müller’s concert design and considers them not as authoritative analyses of Beethoven’s music, but as declamatory performances within a multimedia concert format designed to promote engagement with this new and difficult music. It argues that in the Bremen Family Concerts Müller and Iken pioneered a multimedia concert design that explicitly linked Beethoven’s music with emerging Romantic aesthetics and positioned audiences to experience music through multiple imaginative registers—visual, poetic, intertextual, and immersive. Iken was not presenting what to listen for but showing the audience how he listens, modeling an imaginative mode of listening rooted in Romantic aesthetics (e.g., Schlegel, Wackenroder, Tieck).

Offering the first sustained analysis of Iken’s manuscripts and drawing on Müller’s writings, the paper reconstructs the mediating elements of the Family Concerts using methods from the emerging field of concert studies (e.g., Tröndle, Uhde) to examine how historical concert design shaped reception. It builds on scholarship on musical signification, Beethoven reception, and listening practices (e.g., Bonds, Grey, Mathew, Solomon). By restoring Iken’s project to its performance context, the paper demonstrates that the practices Schindler sought to discredit were vital to shaping early audiences’ engagement with Beethoven’s music, and that multimedia concert practices played a formative role in cultivating the imaginative listening central to musical Romanticism.

In the late eighteenth century, the concerto emerged as a highly flexible genre, readily adapting to practical demands, virtuosic performers, varied venues, and transforming audience tastes. Johann Christian Bach’s contributions to this flexibility are particularly evident in his revisions of solo concertos and symphonie concertantes, reflecting tailored responses to performer capabilities, different venues, and performance contexts.

Bach’s strategic approaches to performance contexts and performer capabilities are demonstrated in his symphonie concertante adaptations. His bassoon concerto, WarB C 82, was adapted from the symphonie concertante, WarB C 42. Another strategic adjustment to performance contexts is his symphonie concertante for two violins, WarB C 33, which was adapted from his solo keyboard concerto, WarB C 75. These adaptations highlight Bach’s approach to satisfying different performers and performing contexts through adaptable musical textures.

Bach’s practical considerations, particularly textural flexibility to maximize performance opportunities and circulation, are exemplified in his flute concertos. His flute concerto, WarB C 78, directly adapted from the oboe concerto WarB C 80, underscores his approach to maximizing performance opportunities and work’s circulation. His flute concerto, WarB C 79, which includes optional horn parts, allows performers and concert organizers to tailor the ensemble to venue constraints, musicians' availability, and practical circumstances, reflecting Bach’s context-specific considerations and the flexibility of his musical textures.

Bach’s reuse of existing material, further enhancing the flexibility and adaptability of his works, is exemplified in his only violin concerto, WarB C 76. It incorporates two movements originally composed for his symphony and symphonie concertante works. This concerto thus exemplifies Bach’s use of pastiche, integrating previously composed material into a cohesive yet innovative solo work.

By examining these selected works in detail, this study will demonstrate Bach’s approaches to adaptable and flexible musical textures that enable instrumental substitutions and his adjustments to varied performance contexts. These insights not only uncover Bach’s compositional strategies but also advance our understanding of genre adaptability, performance practices, and market-driven composition and performance in the rapidly transforming musical environment of the late eighteenth century.

This study explores the impact of newly constructed concert halls, from 2015 onward, on reorienting cultural institutions for the future. These structures, often in cities with imposing musical legacies, create “new relationships between the building, the cities” and their many subcommunities. They challenge traditional concepts of ‘high art’ by reshaping programming models, reflecting the socio-economic and cultural makeup of their cities and changing audiences, while upholding expectations. The initial phase of the study focuses on European institutions. Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, both opened in 2017, serve as case studies for this paper. Both organizations foreground musical diversity that reflects current socio-political discourses and changes representative of their cities’ identities.

Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Elbphilharmonie anchors an urban (re)development project in HafenCity. It houses a large and small hall, multi-purpose studios, hotel, apartments, an observation plaza, and administrative offices. The NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra performs in the vineyard-style large hall. Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, designed by Frank Gehry is a modular hall, seating 682, built around two interlocking ellipses. It offers a flexible space, egalitarian seating, and proximity to musicians. Home to the Barenboim-Said Academy and Boulez Ensemble, the hall reflects the collaboration of Pierre Boulez, Frank Gehry, Daniel Barenboim, and Edward Said.

Fields such as cultural studies, urban planning, and architecture and design have begun to assess the impact of these new structures. Charles Jenks, for example, reads the Elbphilharmonie as a postmodern masterwork, a melding of high-art and pop-art. Musicology, however, overlooks these new institutions, rich with interpretive potential. To examine their role in shaping public art for the future, I rely on the Elbphilharmonie’s unprecedented amount of published data on concerts, finances, and visitor frequency as well as the Boulez Saal’s program archives.

This paper analyzes the programming data to understand how the respective future-oriented missions are conceived but also to compare to peer institutions. This first analytical layer interprets the halls’ relationships to related socio-cultural policies. Using musicological and social sciences analytical tools it is possible to model ongoing socio-cultural analysis of these halls and other new institutions reshaping their legacies.