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Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770. On the actual anniversary date of December 16 this year, Jeremy Yudkin will celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday with our library listeners by presenting an online talk about the achievements of this remarkable man and his musical legacy.
Dr. Yudkin will discuss some of Beethoven’s greatest works, including his piano sonatas, string quartets, and symphonies, illustrating his talk with rare pictures and powerful musical examples. He also will address biographical issues, such as the composer’s tragic deafness and his tangled and difficult personal relationships. Finally, Yudkin will explain how Beethoven’s music acted both as a challenge and an inspiration to composers who came after him, including those of today. The lecture will be followed by questions from the audience.
250th birthdays are not very common. Don’t miss this special lecture!
Dr. Jeremy Yudkin
About our speaker: Jeremy Yudkin is Professor of Music and Co-Director of the Center for Beethoven Research at Boston University. He has served as Visiting Professor of Music at Oxford, Harvard, and the Sorbonne. He is the author of ten books, including From Silence to Sound: Beethoven’s Beginnings (2020) and Understanding Music (Prentice Hall, 1996, 2016), and edited the just-published 550-page volume The New Beethoven. He also researched and published the first-ever book on the Lenox School of Jazz (2006). In addition to just completing his thirty-eighth straight year of presenting his pre-concert Tanglewood Talks, he has given hundreds of lectures across Europe, the United States, and Russia. He has won numerous awards, including an Award for Excellence in Historical Research for his book on Miles Davis (2008). At Boston University, where he teaches courses on Beethoven, Bartók, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles – among many others – he has been nominated ten times for Metcalf Awards in Teaching and once as Provost’s Scholar-Teacher of the Year.