Brother Ludwig

This blog entry is not about jazz, but in the landscape of western music and the issue of identity perceptions and blindspots of convenience related to that topic, I believe this is pertinent, seeing how jazz flies in the face of any and all self-delusions pop culture attempts to impose.

In the recent past, there was a lot of talk about Beethoven. Ol’ Ludwig just keeps affecting the general zeitgeist’s barometer. His most recent ressurection, at least for those who don’t realize his music has always been ubiquitous, was a resurfacing of speculation about his race. Seems ol’ L.B. (uh, relevance today seems to only be legitimate if one uses acronyms or initials) is thought by some, to be imbued of Negritude. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, popular culture’s notoriously excitable and seldom accurate court of opinion used dark-skinned looking portraits and the depiction of hair texture in those portraits as conclusive evidence that in his lifetime, Beethoven was ‘writing while Black’. And suddenly, Ludwig van Beethoven was… ‘relevant’ to the 21st Century, according to those who only know he was deaf, and are almost certain he lived before TikTok but not quite sure; they'll have to check Wikipedia.

Does it mean anything to me if the findings that Beethoven is not Black miraculously were reversed? Does this validate him in my eyes? Or maybe the real question is, does this validate me in anybody’s eyes who doesn’t look like me? Or perhaps the only question is, do I really give a damn if Beethoven magically became Black?

Wouldn’t you relate to him easier?

“Relate to him easier”?

So you’re telling me, all those times I, as a little boy, was moved by his music as I watched the vinyl spin around on the record player don’t mean anything? Or all that time in piano lessons, sweating through a piece of his music are irrelevant? All those instances at the piano practicing for lessons, thinking about the fact that a man’s thoughts, hundreds of years older than me, were literally on a page and at the tips of my fingers; or that their interpretation affected my mood and spirit; or when my heart leapt as I sat eagerly in the audience when André Watts came to town and performed my favorite Beethoven concerto - even with all these examples of connection through the years, you want to ask if Beethoven’s race improves or decreases his ‘relatability’ to me?

You must be outta your natural mind.

Oh, suddenly now he’s great because some people think he might be (gasp) Black? I don’t need any Fisher-Price-toy-level of discourse to comprehend the arts. Beethoven was always great. Listen to the music. And not just the 9th Symphony (“bam-bam-bam, b-a-a-a-h”). Yes everybody knows that. I’m talking in particular about the sonatas that are a universe unto themselves. And unforgiving on the player! The Tempest, or my favorite, the Emperor, just to mention two examples.

But if Beethoven is Black, what a celebration. We could celebrate him as part of our heritage.

Oh really, Blacker-Than-Thou? Well Coleridge Taylor was actually Black. And so was William Grant Still. And so was Nathaniel Dett. There has never been any speculation about their lineage but it’s funny- as relatively well known as they are, the same folks fantasizing about Beethoven’s make-believe Blackness have no advocacy for the music of actual Black composers like Florence Price or Dett or Still or Coleridge-Taylor. It’s just whatever hits the popularity meter on whatever given day, that they directly come across by accident. All the aforementioned composers are legendary because they are timeless, just as Beethoven transcends eras, mindsets, generational dispositions et al, because his music is timeless.

Excuse me for stealing an iconic quote better than anything I could write, but it certainly fits here. There is that well known and often quoted (perhaps apocryphal) instance, during FDR’s funeral procession, where an unidentified inconsolable man was approached by a reporter who asked, due to the man’s deep grief, if he knew Roosevelt personally.

No. But he knew me.

That’s what Beethoven is when I hear him: universality, familiarity, soul. I don’t care what his genealogy says. He knew me.