CHINA AND BEETHOVEN
中国与贝多芬
LIVE | ONLINE | WORLDWIDE • December 11-18, 2020
welcome
The 3rd annual China Now Music Festival presents 8 online events celebrating the extraordinary story of Beethoven’s cultural and musical rise in Chinese society.
THANK YOU to everyone who tuned in to our live, free events. But if you missed something, don’t worry! Past events can all be viewed on each of the event pages below.
view past events
featured artists and speakers
Why Beethoven? Why China?
At the turn of the twentieth century, students returning from abroad introduced Beethoven to China. The composer's perseverance in the face of adversity and his musical genius resonated in a nation searching for a way forward. Beethoven has remained a durable part of Chinese life in the decades that followed, becoming an icon to intellectuals, music fans, and party cadres alike, and playing a role in major historical events from the May Fourth Movement to the normalization of US China relations. First introduced to China in 1906, he inspired intellectuals like Lu Xun, who considered him a role model for dedication and aesthetic taste, and aspiring musicians. As a man who refused to bow to royalty, Beethoven was celebrated by the Communist Party in the early days of the revolution before he was banned for composing bourgeois music in the cultural vacuum of the 60s and 70s. After the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao, ‘Beethoven fever’ would sweep the country, presaging his present-day popularity.
The China Now Music Festival: China and Beethoven, explores the many ways that China has embraced, interpreted, and enthusiastically appreciated the man and his work with a series of musical and scholarly online events, coinciding with the week of Beethoven’s birth in 1770.
about the china now music festival
The China Now Music Festival is an annual series of events produced by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Dedicated to promoting an understanding and appreciation of classical music from contemporary China, each year’s festival explores a singular theme. The inaugural festival in 2018, Facing the Past, Looking to the Future: Chinese Composers in the 21st Century, presented US and world premieres of orchestral works by 11 living Chinese composers in concerts at Bard College, Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center. The following year, the festival presented China and America: Unity in Music at Bard College, Carnegie Hall, and Stanford University, and featured the world premiere of the symphonic oratorio ‘Men of Iron and the Golden Spike,’ a major new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Zhou Long honoring the Chinese railroad workers of the American West on the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad.
festival partners - thank you!
