My newsfeed exploded this week with posts about Ludwig van Beethoven‘s 250 birthday.

trigger warning: If you love Beethoven, be prepared to hate me.
2nd trigger warning: I’m about to mention abortion, but this post has nothing to do with the being pro-life or pro-choice. So for goodness sake, don’t comment on it. If you must send me a hate-comment, do so because I am throwing shade at Beethoven.

There’s a pro-life meme that’s been travelling around for some time – there are variations, but it goes something like this:

“A syphilic mother of eight handicapped children becomes pregnant. Should she have an abortion? If you said yes, you just killed Beethoven!”

Just for the record, this is incorrect. Ludwig was the 2nd born, and the oldest surviving child in his family, and I won’t get into the logic issues of the argument.

So it’s Beethoven’s 250th birthyear. That means that musicians all around the world will be programming MORE Beethoven on their concerts this year. I can’t say I’m particularly excited.

To be clear: I love the music of the great composers of the past. There is a reason that masterpieces stand the test of time – their message is enduring, they are crafted perfectly, or they evoke a sublime reaction. If I didn’t think it was worth keeping these pieces alive, this blog wouldn’t exist.

So here’s my Beefoven with Beethoven. You can hear his symphonies performed live every year – at least the best six of the nine. If you look at orchestra repertoire in general, the composers are overwhelmingly dead. This chart from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra takes into account thousands of concerts and shows living composers represent 12.3% of pieces performed (and I get a sense that the chart is bragging about how high that number is). A rough estimation based on this chart suggests that Beethoven is performed 25% of the time – one composer, getting twice the amount of performances as ALL living composers combined.

Ok, so his music is great. It’s hard to argue against that. But let’s go back to the “would you abort Beethoven” meme. Today, a syphilic mother of eight handicapped children needn’t worry that she might abort the next Beethoven; nobody will perform the child’s music anyway, because they’re too occupied with overplaying the first Beethoven’s music.

Now throw in the concerns that orchestras are failing to attract young or diverse audiences. Living composers are far more likely to bring musical ideas to the stage that would attract new audiences – not only with new sounds and styles, but also by addressing current issues or events. And using living composers would allow orchestras to actually diversify their repertoire and include more women and non-white composers. (go back to the chart from the Baltimore Symphony. A whopping 1.3% of music performed is by women composers. The chart doesn’t even mention race; I’m willing to bet it’s because the percentage of black composers would be even lower than women.)

But no, no, no, let’s not change anything. Let’s play Beethoven’s 5th for the birthday boy for the 5,555,555th time.

Cinco de Mayo is not the Mexican version of the Fourth of July, but rather a commemoration of a military victory. In the US, it is a day spent celebrating Mexican-American culture (not unlike how Irish-American culture is celebrated on St. Patrick’s Day).

Carlos Chávez is to Mexican Art Music as Aaron Copland is to American Art Music. Chávez’s Sinfonía India sets melodies of indigenous Mexican cultures to the exciting sound of a full symphony orchestra. Like Copland, the music is enjoyable to listen to, employs lots of different instrumental timbres, is harmonically and rhythmically accessible, and gives a taste of the culture from which it was born.

We humans certainly are fascinated with Death. Do you fear it? welcome it? try to postpone it? encourage it to come sooner? And what happens as we pass out of this world? Let’s dive into some musical expressions of death.

Richard Strauss – Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration): Strauss’ magnificent tone poem tells the story of a sick man, facing death – he fights the illness, but loses, his life flashes before his eyes, he is scared, and then achieves a peaceful calm as his life slips away and, in Strauss’ own words, “the soul leaves his body, to discover in the eternal cosmos the magnificent realization of the ideal that could not be fulfilled here below.”

Guiseppe Verdi – La Traviata finale: This is your classic tragic ending to an Italian opera (the music at the point of death is strikingly similar to the final death scene in Rigoletto). Like nearly all Italian tragic operas, you can sum up the plot thus: adultery is all fun and games until somebody gets killed.

Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 9 finale: Mahler’s last complete symphony ends with mournful elegy to himself. He had been diagnosed with a heart defect, and felt (knew?) he was dying as he wrote it. Though a long, slow-moving listen, the deep peace of the pianissimo strings ending is very rewarding – it’s as if Mahler is taking his final breaths (and indeed, I find it hard to breathe when I listen to it!)

Giacomo Puccini – La bohème finale: Maybe it’s a little clichéd as far as deaths go, but every time I see this opera I get a cold chill when the minor chord signals Mimi’s death (in this video, 2:05). Mimi is finally at peace, but the torment that her friends and lover go through is utterly heart wrenching.

Richard Wagner – Liebestod (Love-Death): In a Romeo-and-Juliet-like moment, Isolde dies over the body of her lover, Tristan, and in doing so finds complete fulfilment and repose, and becomes one with the universe, or something like that. The romantics were totally into that sort of awesomeness.