Revolutionary music at the Beethoven Festival

When the pianist Seda Röder spoke with composers about the "Arab Spring," she was surprised: "I thought I was able to understand the revolution due to my Turkish cultural background, but that wasn't true," she explained to DW. "It is not easy to understand this revolution and to navigate through the flood of information. Maybe music can help there."

For a multimedia presentation at Bonn's Beethoven Festival, the pianist asked artists from various Arab countries to express through music what the "Arab Spring" means to them. The composer Amr Okba from Egypt finds the situation in his country worse today than before the revolt. His piece, "FBI Facebook," criticizes the growing radicalism in society and the impact of social media. He also criticizes American involvement in the conflict.

"I play chords on the piano. They continuously grow in intensity," says Seda Röder, describing Okba's piece. "But again and again, the chords end abruptly, and everything starts all over from the beginning. In the end, when you finally have the feeling that it is going somewhere, the American national anthem sounds out."

Music in the spirit of the revolution

How social revolutions have influenced music is the main topic for four weeks at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn beginning September 9. "Even the architects of the French Revolution knew that you can manipulate people with music," says musicologist Stefan Aufenanger. "Music was needed for mass rallies and festivals. It had to be accessible and appeal to the ear."

While traditional secular music had traditionally had its place at court, the bourgeoisie gained influence prior to the French Revolution. This found its expression particularly in opera, says Aufenanger. Typical operatic roles of the time were common men and women. Also popular were themes from ancient Greece about the end of tyranny. Later, the events of the French Revolution itself became the stuff of opera.

Beethoven and the revolution

Ludwig van Beethoven also supported the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. His Symphony No. 3, the "Eroica," has a direct connection to the French Revolution. But Beethoven's Third is also revolutionary in purely musical terms. Its expressive power and sheer length exceeded anything known theretofore - and using a funeral march for the war dead as the second movement was a true innovation.

Beethoven's musical forms and his emotionally charged dynamic contrasts also influenced subsequent composers such as Hector Berlioz, says Aufenanger. "He worked with dynamic change, rich orchestration and gloomy atmospheres."

Musical bombast can also be found with Sergei Prokofiev, who in 1936 combined instruments with various noises - even machine guns - in order to aurally represent the Russian October Revolution of 1917.

Revolutions in music

Revolutionary music was of course not only created in the course of political revolutions. Some pieces are considered revolutionary because their composers developed new sounds or harmonies or expanded the possibilities of sound production through electronic technology.

In the early 20th century, a time of rapid technological innovation, Alexander Scriabin envisioned a work of art combining music, text, dance, colors and even smells. Wanting to make a clean break with the past - and with music history - after World War I, Arnold Schoenberg developed atonal and twelve-tone compositional methods.

Luigi Nono is considered revolutionary because, like Karlheinz Stockhausen, he dedicated himself to the experimental music of the 1950s. Both composers worked with electronic sounds and recordings as an additional "instrument."

Both the music of revolutions and revolutionary developments in music itself are part of the 2016 Beethoven Festival. Beethoven's Eroica is on the program as are Nono's "Fabricca Illuminata" and the multimedia presentation by Seda Röder on the "Arab Spring." For many, the latter is a revolution that has not ended.