Anniversary Thoughts: Wagner’s ‘Beethoven’ Essay of 1870 with Katherine Syer

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE ARCHIVAL RECORDING OF THIS EVENT: https://youtu.be/NCSTg74pJ3E

In recognition of the 250th Anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, The Wagner Society of Northern California welcomes Professor Katherine Syer to our webinar series. In her presentation Professor Syer discusses Wagner’s evolving response to Beethoven up that point in his life and the ways the essay is not ultimately so much about Ludwig van Beethoven, but engages substantially with Schopenhauer in ways that tie back into key veins of Wagner’s artistic evolution (thereby allowing opportunities for music examples).

Professor Katherine Syer is an Adjunct Professor of Music and Musicology at the University of California Los Angeles, Herb Alpert School of Music. Before joining the faculty at UCLA, she taught opera and theatre history/production, research methods, dramaturgy, and special topics courses at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also served as the director of Graduate Studies and Area Head for Theatre Studies. Dr. Syer’s work on Wagner’s creative development and legacy has been published in The Wagner Journal, Musical Quarterly, Wagner and His World, and A Companion to Wagner’s Parsifal. Her monograph “Wagner’s Visions: Poetry, Politics, and the Psyche in the Operas through Die Walküre” appeared in 2014 (Boydell and Brewer). She has offered production-related presentations for the Wagner Societies in Northern California, New York, and Chicago, as well as at international scholarly conferences.