Instead, the hosts interpret a 1845 diary entry by one George Templeton Strong, saying that “All women should be gagged” before entering a performance hall, as a sign that all white male music appreciators want all women excluded from all live music - when in reality people are just annoying at concerts sometimes.

Yet seeing the human side of this doesn’t boost podcast rankings. And it’s totally fine to wear jeans and a sweater, by the way. This stuff happens, and it can be helpful to have guidelines and “symphony concert etiquette guides” in the program, especially considering that in 2020 most of us are rookies at this classical music thing. Host Charlie Harding starts off the podcast on a derisive note, questioning the symphony’s inclusion on the Voyager spacecraft’s Golden Record : “What are they going to think of us? When some alien civilization discovers this golden record and we greet them with ‘Dun-dun-dun- DUNNN ’ … Are we the conquering intergalactic empire?”Īs for concert etiquette, the “5th on Pop” co-hosts harp on old debates about when you should clap and when you shouldn’t, when you can leave your seat and when that’s disruptive, what you should wear, and when you should unwrap your lozenges.Īnecdotally, in one year as a music critic in New York, I ran up against every one of these issues: people clapping at the wrong time and getting up to leave between movements because they thought the concert was over, people climbing over me to get out of a crowded row of seats, people (gasp) wearing T-shirts to concerts, and, during a cold outbreak, a concert during which the wrapper-rustlers were louder than a soft section of a violin solo onstage. For women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color, the podcast’s introductory notes say, “Beethoven’s symphony may be predominantly a reminder of classical music’s history of exclusion and elitism.” First off, didn’t Beethoven write the Fifth as he was going deaf, which makes it a pretty impressive personal triumph? And don’t people still listen to it because, frankly, it’s a banger ? Now, you might have some questions about this.

Those famous four notes are known as the “Fate motif,” and they’re an accurate theme song for “The 5th on Pop,” a collaborative podcast between Vox and members of the New York Philharmonic, which in its latest episode claims that Beethoven’s Fifth is all about wealthy white men showing off their cultural importance and shutting everyone else out of the concert hall. According to Vox, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is now a symbol of white supremacy and classism.Īs Beethoven’s Fifth itself would say: “Dun-dun-dun- DUNNNNN.

Beethoven banger