How a Twitter debate about race rejected classical music norms and created space for new forms of appreciation.
“Ok, who had the #BeethovenwasBlack on their 2020 plot twist bingo card?” read one tweet. “Allegedly #Beethoven used to powder the f*** out of his skin and used body doubles for portraits. Hopefully he was finessing to get paid the dollars he deserved and it wasn’t from self-hate,” claimed another. “That ‘Beethoven was black!’ thing hasn’t got much convincing evidence. Stop repeating it,” retorted a third.
During the summer of 2020, an intense and unlikely debate took Black Twitter by storm: the race of Ludwig van Beethoven. The German composer, one of the most well-known names in classical music, was thought to have been of African descent due to speculation that his grandmother was of North African heritage. After the resurfacing of an article published by the Concordia in 2015 that discussed the potential ambiguity of Beethoven’s race, Black Twitter erupted into passionate arguments, ranging from discussions of cultural authority in relation to music performance and appreciation to deconstructions of phenotypic determinism that often appears in debates about racial identity. Read more.