Democratic Virtuosity Music and the Public Sphere

Description: Watch video of a May 6 talk, "Democratic Virtuosity: Music and the Public Sphere," by Assistant Professor of Philosophy Jonathan Neufeld. On July 7, 2001, Daniel Barenboim conducted the prelude to Wagners Tristan und Isolde as an unscheduled encore at the Israel festival in Jerusalem, bucking an unofficial ban on the public performance of Wagners music that had been in place in Israel since 1938. His action ignited a firestorm of debate, beginning with a significant fraction of the audience leaving the performance, and culminating in an official rebuke by members of the Israeli parliament. What is the relationship between the context of a performance and the sounding of the music itself? What role do modern audiences, in all of their diversity, play in influencing the direction of classical music practice?