As we take a deeper dive into the meaning of Western Art Music I have specifically picked out the Berlin Philharmonic to analyze because their rendition of "Emperor" is the one I heard on the radio. 
The Berlin Philharmoniker is a symphony orchestra located in Berlin, Germany and they had a lot of music composed by Ludwig Van Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Handel alike on their 2020 musical season. As is the tradition in this style of concerts, there was silence while they performed, no applause until the end of the work, and the audience was dressed very formally. Small listed some problems he had with Western art music and these expectations on the audience as “It suggests that the listener’s task is simply to contemplate the work, to try to understand it and to respond to it, but that he or she has nothing to contribute to its meaning. That is the composer’s business.” (6).The Pianist in this specific concert was Igor Levit, who is a world-renowned musician from Russia, and the skills he possesses are honestly otherworldly. Igor has been dubbed one of the greatest pianists of the century and he has achieved this feat at the young age of only 34 years old. The work was treated almost like a very fine meal, there was a complexity to the “flavor” of the work, there were ups and downs in the overall theme of the piece which made you feel as though you were in a trance and on a journey to find yourself. From the minute details to the overarching variations to these details applied to the entire orchestral group, it left you feeling “full” in a sense. The things that stood out to me the most in this performance are the absoluteness that the musicians performed with. The tonality of the movements and the diverse contrasts in various sections like the allegro to the Adante and Adagio were executed in such precision it was as if I was listening to the piece come off of the page and flow through me like I was living inside of the composers head as he constructed the work. I have over a decade in musical performance and I can honestly appreciate the hard work that was put into the performance which ties into the way it affected me emotionally throughout the concert. I was taken on a rollercoaster of emotions from happy, to anxious, and even depressed by using characteristic musical elements from the romantic period. A mixture of Freedom-form and Song like melodies almost created a lullaby in the soft and slow sections in the second movement making them ethereal and enticing a peace like state, which is in stark contrast to the bold and bright dynamics of the third movement which instilled a feeling of victory and overcoming adversity which was common with Beethoven as he had to endure going deaf over his short but very fruitful career. Beethoven's contribution to the musical world sent him to legendary status in turn developing into the Beethoven myth that separated various composers from being men to being almost god-like because they possessed inhuman musical abilities and society labeled them “geniuses". A common theme in the pieces produced from this era of misunderstood geniuses as stated before is overcoming adversity and people often saw these composers as being independent of their time or removed from generation. The compilation of their works lasted centuries beyond their demise and are commonly referred to as the Western Art Canon which is the "body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly valued in the West". This canon has shaped the nature of music entirely as we tend to think of this period in time from which it was born as almost the standard for composers and performers alike as the contributors are regarded as being in a dimension of their own.

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