200 years of music by Ludwig van Beethoven becomes, during 2020, the (white supremacist) elephant in the room.
My favorite 9th Symphony is, thus far, by Roger Sessions ... so I think I'm a quite a safe distance from the 'woke' radar of social justice warriors. Lovers of Beethoven's warhorses, though, are now targets of cancel culture, so it might ... ahem ... behoove themselves to procure others' ninth symphonies as 'plan B' back-ups.
I actually read the article at Vox.com (?). It is indeed a load of old bollocks, but isn't it just two people spouting rubbish on a podcast which was then picked up by a newspaper and thus magnified in importance? Yeah, Nick and Charlie may be music critics, but are their opinions really going to change the world? All the elements are already in place in the current phenomenon of cancel culture so it's easy enough to add names to the list. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see that article in itself leading to Beetroot statue-toppling or even "programming him out" of forthcoming concerts, unless Nick and Charlie are actually in charge. Still, I may have missed something when skimming the article. Put me right if I'm underestimating its danger.
Ah, I've just checked. They're not really musicologists. Well, Nick is but Charlie's a songwriter. Both are podcasters. I don't detect much weight behind them.
Today it's too easy for something to be written then read ( multiply by dozens). Especially of some dross that would have normally just died without a ripple.