Fate Now Conquers
Carlos Simon
(b. 1986 in Washington, D.C.)

If Beethoven's Second Symphony is the sound of a man raging against his personal fate, Carlos Simon's Fate Now Conquers explores that same struggle as a broader, historical, and social force. The title itself is a direct quote from Beethoven—not from the Heiligenstadt Testament, but from an 1815 journal entry where the composer scribbled a line from Homer's Iliad: "But Fate now conquers; I am hers..."

Commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra for Beethoven's 250th birthday in 2020, the work is a direct response to that legacy. Simon, who grew up in Atlanta, is one of the most prominent voices of his generation, celebrated for what he calls "musical aural-activism." As a Black composer, his work often explores the "resilience of the human spirit." He does this by infusing the neoclassical orchestra with the syncopated rhythms and harmonies of jazz, gospel, and spirituals—sounds that are themselves a profound testament to a community's long struggle with destiny.

Paying this homage, Simon chooses to draw inspiration from the relentless, obsessive rhythm of the Allegretto from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. He takes that iconic rhythm and transforms it, re-imagining it as something more agitated and unpredictable.

In the composer’s own words: "I was interested in exploring the uncertainty of fate... This piece depicts the unpredictable ways of fate and the struggle one has with it. Jolting stabs and frenzied arpeggios in the strings show the unsettling nature of fate."

The work is a powerful dialogue across two centuries. It connects the "unimaginable profundity" Beethoven found in his personal crisis to the complex anxieties of our own time. It asks what that "knock of fate"—so famously depicted in Beethoven's Fifth—sounds like today. In Simon's hands, it is less a single, defiant knock and more a persistent, rhythmic, and inescapable communal force.

(c) 2025 by Steven Hollingsworth
Creative Commons Public Attribution 3.0 United States License
contact: steve@trecorde.net