Over the weekend I took a break from my usual work and TV schedule and decided to watch something on the PBS streaming app. I ended up choosing the latest episode of Scott Yoo’s series Now Hear This which has been airing as a part of PBS’s long time arts show Great Performances. I wrote about Yoo’s episode on Mozart a few months ago, and this iteration’s focus on Beethoven likewise did not disappoint. The premise of the episode was essentially Yoo and friends renting out an old Gilded Age mansion in the Berkshires and recording Beethoven’s Ghost Trio (op. 70, no. 1). At the same time, in the Halloween spirit of the weekend when this episode aired, the ghost of Hr. Beethoven himself appeared to listen to his music being played once again. Yet alongside the great composer also appeared the ghost of Dr. Sigmund Freud, who it turned out, had been offering psychoanalysis to the ghosts of dead composers since his own demise in 1939.

At first, I have to admit, I laughed at the idea that Freud interviewing Beethoven would fill the biographical aspect of this episode. It made sense, but it seemed like a silly idea. But as the show went on, I found the premise not only believable but it made Beethoven himself seem more endearing and modern. Now for both of these to occur, I have to admit that I do tend to believe in the possibility of the supernatural. Writing as a Catholic, I believe in an afterlife, and that likely both gentlemen in question are currently in residence there. What’s more, I’ve always thought that one of the things I’d love to do after I died would be to sit down and talk to some of these famous people: Beethoven, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, among all my own relatives I’d be dying to meet.

By the time the episode ended I really liked the idea of having the ghosts of historical figures interviewing each other as a way of describing their biographies. Sure, it’s corny, but it works. I remember a few years ago KCPT (Kansas City PBS) had a program that they ran with the KC Public Library where Crosby Kemper, then the library’s director, would interview figures from Kansas City’s past: whether they be President Truman, Buffalo Bill Cody, some of the great jazz band leaders, or Boss Tom Pendergast. In many ways, the format that Yoo and friends came up with having Freud’s ghost interview Beethoven’s ghost fits that same model.

Then again, one final question arises from the grave: are they Freud’s ghost and Beethoven’s ghost, or are they just simply Freud and Beethoven? What’s the difference between a potential remnant of a deceased soul and the person they once were? And if there is a difference, does that mean that experience makes all of us who we are?