A first version of this essay was written in Paris in January 2020, a few weeks before the brutal disruption of everyday life caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This is how it began:

Predictions are always risky, be they grounded on science, on belief, or on tradition. They are especially risky for historians, who are supposed to be experts on the past, or rather, on a small part of it. On the other hand, the future tense in these opening sentences did not indicate an exercise in prophecy or in phenomenological protention, but a trivial reality of cultural life, namely, the fact that a commemoration of this kind always follows a long pre-established program.

For humanity, the sudden cancellation of Beethoven concerts, exhibitions, and conferences looks insignificant compared to so many catastrophes. Yet it is as good a spot as any to take the pulse of the random and dangerous reformatting of historicity in which humans are presently engaged. As the present second version of this essay is being written, in May 2020, some scholarly events are going virtual, and most concerts are being rescheduled. If this pattern holds, the disruption might eventually boil down to a chronological anomaly, with 2021 doubling for 2020.