Beethoven walking trails open at the Yellow Barn

PUTNEY- Yellow Barn announces the opening of Beethoven Walks, a series of trail walks with accompanying music and reproductions of Beethoven’s hand-written sketches and manuscripts, created by Yellow Barn Artistic Director Seth Knopp. A project with national reach, Yellow Barn has sponsored the first two walks as a gift to its community. They are free and open to the public.
Knopp imagined his Beethoven Walks project last fall, as part of a larger visual tribute to Beethoven, a birthday gift of work by five local artists inspired by his music. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, a sense of urgency motivated Knopp to accelerate its creation. The trails are best enjoyed in solitude, and provide a way of social distancing in a way that comes naturally to much of the local population.
Beethoven Walks currently features two trails, the Greenwood Trail on Putney’s Greenwood School campus and the Hannum Trail on Putney Mountain. Yellow Barn has gifted the Greenwood Trail walk to the Greenwood School. At the request of the Putney Mountain Association, the Hannum Trail will close on July 18.
The walks incorporate hundreds of reproductions of Beethoven’s sketches, or leaves from his autograph manuscripts, bannered on trees with customized bungee cords. Music posts placed along the path will prompt people to listen to Beethoven’s works corresponding with these sketches and manuscripts. These autographs lead us along the path, or to listening places that invite more spacious listening and looking. Those walking the path connect with Beethoven’s music, his creative process, and the inspiration he drew from nature.
A project born during collective isolation, Yellow Barn believes that the Beethoven Walks serve a universal need to better understand our humanity through music and the beauty of the world. It also gave many people and companies a chance to be productive during a time when work has been greatly inhibited. Over the course of two months a team of over a dozen people in the local community banded together to bring the Beethoven Walks to life, including trail advisor and woodworker Michael Kohout, who built eight benches and 13 music posts specifically for these trails.
To experience a Beethoven Walks trail, download the app for each trail onto a phone or other device. Instructions can be found at www.yellowbarn.org/beethovenwalks. The app includes the music playlist, directions to the trail head, and information about the manuscripts.
For more information about Yellow Barn contact info@yellowbarn.org or (802) 387-6637.