The 2025 Wiegand Lecture featuring Daniel Chua — Is music joy?

Recorded February 24, 2025. Presented by the Jackman Humanities Institute, this year’s Wiegand Memorial Foundation Lecture, “Music, Joy, and the Good Life” was delivered by Daniel KL Chua, the chair professor of music at the University of Hong Kong. From Confucius to Saint Augustine and Beethoven to the blues, Chua explores the ancient correlation between music and joy and asks whether its cosmic and theological dimensions can be retrofitted to the modern world as a way of life. Chua earned his PhD in musicology from the University of Cambridge. He was director of studies at St John’s College, Cambridge, and professor of music theory and analysis at King’s College London. He is the recipient of the 2004 Royal Musical Association’s Dent Medal, a fellow of the American Musicological Society and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. He has written widely on music – from cosmological concepts in ancient Chinese music theory to NASA’s Golden Record on the Voyager mission – but is particularly known for his work on Beethoven, the history of absolute music and the intersection between music, philosophy, technology and theology.