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The City, The Machine, and The Heart: Metropolis at 100
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To mark the centennial of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the Neue Galerie New York and 1014 present a special Literatur Café exploring one of cinema's most visionary works and its continuing resonance today.
In conversation with film historian Noah Isenberg, Emmy Award–winning composer Jeff Beal reflects on the creation of his new symphonic score for the silent-film masterpiece and the challenge of bringing fresh musical life to a landmark of modern cinema. Drawing on his distinctive career at the intersection of orchestral, jazz, electronic, and screen music, Beal discusses how sound can reshape our experience of a familiar film, while Isenberg places Metropolis within the broader history of Weimar culture and its enduring influence on our visions of technology, society, and the future.
Together they explore why, one hundred years later, Lang's city of machines still speaks so powerfully to the human heart.
Biographies
Award-winning composer Jeff Beal’s career spans several decades with an oeuvre that includes hundreds of works for the screen and stage. Following in the tradition of great American composers such as Copland, Gershwin and Bernstein, his works are influenced by his roots as a jazz trumpeter, and incorporate a sophistication that has made him the favorite of outstanding directors of both dramas and documentaries. Early recognition in his career began in his native California, where he composed for films and television shows, notably including Pollock, Monk, and House of Cards. His outstanding work was recognized with five Emmys ®, an SCL Ambassador and Jury Award, and three HMMAs. His compositions for the concert hall have taken many forms, from symphonic to song-cycles, from ballet to works for solo piano. An official Steinway Artist, the composer also maintains an active performing and recording career, playing his compositions on the piano, trumpet or flugelhorn as well as conducting. Recent works include the score for the award-winning Peacock thriller All Her Fault, the song cycle Our Better Selves for Rachel Willis-Sørensen (premiere at the Staatsoper Berlin in recital in 2026), New York Études, Volume II (recording and concerts), and his new symphonic score to Metropolis (world premiere in Prague in 2026). Whether for the concert hall or the screen, throughout his career, Beal has often engaged with works that hold deeper significance and deal with the issues of our time, ranging from environmental conservation to women’s rights.
Noah Isenberg is the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin and Executive Director of the university’s two study-away programs, UTLA (Los Angeles) and UTNY (New York City), where he’s based. Author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller We’ll Always Have ‘Casablanca’: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie (W.W. Norton + Faber & Faber, 2017), his anthology Billy Wilder on Assignment (Princeton, 2021) was selected by Tom Stoppard as a TLS 2021 Book of the Year. His latest book, Runnin’ Wild: The Madcap Story of ‘Some Like It Hot’, is due out next June from Norton and from Faber soon after. A 2026 Guggenheim fellow, he is currently completing short interpretive biography of Wilder for the Yale Jewish Lives series.
To mark the centennial of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the Neue Galerie New York and 1014 present a special Literatur Café exploring one of cinema's most visionary works and its continuing resonance today.
In conversation with film historian Noah Isenberg, Emmy Award–winning composer Jeff Beal reflects on the creation of his new symphonic score for the silent-film masterpiece and the challenge of bringing fresh musical life to a landmark of modern cinema. Drawing on his distinctive career at the intersection of orchestral, jazz, electronic, and screen music, Beal discusses how sound can reshape our experience of a familiar film, while Isenberg places Metropolis within the broader history of Weimar culture and its enduring influence on our visions of technology, society, and the future.
Together they explore why, one hundred years later, Lang's city of machines still speaks so powerfully to the human heart.
Biographies
Award-winning composer Jeff Beal’s career spans several decades with an oeuvre that includes hundreds of works for the screen and stage. Following in the tradition of great American composers such as Copland, Gershwin and Bernstein, his works are influenced by his roots as a jazz trumpeter, and incorporate a sophistication that has made him the favorite of outstanding directors of both dramas and documentaries. Early recognition in his career began in his native California, where he composed for films and television shows, notably including Pollock, Monk, and House of Cards. His outstanding work was recognized with five Emmys ®, an SCL Ambassador and Jury Award, and three HMMAs. His compositions for the concert hall have taken many forms, from symphonic to song-cycles, from ballet to works for solo piano. An official Steinway Artist, the composer also maintains an active performing and recording career, playing his compositions on the piano, trumpet or flugelhorn as well as conducting. Recent works include the score for the award-winning Peacock thriller All Her Fault, the song cycle Our Better Selves for Rachel Willis-Sørensen (premiere at the Staatsoper Berlin in recital in 2026), New York Études, Volume II (recording and concerts), and his new symphonic score to Metropolis (world premiere in Prague in 2026). Whether for the concert hall or the screen, throughout his career, Beal has often engaged with works that hold deeper significance and deal with the issues of our time, ranging from environmental conservation to women’s rights.
Noah Isenberg is the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin and Executive Director of the university’s two study-away programs, UTLA (Los Angeles) and UTNY (New York City), where he’s based. Author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller We’ll Always Have ‘Casablanca’: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie (W.W. Norton + Faber & Faber, 2017), his anthology Billy Wilder on Assignment (Princeton, 2021) was selected by Tom Stoppard as a TLS 2021 Book of the Year. His latest book, Runnin’ Wild: The Madcap Story of ‘Some Like It Hot’, is due out next June from Norton and from Faber soon after. A 2026 Guggenheim fellow, he is currently completing short interpretive biography of Wilder for the Yale Jewish Lives series.
To mark the centennial of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the Neue Galerie New York and 1014 present a special Literatur Café exploring one of cinema's most visionary works and its continuing resonance today.
In conversation with film historian Noah Isenberg, Emmy Award–winning composer Jeff Beal reflects on the creation of his new symphonic score for the silent-film masterpiece and the challenge of bringing fresh musical life to a landmark of modern cinema. Drawing on his distinctive career at the intersection of orchestral, jazz, electronic, and screen music, Beal discusses how sound can reshape our experience of a familiar film, while Isenberg places Metropolis within the broader history of Weimar culture and its enduring influence on our visions of technology, society, and the future.
Together they explore why, one hundred years later, Lang's city of machines still speaks so powerfully to the human heart.
Biographies
Award-winning composer Jeff Beal’s career spans several decades with an oeuvre that includes hundreds of works for the screen and stage. Following in the tradition of great American composers such as Copland, Gershwin and Bernstein, his works are influenced by his roots as a jazz trumpeter, and incorporate a sophistication that has made him the favorite of outstanding directors of both dramas and documentaries. Early recognition in his career began in his native California, where he composed for films and television shows, notably including Pollock, Monk, and House of Cards. His outstanding work was recognized with five Emmys ®, an SCL Ambassador and Jury Award, and three HMMAs. His compositions for the concert hall have taken many forms, from symphonic to song-cycles, from ballet to works for solo piano. An official Steinway Artist, the composer also maintains an active performing and recording career, playing his compositions on the piano, trumpet or flugelhorn as well as conducting. Recent works include the score for the award-winning Peacock thriller All Her Fault, the song cycle Our Better Selves for Rachel Willis-Sørensen (premiere at the Staatsoper Berlin in recital in 2026), New York Études, Volume II (recording and concerts), and his new symphonic score to Metropolis (world premiere in Prague in 2026). Whether for the concert hall or the screen, throughout his career, Beal has often engaged with works that hold deeper significance and deal with the issues of our time, ranging from environmental conservation to women’s rights.
Noah Isenberg is the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin and Executive Director of the university’s two study-away programs, UTLA (Los Angeles) and UTNY (New York City), where he’s based. Author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller We’ll Always Have ‘Casablanca’: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie (W.W. Norton + Faber & Faber, 2017), his anthology Billy Wilder on Assignment (Princeton, 2021) was selected by Tom Stoppard as a TLS 2021 Book of the Year. His latest book, Runnin’ Wild: The Madcap Story of ‘Some Like It Hot’, is due out next June from Norton and from Faber soon after. A 2026 Guggenheim fellow, he is currently completing short interpretive biography of Wilder for the Yale Jewish Lives series.