ode to Joy
200 years of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
The bound manuscript of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is in the Unter den Linden State Library in Berlin. photo
© Soeren Stache/dpa
The “Ode to Joy” is also familiar to classical music fans. The complex masterpiece became a European anthem suitable for the masses. At the beginning, however, there was a drinking song.
Ahead of his time
Mixed in with the enthusiasm about the first symphony in music history to feature a choir, some critics questioned whether the last movement of the symphony, with its setting to music of Friedrich Schiller’s poem “To Joy”, was a little too unconventional was advised. “Beethoven was perceived as an avant-gardist,” said conductor Martin Haselböck to the German Press Agency. “It was the most modern of the modern,” he said of the work of the composer, who was born in Bonn in 1770 and died in his adopted home of Vienna in 1827.
Haselböck and his Vienna Academy Orchestra are known for playing classical music on historical instruments in original locations. But the theater in which the Ninth was heard for the first time no longer exists. Haselböck and his ensemble will perform the work on its 200th anniversary on May 7th and 8th in the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal. WDR broadcasts the first concert.
The idea of international understanding and European unity, which is associated with the symphony today, is behind a TV event on the Arte channel, in which the four movements of the work will be interpreted by four ensembles on May 7th: the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig, the Orchester de Paris, the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.
At the beginning there was a “drinking song”
For his ninth symphony, Beethoven resorted to a poem that was very well known at the time and had previously been set to music by others. Schiller wrote “To Joy” in 1785, a few years before the French Revolution. “Beggars become princely brothers” is what the original text says, which begins with the words “Joy, beautiful spark of the gods.”
The song was a hit even before Beethoven gave it a nobility, said Beethoven researcher Beate Kraus from the Beethoven House in Bonn. It’s not just the revolutionary text that’s responsible for this, she told the dpa. This hymn to joy and friendship was also popular in student circles. “It’s just a drinking song,” said Kraus.
Under the title “Ode to Joy”, Schiller’s verses became the core content of the Ninth. Since its premiere, the genius cult surrounding Beethoven and the complexity of this symphony have meant that it has been charged with a wide variety of content, said Kraus. “That’s why everyone can choose what he or she prefers,” said the scientist.
Hitler’s birthday music and German-German anthem
Beethoven’s music was exploited during the Nazi era. The Ninth Symphony was played around Adolf Hitler’s birthday. In the GDR, the composer’s work was interpreted in the communist sense as music of peace and friendship between peoples. “Only in peace can we maintain our national cultural heritage,” said a poster for a performance by the Ninth in the Saxon town of Aue in 1952.
The “Ode to Joy” accompanied the division and reunification of Germany. In the 1950s and 1960s it served as the German anthem for the all-German teams of West and East German athletes at the Olympic Games. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, star conductor Leonard Bernstein performed the Ninth with the rewritten text “Freedom, Beautiful Sparks of the Gods” in December 1989 in East and West Berlin.
Beethoven’s handwritten music from the Ninth is largely kept in the Berlin State Library. Different storage locations for individual parts during the Second World War resulted in a west-east odyssey after the war. Only reunification brought Beethoven’s music back together.
Beethoven as a rubbing tree and source of energy
At the beginning of the 1970s, Herbert von Karajan boiled down the complex fourth movement with its dissonances, dramatic turns and intertwined vocals into an anthem suitable for the masses for the Council of Europe. It later became the anthem of the European Union. As a result, Beethoven’s melody also became a political source of friction: MPs from the British Brexit Party, for example, turned around demonstratively during the anthem in the European Parliament. At the end of April, some members of the right-wing and EU-critical Identity and Democracy faction remained seated when the European anthem was played to commemorate EU enlargement.
But you can also just enjoy Beethoven’s masterpiece. Many people do this in Japan, where Ninth performances with amateur choirs are one of the New Year’s traditions. The largest of these concerts take place in Osaka with a total of 10,000 singers and are conducted by Yutaka Sado. Among the participants were cancer patients or people who care for relatives and want to draw strength from music, said Sado, who is also chief conductor of the Tonkunstler Orchestra in Lower Austria. Beethoven’s music expresses that joy is not that easy to come by. “We have to hug each other in order to achieve joy,” he told dpa. This also applies to natural disasters and wars.