MASTERWORKS CONCERT I: Opening Night ~ Beethoven’s Ninth

Beethoven once described himself as someone “who did everything badly except compose music,” and yet he aroused intense personal devotion not only by his music but by his personality, rough and ill-mannered, violent and wrong-headed though his actions often were. The nature of his personality and the fact he was virtually uneducated, gave his musical utterance a simplicity and a sincerity that are without parallel among the great composers. It is these qualities, combined with his strong sense of humanity and his inexhaustible power of striving for the ideal, that have earned him his unique place in affections of music-lovers of all types. 

Dedicating himself principally to composition from the early 1800s, he supported himself partly by public concerts, in which he presented his works and his skill as an improviser, and partly through dedication fees, sales of publications, and generous gifts from patrons. Determined to survive as a free-lance musician, Beethoven eventually ended his career as a performer for full time composing due to the gradual onset of incurable deafness. 

Like his musical idol, Handel, Beethoven embodied his own musical era and at the same time contributed to the overall progression of music in technique and artistic form. Unlike Handel (and even Mozart) however, Beethoven did not have the luxury of speed and instantaneous perfection in his composing; he needed to make several drafts and revisions to most of his works. Certain pieces were often started, interrupted by other projects, and finished much later, at times several years later. Beethoven’s large output of works in all genres includes much occasional music, some of which is rather mediocre. In every genre, however, there are works of the greatest mastery, and the finest of them are unmatched in originality and expressiveness. His works include one opera (Fidelio), incidental music (Egmont, The Ruins of Athens), two ballets, nine symphonies, two mass settings (Mass in C and Missa Solemnis), oratorios, including Christ on the Mount of Olives, and other choral works, five piano concertos, a violin concerto, string quartets and quintets, chamber music with winds, sonatas for violin and cello, piano trios, 32 piano sonatas, many variation sets for piano, works for solo and duet piano, dance sets, concert arias and songs, and canons. 

What chiefly distinguishes Beethoven from his predecessors is his personal connection to his art. Recognized as the father of the Romantic Era in music (the period between 1820 and the early 1900s), Beethoven is best understood by gaining an insight to his works, particularly his symphonies, string quartets, and the Missa Solemnis. 

With Romanticism, the art and the artist are inseparable. This connection between art and artist is the driving force that most music has thrived on for the past two centuries, whereby music strives to attain the unattainable, the ideal, and the larger-than-life. 

This is not to suggest that Beethoven surrendered the structures and forms established by Haydn and Mozart; on the contrary, Beethoven is regarded as the link between the Classical Era of form and reason and the Romantic Era of emotion over reason and art for art’s sake. 

Beethoven’s own personal ideas, hopes, and faith, or lack of faith, are represented in his symphonic output. He wrestled with his own fate in Symphony No. 5 and he strove to obtain ideal heroism in Symphony No. 3.

Beethoven’s first eight symphonies were composed in twelve years. Another twelve years elapsed between the Eighth Symphony and the Ninth. In the earliest sketches for the Ninth, Beethoven contemplated a purely instrumental finale, but later conceived the idea of introducing voices to sing a setting of An die Freude (To Joy or Ode to Joy), a poem by contemporary German playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). Considering using voices in a symphony for some time, Beethoven actually started sketching the Ode to Joy theme thirty years before the final symphony was completed in 1824. After almost 200 sketches and six and a half years, he completed the work. 

The work was actually commissioned by The London Philharmonic Society; however, Beethoven was persuaded to give the first performance of the new symphony in his home city of Vienna. For several months during the initial compositional stages, he contemplated writing two works: an “English Symphony” for the London commission and a “German Symphony” for the Vienna performance. The works seem to merge together to form one work and The Philharmonic Society received the Ninth a year after it had been heard in Vienna.

The Ninth premiered on 7 May 1824 in Vienna during a lengthy performance that also included three movements of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and the premiere performance of The Consecration of the House Overture. The Ninth is not a flawless work. Much of the music for the singers, woodwinds, and often the strings was too demanding for the musicians in Vienna at the time and transitions were awkward. Beethoven ignored the requests by the performers to alter the score. Despite the shortcomings in the orchestra and chorus at the premiere (when the sopranos could not reach the high notes as written they simply did not sing!), Beethoven had proven himself to be at the height of his creative powers. While the composer did not actually conduct the performance, he stood on stage attempting to lead the orchestra, soloists, and chorus. 

The audience was overwhelmed! Beethoven, completely deaf and trapped by only the sounds in his mind, did not realize that the music ended and the applause had begun. As a soloist turned the ailing composer to face the audience, the crowd erupted. The police had to be called to ensure that order was maintained. The critics for the most part agreed that Beethoven had launched a new era of symphonic writing; however, they were not entirely sold on the use of voices or percussion instruments in the final movement. Perhaps by adding words it would seem on the surface to remove the intangible elements of a symphony and therefore to destroy the autonomy of music as an independent language. After a more careful look, it is clear that Beethoven only enhances the Romantic motto of searching for the ideal, as Schiller’s poem embodies ideals that are far too remote for the German people of 1824, and maybe even too ideal for society at large today. 

The overall musical idea of the Ninth stems from a basic conflict between D major and D minor struggling for supremacy, where D major will ultimately claim victory over D minor. Moreover, it is the quest for D major amongst the constant pulling of the tonalities of D minor. The first three movements are titanic in scope and concept, particularly the opening movement. It is a tempest, derived from the innermost secrets of a storm-tossed man’s intellect and spirit culminating in jubilant outbursts of hopes for mankind.

The Symphony begins with the uncertain interval of an open fifth (meaning it is undetermined whether it is a major or minor chord – joy or doom), suggesting some mystical void that anticipates a conclusion. The first eruption of the entire orchestra states the dark tonalities of D minor and for the most part it remains there for the entire movement. Beethoven notes in a sketchbook that the first movement “reminds us of our despair;” it is meant to be disruptive and a search for order.

In the traditional symphonic model (which Beethoven followed in his previous eight symphonies), a more contemplative slower movement follows the opening movement. However, in order to keep the audience on the edge of their seats or with agitation or anticipation, Beethoven inserts a lengthy scherzo (dance-like) movement (usually the third movement of a symphony). The hammer-pounding octaves of its opening were said to have occurred to the composer as he once stepped from darkness into a sudden light. The scherzo is composed in a complex form (a fugue in the sonata form along with the traditional Trio) that exudes a physical exuberance and energy. 

The third movement, the Adagio molto e cantabile, encounters a peace after the storm – perhaps a spiritualizing of all the sorrows of the world. It is one of the most sublime compositions that Beethoven, or anyone else, ever wrote. Its “impression of solemn profundity,” as described by historian Richard Rodda, is enhanced by being placed between the energetic second movement and the climatic Finale. The third movement is a kind of theme and variations but with a second theme inserted between the original melody and its variations. Beethoven writes that the Adagio movement is “too tender,” suggesting that it is too beautiful for this world, bringing us closer to his search for utopia. 

At this point no real resolution of the opening turmoil is apparent and Beethoven resolves the initial conflict in the final movement. The Finale rudely awakes the sublime world of the third movement with a disturbing fanfare and orchestral allusions to the Joy theme while summarizing the previous three movements and recalling the battle between the tormented first section and the peaceful third. The cellos and basses then lead the rest of the orchestra with the complete playing of the Joy theme. 

Beethoven believed he had one major obstacle to overcome before he could have the words of Schiller enter the Symphony: how to bridge the instrumental and the vocal aspects. He concluded that a recitative, the technique used in opera to bridge one movement to the next, would serve as the connecting point. For the recitative, Beethoven uses his own words (“O Freunde, nicht diese Tone” / “O friends, not these sounds”) to introduce Schiller’s Ode to Joy. The composer suggests that Schiller’s words will resolve the previous turmoil of the dark instrumental fanfares that just occurred, and more importantly resolve what Beethoven scholar Donald Tovey says the previous three movements symbolize: “tragedy, satiric drama, and beauty of an order too sublime for a world of action.” 

From the introduction of the Joy theme onward, the movement builds in over a series of variations on the Joy theme, using about one-third of the 96 lines of Schiller’s poem. Beethoven outlined the Finale as a “song and dance” and in the variations that follow the entrance of the chorus, he explores several dance and march rhythms. The Joy theme is written in almost a dozen variations through the course of the movement, each climax leading to the next. In accordance with his compositional style of the 1820’s Beethoven included a double fugue where the chorus is simultaneously proclaiming two lines of the text representing the triumph of Joy and the religious connotations of mankind being embraced as brothers under God. For opera composer Richard Wagner, the combined forces of voices and instruments in the Beethoven Ninth marked the birth of the first great musical drama.

Despite Beethoven’s continual struggle with God and with acceptance of his fate, Beethoven did embrace a conception of God as a universal father and mankind as children of God. It was because of this belief that Beethoven never relinquished the prophetic vision of the potential for society. In that sense the Ninth is nothing less than a paean to the brotherhood of man and a work of great optimism that asks, or even demands, that the city of man can and should be as peaceful as the city of God. French writer Victor Hugo called utopia “the truth of tomorrow” and French poet Alphonse de Lamartine wrote that “utopias are often only premature truths.” Beethoven’s Ninth is calling for society to search for this utopia, this “truth of tomorrow.” For Beethoven and Schiller, utopia was Elysium, the heaven of Greek mythology, where brothers are free from struggle and protected by a benevolent god. 

To Beethoven, the ideal of freedom was betrayed by Napoleon Bonaparte and terminated by the restoration of authoritarian rule throughout Europe by the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). The interests of the individual and those of society could never be balanced in Beethoven’s mind. In addition to the religious impetus for Beethoven to write the Ninth, “his refusal to accept the finality of the failure,” as biographer Maynard Solomon explains, of the revolution to come to Germany also served as a motive for the Ninth. In part, it was this sense of doom for mankind that caused Beethoven to proclaim freedom in a repressed society and what attracted him to Schiller’s poem. Although it was seen as propaganda for the sentiments of the French Revolution, Schiller’s poem represented for Beethoven a philosophy of love and a religion of brotherhood far more meaningful than the Church. The poem prompted Beethoven at the age of 20 to become a Freemason, an organization dedicated to the ideals Schiller promotes. 

Is the Ninth as autobiographical as Beethoven’s Third or Fifth Symphonies? While it is impossible to know what personal experiences of Beethoven’s directly influenced the Ninth, Maynard Solomon suggests it could be Beethoven’s yearning for the reconstruction of a splintered family, for an idyllic past, for loving brotherhood, for an extended moment of pure joy, or for eternal life.

Today the Ninth Symphony has become a symbol for countless societies, cultures, religions, and governments. German nationalists, French republicans, Communists, and Catholics have used it. When democracy toppled the symbols of the Cold War with the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the Ninth was performed. Hitler celebrated his birthdays with it, yet it was played by prisoners in German concentration camps. The work has come to symbolize the pursuit of wealth in Hong Kong and the communist government of China uses the Ninth as a motto of the Marxist slogan “victory through revolutionary struggle.” As the Chinese politicized the Ninth Symphony, the Japanese socialized it, playing it in karaoke bars. Even the racist government of Rhodesia ironically made the Ninth its national anthem. 

When the United States was attacked by terrorists on 11 September 2001, almost everything in the country stopped – every major sports team postponed games, the stock market closed for days, and many forms of transportation were interrupted. The only thing that seemed appropriate was music, and orchestras throughout the country and indeed at Ground Zero in New York performed Beethoven’s Ninth, his final cry of hope and optimism for mankind. 

Above all, Beethoven understood, identified with, and captured Schiller’s idea of a universal love. Musicologist Bernt von Heissler states that the Ninth is “the bond that unites all people; it establishes a correlation between individual happiness and the perfection of society and it attempts to change everything and create a paradise on earth.” Music historian Edward Downes puts it best: the Ninth Symphony is “one of the greatest achievements of the human spirit. It stands taller, strides longer, reaches higher toward the Infinite than anything remotely like it.” If we stop sharing in Beethoven’s hope for utopia or cease believing in humanity’s potential for greatness, we are left with little recourse against the terrors facing civilization.