Symphony No.9 in D minor, Op.125 - "Choral"

VICTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE

It is the best-known work in the history of music, that goes without saying. Its folksong-like melody is common property throughout the world. It resounded during innumerable concerts celebrating the millennium all over the globe. Everyone can hum or sing along to it. The subject at hand is, of course, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and its Freudenmelodie (= melody to “Ode to Joy”). In the year 2001, it received the great honour of becoming the first musical opus ever to be included in the UNESCO World Inheritance List. In short: it is omnipresent. And that is also its problem.

Following its premiere on May 7, 1824, which received an enthusiastic reception from the audience at the Vienna Kärntnertor Theatre, Beethoven’s last symphonic work embarked upon an incomparable – and non-stop – triumphal march. Right up to the present day, it has been constantly and vehemently “claimed” by all imaginable ideological and political groupings. Fascist, anti-fascist, communist, anti-dictatorial, etcetera, etcetera... Even to this day, it still causes amazement that this masterpiece, “about which so much rubbish has already been spread [...], has not long been buried under the pile of scribbling to which it has given rise” (to quote Debussy).

Despite the fascinating and, at the same time, also frightening history of the reception given to the Ninth (which cannot simply be ignored in a study of the work), the main thing here is to focus on the idea which Beethoven expressed both instrumentally and vocally. After the composition of his Eighth, well over a decade passed before the composer (who in the meantime had become profoundly deaf) again attempted a symphony and started working on the project. Previously, he had written his eight other contributions to the genre within a similar period of time. The stimulus apparently came from a commission he received from the London Philharmonic Society for two symphonies in 1817. Beethoven subjected his own work to the greatest of criticism and wrote as follows: “For some time now, I have not found it easy to get down to writing. I sit down and think and think. I already know what I want; but I just can’t get it down on paper. I dread finally embarking upon such a major work.” Only a number of years after writing this, did Beethoven manage to conquer his dread and begin sketching the first movement. He spent a number of years working on the composition, the gigantic dimensions of which far exceed all its predecessors. Only at a relatively late stage, did Beethoven take the decision to include the human voice in the Finale: he had also worked on a purely instrumental solution for the Finale (which he later used in his Quartet in A minor, Op. 132). Finally, in March 1824, the composition was finished.

The central theme of the Ninth is Beethoven’s solution to the Finale problem, which he had designed individually for each of his previous symphonic works. The task of allowing the human voice to invade the domain of absolute music – the symphony – correspondingly demanded yet another special solution.

In the first movement, the music consists of the most elementary and characteristic tonal components, of an unembellished, lingering 5th interval (a – e), which finally increases from falling 5ths and 4ths to octave jumps, before the elemental force of the main theme breaks in.

The previous lack of structure then begins to take on form, from the chaos order is restored. In a number of swelling waves, indicative of the later monumental symphonic works of Anton Bruckner, the recapitulation presents the theme in its full glory, before this is once more surpassed in the Coda. The Scherzo appears for the first time in Beethoven’s symphonic cycle in his second symphony, thus assigning to the Adagio the task of providing the place of rest. The movement supplies thematic material from the main theme of the first movement and tirelessly and restlessly drives it onwards in highly dynamic contrasts, before a melodic derivative from the “Ode of Joy” from the Finale appears for the first time in the cantabile Trio in D. However, here it does not yet have a joyful development. The supremacy of the D-minor key, which has so far continually dominated, is not broken until the Adagio, with the appearance of B-flat major: in a closely woven motif consisting of a 2nd interval, it develops the preliminary stages of the “Joy” theme, until two fanfares in the Coda announce the final movement. One more time, the D-minor key overwhelms the listener in this movement with shattering force. Then Beethoven quotes – adding each time a commentary from the instrumental recitative of the low strings – the main themes from the first three movements (as Bruckner was also to do in his Symphony No. 5), until finally the “Joy” melody asserts itself. It develops from the depths into a kind of undertow, which finally takes over the entire orchestra in all its tutti glory. Only now, after the theme has been, as it were, presented by the instruments and thus set free, does the human voice appear on the scene to depict the utopia of a harmonic, peaceful and loving human society. Beethoven had summarized the text of Schiller’s Ode an die Freude (= Ode to Joy) in a greatly reduced and concentrated form. The melody of Alle Menschen werden Brüder (= All people will become brothers) can be grasped immediately by the listener, due to its simplicity. It encourages the listener to sing along and allows him to join in the rest of the movement. Once again, Beethoven summons up major and magnificent compositional devices – ranging, for instance, from counterpoint to double fugues based on the main theme – before the movement comes to a hymnal conclusion in lively jubilation.

With this Finale, Beethoven left behind not only his symphonic legacy, but, without realizing it, also a gigantic problem: after this work, which allowed vocal music to intrude into the absolute world of instrumental music, how would any future composer be able to write symphonic works? Was the absolute climax of the genre also to signify its demise?