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Jenny Farrell<\/strong> discusses Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, on the eve of the 250th anniversary of his birth<\/em><\/p>\n Like few other composers, Beethoven expresses the will for freedom, the democratic longing of the people. His music is the continuation of the French Revolution through the means of art; his Ninth Symphony is a hymn to the humanist utopia of the equality of all humankind.<\/p>\n Between 1905 and 1933 Beethoven’s Ninth was frequently performed in Germany to a large number of workers\u2019 audiences, with the participation of workers\u2019 choirs, including a concert entitled \u2018Peace and Freedom Celebration on New Year\u2019s Eve 1918\u2019. The beginning of this concert was scheduled so that at the stroke of 12, the final movement began with Friedrich Schiller\u2019s \u2018Ode to Joy\u2019. These annual concerts were stopped by the Nazis in 1933.<\/p>\n Reaction, resistance and revolution<\/strong><\/p>\n The symphony was composed in 1823, but Beethoven had planned from youth to set Schiller\u2019s \u2018Ode to Joy\u2019 to music. Schiller\u2019s poem, expressing the aspirations of the age of revolutions, was close to his thinking all his life.<\/p>\n The years since composing his eighth symphony had been times of bitter disappointment at the oppressive reactionary political developments after the Congress of Vienna, but also of personal suffering. They were also years of growing resistance to reaction, and the revival of the revolutionary ideals which had been betrayed by the upper middle classes. The Ninth Symphony symbolises powerfully the struggle through night into light, of progress against reaction, to which Beethoven dedicated his whole life and work. It is often expressed in a struggle between a dark minor key and a brilliant affirmative major key. The finale of the Ninth anticipates and celebrates the victory of this ideal: a future society, in which freedom, equality, and universal fellowship is fulfilled, in which Joy can reign.<\/p>\n The first movement<\/strong> portrays a great battle, heroic resistance against adverse conditions. Beethoven described the reactionary state of Metternich as the \u201cchaos and despair in which we live\u201d. This is enacted in the dark opening bars and theme 1 is in D minor, the key of despair: a world without joy. Downwards plummeting, twitching motifs give rise to the increasingly vigorous theme of resistance.<\/p>\n This energetic battle cry is answered by a plaintive woodwind motif. Tutti chords express new, gathering forces that are extinguished in a downward-rushing gesture, as \u201cdespair\u201d is brought back to mind. The heroic theme breaks through powerfully in B flat major, with a first anticipation of the \u2018Joy\u2019 melody. This polarity between minor and major represents the symphony\u2019s two protagonists.<\/p>\n The threatening mood returns, a recurring suggestion of suffering, of falling from a great height. An energetic tutti insists on resistance. The rhythmic struggle motif is the driving force of the development. Its contrast with a soothing motif is characteristic of Beethoven. Above the softly throbbing timpani rhythm of the struggle motif, grows a longing for peace and joy. In the movement\u2019s climax, the heroic theme resounds over a mighty organ point with booming winds and swirling timpani. This concentration of strength, raging with pain and defiance, heralds a major change. Above the thundering organ point, the heroic theme once again appears majestically in D minor, contrasted with a painful, sinking motif. The movement\u2019s final section evokes friendly images with the soft horn melody, intensified by further woodwinds.<\/p>\n The struggle has not been resolved. The state of \u201cdespair\u201d is challenged, not eliminated. A solemn funeral march in D Minor moves the movement to a dark ending, yet it finishes with a gesture of defiance and belief in victory with the heroic motif played in unison.<\/p>\n The second movement<\/strong> opens in D minor but transitions into a joyful dance in F major. The entire orchestra plays a stomping dance theme; the woodwinds then cheer a joyful tune in C major. The recapitulation increases the sense of busy tumult; the coda follows with lively movement. Oboes and clarinets play a cheerful tune, reminiscent of Slavic folk music. This powerful folk melody, the joy of the people, has entered the first movement\u2019s joyless world, with the movement ending brilliantly and optimistically in D major.<\/p>\n The third movement<\/strong> contrasts with the second movement\u2019s active participation in life, with a wonderful adagio movement, a dreamlike vision of longed-for human happiness and peace. The first violins sing the soulful main theme, its variations make the movement increasingly fluid. Suddenly signal-like fanfares promise victory, sounding into the dream. The melody swings upwards, offering beautiful glimpses of that world of longed-for peace and joy.<\/p>\n The crowning final movement<\/strong> evokes life in community, in happiness and peace, a utopian vision. Beethoven merged the instrumental and the vocal for the first time in symphonic music, to express these revolutionary ideals, won through struggle, with the help of human singing.<\/p>\n At the start of the final movement, Beethoven surveys the ground that had to be traversed in order to reach this utopia, the hard-won realm of joy and freedom. The wild, dissonant outcry in thundering D minor, with which the wind groups begin the final section fortissimo over swirling timpani, seems to destroy all the hopes that the adagio had raised. This recalls the gloomy opening of the first movement. However, the C sharp in the bass, pushes the motive into major. The recollected restless Scherzo theme is not yet a source of true joy, neither is the dreamy melody of the third movement\u2019s adagio. Beethoven prepares the ground musically by having the low strings represent the hero who gradually rejects the main themes of the preceding three movements, until finally they embrace the \u2018Ode to Joy\u2019 theme and with it the message of universal humankind.<\/p>\n The awakening of the Joy melody in the woodwinds is sounded in D major as from a distance. Beethoven notes, Ha, this is it, it is found. Joy<\/em>. The bass recitative rejoices and picks up the melody to complete it.<\/p>\n