№ 734. Beethoven's 9th Symphony

Robert Loves Pi

The “Ode” is a setting of Schiller’s “An die Freude,” or “To Joy.” (The word “ode” was added for Beethoven’s symphony.) Schiller wrote it in the style of a “geselliges Lied,” a kind of social drinking song with verses and choruses. Sprawling and based on Enlightenment ideals like trust in reason, democracy and quality, it portrays facets of joy, which Schiller refers to as the “daughter of Elysium.”

When this poem was written, in 1785, Beethoven was growing up in Bonn, Germany, a progressive city swirling with the tenets of the Enlightenment that influenced Schiller and, earlier, American independence. Schiller revised his text in 1803, disillusioned by the bloody French Revolution of the 1790s and believing that his earlier version had become detached from reality. Lines that were once incendiary were tamped down; “Beggars become brothers of princes” turned into “All men become brothers.” Still, he dismissed the poem as a lapse in judgment, politically and artistically.

Beethoven must have been aware of the poem’s flaws; when he composed his setting, he took from both versions, and even then only bits and pieces. But he was still devoted to the Enlightenment, especially in the face of revolution and resurging autocracy. He much preferred, he wrote in a letter, “the empire of the mind,” which he regarded as “the highest of all spiritual and worldly monarchies.”

Ludwig van Beethoven performing with the Razumovsky Quartet,
as depicted by artist August Borckmann. Rischgitz / Getty Images