Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
Ludwig Van Beethoven
(b. December 16, 1770 in Bonn, d. March 26, 1827 in Vienna)
The storyline of the ninth symphony unfolds at a macro level over thirty years. In the 1790s Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” is referenced in Beethoven’s sketchbooks that were a fixture of his entire creative life. More related notes are recorded among ideas for his 7th and 8th symphonies beginning in 1811. It can fairly be said Symphony No. 9 was being regularly worked on from 1817 until its completion in 1823. His plodding diligence in those years must be contrasted to the chaos in the last few months arranging for the first performance which was to be in Berlin. No, London. Wait, not London, but Vienna. The uncertainties and delays meant that, despite recruiting top talent from many musical organizations, there was time for only two rehearsals of a work of unprecedented challenges. The result was, predictably, an impaired performance. The audience did not care–they were there to honor their hero–and gave him an unrestrained ovation.
The opening movement begins with the strings shimmering. In the arc of the piece, we begin where "the Earth was without form and void." By the end of the first movement we know we are embedded in a mighty Creation but we are not sure what it is.
The second movement scherzo is too busy for contemplation. Aggressive, percussive, there is no rest. It was a perfect choice for Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange's “Suicide Scherzo.”
The slow third movement is a passionate and surpassingly beautiful theme and variations.
The long finale is sometimes likened to a symphony within a symphony. The very beginning may be a clue as to how Beethoven saw the solution to a problem of grafting choral music onto a symphony. Each of the first three movements is quoted briefly in turn. No, none of these will do. Finally the baritone solo opines in Beethoven's (not Schiller's) words, “Oh friends, not these sounds! Let us instead strike up more pleasing and more joyful ones!”
Beethoven recognized his advancing deafness as early as his Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802 where he pondered his artistic destiny at length. He conducted the premiere of his eighth symphony in 1812—reportedly badly because of his deafness—and played piano in public for the last time in 1814. In the dozen years from his eighth to his ninth symphonies, he composed in his own silence even as importunities besieged him. Most confounding him was the situation with nephew Karl. During his brother Kaspar's final illness, Kaspar declared Beethoven Karl's future guardian. After Kaspar's death in 1815 Kaspar's will attempted to give limited guardianship to his widow, as well, and contentious litigation ensued. Beethoven prevailed in court but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Beethoven wanted the boy to carry on the family name. Merely by his force of will he would also make Karl a musical genius. Beethoven's attempts to produce the impossible only made both miserable.
Nevertheless Beethoven's inner musical life flourished. Despair at his outward surroundings drove him to rarefied heights. Referring to the music of this period merely as Late Beethoven, we downplay the seismic event taking place in solitude and utter silence. The piano sonatas, finishing with Op. 109, 110, and 111, and the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120 were his final testament to solo piano. Missa Solemnis, Op. 123 capped his religious and choral legacy.
Still Beethoven had unfinished business. Friedrich Schiller's poem “An die Freude“ ([Ode] To Joy) echoed across the years. Schiller's humanist words spoke ever louder in Beethoven's silent world. Initially setting “Ode to Joy” and writing a new symphony were not the same project—after all, symphonies didn't have choruses. How he made this leap of faith is not clear, but the musical world was never the same after.
Beethoven took money from the Philharmonic Society of London for a first performance of the Ninth Symphony under its auspices. Beethoven was also negotiating a possible debut in Berlin, but when word got out to Viennese friends and fans, they started a petition urging him not to give up on his city. The outpouring of support may have surprised him, but he was convinced—Vienna it was. The premiere took place May 7, 1824, at the Theater am Kärntnertor.
The premiere remains the stuff of legend with many conflicting accounts. Two of the vocal soloists were young stars of Beethoven's choosing and surely gave fine accounts of themselves. Without a doubt, too, the best musicians available from several prestigious musical organizations participated. Yet there were only two rehearsals for a work of unprecedented difficulty. Moreover, Beethoven took a place on stage among the musicians, present as the “conductor.” Even though musicians were warned to pay attention only to the concertmaster, seeing a man standing and gesticulating wildly had to have been distracting. At the end of the scherzo movement (or the finale in some reports) everyone erupted in a huge ovation. Beethoven, however, continued to beat time, his back to the audience and only saw the enthusiastic reception when the contralto soloist went to him and turned him around.
After Beethoven’s death, critics and the music intelligentsia who were there in May 1824 remembered the problematic performance and forgot that the problems were with the musicians and not Beethoven. When they faulted the symphony as “Beethoven’s regrettable aberrations,” their judgment prevailed for over twenty years. It was left to Richard Wagner to restore the symphony’s proper place among the greatest works of all time with a loving reconstruction and performance of the work on Palm Sunday 1846 in Dresden. In addition to conducting it himself, he wrote a memorable, if overly romantic, appreciation:
Movement I. "A struggle, conceived in the greatest grandeur, of the soul contending for happiness against the oppression of that inimical power which places itself between us and the joys of earth, appears to be the basis of the first movement. The great principal theme, which at the very beginning issues forth bare and mighty, as it were, from a mysteriously hiding veil, might be translated, not altogether inappropriately, to the meaning of the whole tone poem, in Goethe's words 'Renounce, thou must renounce.'”
Movement II. "Wild delight seizes us at once with the first rhythms of this second movement. It is a new world which we enter, one in which we are carried away to dizzy intoxication. With the abrupt entrance of the middle part there is suddenly disclosed to us a scene of worldly joy and happy contentment. A certain sturdy cheerfulness seems to address itself to us in the simple, oft-repeated theme."
Movement III. "How differently these tones speak to our hearts! How pure, how celestially soothing they are as they melt the defiance, the wild impulse of the soul harassed by despair into a soft, melancholy feeling! It is as if memory awoke within us the memory of an early enjoyed, purest happiness. With this recollection a sweet longing, too, comes over us, which is expressed so beautifully in the second theme of the movement."
Movement IV. "A harsh outcry begins the transition from the third to the fourth movement, a cry of disappointment at not attaining the contentment so earnestly sought. Then, with the beginning of the Ode, we hear clearly expressed what must appear to the anxious seeker for happiness as the highest lasting pleasure."