As slovenly as Beethoven was in his personal life, he stored and maintained his musical ideas in sketchbooks, continually jotting down ideas that might come in handy later on. Perusing these sketchbooks today, we are provided with an insight into both his creative process and method of working. While Beethoven did not have the quick and ready inspiration of a Schubert or a Mendelssohn, two characteristics contributed to his greatness: he had the tenacity to work and rework his material many times, often over many years; and he knew when he got it right.

Ideas about the Ninth Symphony first appeared in Beethoven’s sketchbook in 1817-18, initially as material for a pair of symphonies, one of which was to have a choral finale with text from Greek mythology. He did not begin sustained work on the symphony until 1822, finally finishing it in February 1824.

During this period, Beethoven was embroiled in turmoil in his personal life. When his brother Johann, who had married a woman against the composer’s advice, became ill, his wife Therese shamelessly carried on with her lover. Beethoven’s on-again-off-again friendship with Anton Schindler, who eventually became his private secretary and first biographer, was currently off. It should be noted, however, that for all Beethoven’s irascibility and mood swings, he was often a shrewd judge of character and he did not trust Schindler, who in the end made off with the composer’s sketchbooks and conversation books, selling some and forging others.

At the time, Beethoven was both clearly over his head in commitments and also beset by debts. He was putting the finishing touches for publication of the Missa Solemnis while trying to manipulate a secret bidding war for it among three publishers, each of whom were expecting the work. He used a bait-and-switch maneuver involving a Mass in D (that was never written), as an excuse to each publisher for not delivering the Missa Solemnis. He had also undertaken several other commissions, some of which remained incomplete or never started.

One unfulfilled commission spurred the completion of the Ninth Symphony. Always an admirer of the British, Beethoven had sent inquiries to the Philharmonic Society of London and had received a positive reply with the promise of £50 for a new symphony. Beethoven would have liked to visit London, perhaps to experience the accolades showered on his former mentor, Franz Joseph Haydn, but the visit never materialized, and the commission never fulfilled. But it was an incentive to finish the Symphony. The score was finished in February 1824, and Beethoven, disgusted with the musical taste of the Viennese, planned to premiere the work in Berlin. But it had been ten years since he gave a public concert of his work, and his friends and admirers signed a petition begging him not to disappoint his public any longer. Although he eventually gave in, it took three months of haggling with the Imperial “Pooh-Bahs” and reluctant singers to finally schedule the concert for May 7 at the Kärntnertor Theater. Artistically the Symphony was a wild success but – because of the huge forces required and the large copying costs – a financial near-disaster.

Starting from the mysterious open fifths of the first movement, the symphony must have amazed its first hearers. The powerful first theme gradually emerges and develops in classical sonata form. The contrasting second them, is made up of several distinct motives that he later develops separately. A long dramatic coda with an ominous ostinato in the cellos and basses concludes the movement, setting up musical tension that will not be released until the choral finale.

The second movement, molto vivace, is a massive scherzo that opens with hammer-blow descending octaves. This motive is immediately picked up by the violins as the first bar of the principal theme, which is introduced as a fugue. The driving rhythmic motif underlies the scherzo section and the timpani periodically bang out the signature d rhythm. A playful trio brings respite, but the insistent scherzo returns with a short coda and a final hint at the trio.

The slow third movement is a free variation form comprised of the simultaneous transformation of two themes; its gentle intensity is in marked contrast to the powerful, driving music that preceded and will follow it. If anyone ever doubted that Beethoven was a romantic, this movement will dispel the doubt, especially with the heartfelt second theme.

It was not until November 1823, only three months before he finished the symphony, that Beethoven decided to use Friedrich Schiller’s ode “An die Freude” (“To Joy”). He had been toying with the idea of setting the Ode since 1793, when he considered it for a song. Again, in 1812, he incorporated part of it into a choral overture, a project he abandoned. Then, he thought of it for the finale of the second of the previously mentioned pair of symphonies.  Now, he took the opportunity to use what would have been the finale of a Symphony No. 10 to close the Ninth.

The long introduction to the Finale begins with a surprise, a recitative for the cellos and basses that alternates with flashbacks that quote the themes from the first three movements plus a hint of the “Ode to Joy” melody to come. These flashbacks (and the “flash-forward”) are now seen as a bold, cinematic stroke, but they were actually Beethoven’s practical solution to a compositional problem. Because the “Ode to Joy” music was originally intended for his next symphony he felt he needed something to connect it to the first three movements. The musical flashbacks, jarring as they probably were to the 1824 audience,  served that purpose. 

After the introduction by the full orchestra, Beethoven uses his own words as a baritone soloist introduces the choral section of the finale: “O friends, not these tones! Instead, let’s take up something more agreeable and joyful!”, sung to the music of the cellos and basses earlier recitative. Schiller himself did not care for the “An die Freude” poem, but Beethoven's music, coupled with judicious rearrangement and strategic deletions in the text, transformed it into a cultural icon. 

Musically, the movement is a set of variations, one for each stanza of the poem. Among the historically notable variations is the Turkish march in imitation of the Jannissary bands of Ottoman soldiers, who had been a constant threat to the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in earlier times. Beethoven then introduces a new theme, which the composer combines with the main melody into a double fugue. At the climax of the movement, Beethoven abandons the variations for a lengthy dramatic coda in which the soloists and chorus restate the text of the poem and freely develop the musical material. Beethoven handles the coda as an operatic finale, recalling the heady celebration that concluded his opera Fidelio in 1806.