In December 1808, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) mounted an ambitious benefit concert to promote his recent compositions. Although audiences enthusiastically acknowledged his prodigious talent and artistic genius, the composer held no official ecclesiastic or court positions and thus drew his livelihood from personal performances, publications, and a few patrons (whose financial support was not altogether reliable). The concert premiered the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, in addition to the Fourth Piano Concerto. It also included selections from the Mass in C Major, which Beethoven was eager to reintroduce after its poorly received premiere in the previous year. With such hefty works on the program, the event promised to be a four-hour marathon, slated to be performed in an unheated theater. Nevertheless, he envisioned an extravagant finale that would combine the talents of all the assembled musicians—solo pianist, orchestral players, solo vocalists, and choristers. His inspiration took form as the highly inventive Choral Fantasy in C minor for piano, chorus, and orchestra.

Beethoven began composing mid-month, anticipating the December 22 concert date; the process was thus a hurried affair, with no time to indulge his customary penchant for revision. The introductory piano solo, at least, prompted little concern, as the virtuoso Beethoven planned to improvise from the keyboard. Indeed, the work was not fully notated until 1809, months after the performance. Even this written approximation of what Beethoven actually played tests the limits of musician and instrument, with 32nd, 64th, and 128th notes blackening the score.

The dramatic piano improvisation fosters an expectant heroic dialogue with the string instruments, leading to a series of variations inspired by an early unpublished song, “Gegenliebe” (Requited Love). Never one to let a good melody languish, Beethoven tosses haunting snippets of the theme from flutes to reeds to strings to the full orchestra until finally the vocal sextet and chorus give exuberant voice to the text, extolling the sacred nature of the human spirit as expressed in beauty, art, and music.

The structure of Beethoven’s Fantasy seems to be, in fact, a recapitulation of the creative process, beginning with the marvelous but unbridled and chaotic imaginary concept. The piano’s original improvisational outburst is gradually distilled into a simpler yet potent musical ideal with recognizable echoes of a theme. As the melodic interplay of the variations becomes familiar, harmonic patterns coalesce and a sense of delightful engagement grows within the audience. At the climax, choral voices ecstatically deliver the uplifting text to further its poetic message. To Beethoven, the score becomes an imaginative playground, with notes arranged to invite each listener to discover the joys of art and invention.

Nearly sixteen years after that debut, as if to underscore the inexhaustible nature of invention and the richness inherent within a single thought, Beethoven revitalized the theme from Choral Fantasy in the Ninth Symphony’s “Ode to Joy.” The composer readily acknowledged similarities between the two themes, which are unmistakable. Additional parallels between the Fantasy and the Ninth include the dialogue between strings and piano, the use of elaborate variations on a musical theme, the frenzied presto that signals the finale, and the surprising modulation to a minor key that emphasizes the word kraft (strength or power) and then resolves to major at the work’s climax. Perhaps the most compelling connection between the Choral Fantasy and the “Ode to Joy” is the rampant optimism and celebration of creativity that permeate both works, particularly in the face of Beethoven’s personal trials and progressive deafness. Such inspirational achievements attest that despite the increasing outer silence of his later years, Beethoven remained determined to communicate the unfailing solace and joy granted by the miracle of creation.