![]() The rhythmic struggle motif is the driving force of the development. An energetic tutti insists on resistance. The threatening mood returns, a recurring suggestion of suffering, of falling from a great height. This polarity between minor and major represents the symphony’s two protagonists. The heroic theme breaks through powerfully in B flat major, with a first anticipation of the Joy melody. Tutti chords express new, gathering forces that are extinguished in a downward-rushing gesture, as “despair” is brought back to mind. This energetic battle cry is answered by a plaintive woodwind motif. Downwards plummeting twitching motifs give rise to the increasingly vigorous theme of resistance. Beethoven described the reactionary state of Metternich as the “chaos and despair in which we live.” This is enacted in the dark opening bars and theme 1 is in D minor, the key of despair. ![]() The first movement portrays a great battle, heroic resistance against adverse conditions. The finale of the Ninth anticipates and celebrates the victory of this ideal: a future society, in which freedom, equality, universal fellowship is fulfilled, in which Joy can reign. It is often expressed in a struggle between a dark minor key and a brilliant affirmative major key. The Ninth Symphony symbolizes powerfully the struggle through night into light, of progress against reaction, to which Beethoven dedicated his whole life and work. They were also years of growing resistance to reaction, and the revival of the revolutionary ideals, betrayed by the upper middle classes. ![]() 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. Schiller’s poem, expressing the aspirations of the age of revolutions, was close to his thinking all his life. The symphony was composed in 1823, but Beethoven had planned from youth to set Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” to music. 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.īetween 19 the “Ninth” was frequently performed in Germany to a large number of workers’ audiences with the participation of workers’ choirs including a “Peace and Freedom Celebration on New Year’s Eve 1918.” The beginning of this concert was scheduled so that at stroke of 12, the final movement began with Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” These concerts were stopped by the Nazis in 1933. Like few other composers, Beethoven expresses the will for freedom, the democratic longing of the people. Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820
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