Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770 – 1827): Symphony no 9 in D Minor (“Choral”)
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony manages to do what no symphony had previously managed: to transcend musical boundaries. With its intricate psychological layers and allusive sidetracks, it is like a “construction of mirrors, reflecting and refracting the values, hopes, and fears of those who seek to understand and explain it,” according to Beethoven biographer, Nicholas Cook. And yet it is also music with an explicit message. Its four large-scale movements seem to encapsulate whole individual worlds – from the depths of despair to hope, from earthy humour to an almost celestial serenity – while in its finale human voices appear (for the first time in a symphonic setting) to sing a great humanitarian paean by the eighteenth-century German poet, Friedrich Schiller.
Like all great works of art, the Ninth has a curious timelessness about it. It was revolutionary in its day and yet its outlook is firmly embedded in eighteenth century ideals. Its musical language, and not least its busy, intricate counterpoint, owes much to JS Bach, while there is more than a hint of Handel in its choral finale. And yet the symphony has constantly found ways to renew its identity with each passing generation, providing a creative starting point for innumerable composers starting from Schubert, Berlioz, Brahms, Wagner and Mahler, right up to the present day.
So how did this extraordinary work come into existence?
For that, we probably have to thank Beethoven’s old friend, Ferdinand Ries. It was the latter who first commissioned the symphony from Beethoven in 1817, on behalf of the Philharmonic Society in London. Several years of on-off negotiations followed, before a fee of just £50 was finally agreed – which not only suggests that Beethoven was not quite living the high life even at this stage of his career, but that the Society expected a much smaller, Haydn-esque work, rather than the monster they got instead.
In any case, Beethoven took his time with the music. He was as busily creative as ever, having just completed two other masterworks, his Diabelli Variations for piano and his great mass, the Missa Solemnis. Most of the work on the new symphony took place throughout 1823 and by the spring of 1824 it was ready to see light of day.
The only question was where? The first performance of the work should have been in London, but Beethoven – a little unscrupulously, given his agreement with the Philharmonic Society – was keen to have the work unveiled closer to home. He preferred Berlin as a venue, believing the local Viennese audiences to be hopelessly drunk on Rossini’s comic operas and therefore not in the mood for something serious. But a petition, vigorously initiated by the Viennese townsfolk, eventually persuaded him to change his mind. A flurry of last-minute organizing, which included finding sufficient musicians (the symphony required a large orchestra) and choosing a suitable venue in Vienna, meant that rehearsals for the work did not begin until just three days before the first performance.
A slightly substandard rendition was the inevitable result, not that it appeared to matter much. The work was greeted with great acclamation almost from the start – perhaps the sheer scale and eclecticism of the music meant there was something in it to appeal to everyone. It was also at its premiere that Beethoven was wheeled out onto a stage for the first time in a decade. He was officially there to direct the performance, although his deafness made his role largely symbolic, the orchestra being instructed to discreetly watch an assistant conductor instead.
An undaunted Beethoven nonetheless carried out his role with great enthusiasm, frequently getting out of time with an orchestra he could not hear. At the end of one movement, he carried on gesticulating and pointing long after the players had stopped. Thankfully a helpful alto took him by the hand and turned him around to face the audience. They were not only warmly applauding, but also cheering loudly, throwing their hats and scarves in the air, just to ensure the composer fully comprehended their appreciation.
In all, the symphony’s first audience had shown impressive staying power for a work not always easy on a first acquaintance. From the very start, it throws up challenges to its listeners. Its first movement opens not so much with a theme but with a mood, hovering ambiguously and without a clear sense of rhythm, on an open fifth chord, A and E (is the missing third major or minor?) Even after the music has finally moved to the tonic of D Minor, its first distinct theme is far from lyrical, appearing instead to be hewn out of solid granite. Also curiously lacking is a sense of progress as the movement proceeds, towards the usual landmarks or “safe ports” which you expect from a classical sonata form structure. It is much more elliptical. One nineteenth century observer likened the movement to “a gigantic tree, whose branches, reaching towards the earth, have taken root and formed a forest round their forebear’.
A funereal feeling persists throughout this early stage of the symphony, with only small glimpses of sunshine. There is more than a hint of Cherubini, and not least there are echoes of the latter’s recent Marche Funèbre (also written in D Minor), but what is Beethoven mourning? Some commentators believe the music to be a profound expression of grief for the many hardships and heartaches of his life. Others suggest it is an elegy for the world he had grown up in, where the great social and political hopes engendered in the French Revolution and Napoleon had ended up in autocracies and bloodshed. In a way, this opening movement is a genuine antithesis to the symphony’s finale.
The brisk second movement, though still in D Minor, is less tragic than the first, while laced with a certain amount of levity and wit (listen to those off-kilter interruptions from the timpani!) A major-key middle section, using cheerful rustic melodies, evokes visions of Beethoven’s beloved arcadia.
The third, slow movement, in the key of B Flat Major, manages to be both serene and intense. It proceeds with two principal sections, the first deeply solemn and prayerful, the second more relaxed and lyrical. Beethoven repeats each section three times, on every occasion adding more instrumental embellishment in the old classical-variation manner. Finally, there are brass fanfares and briefly, via a dramatic interrupted cadence, a searching foray into distant tonalities – before the music closes gently back in its home key.
The extraordinary final movement opens with what Wagner would call a “terror fanfare”, before the cellos and double basses proceed with a restless, recitative-like figure, as if desperately searching for new musical material. Beethoven teases the listener with short extracts from each of the first three movements, one of the earliest examples of a cyclical form within a symphony. Finally, the cellos and basses hit upon a broad, expansive melody in D Major, at first played quietly on their own, before other instruments step in, and the theme gradually rises up through the registers of the orchestra. Despite the relatively straightforward, stepwise nature of this melody, Beethoven would make around 200 false starts while writing it – a vivid example of his painstaking compositional process.
The “terror fanfare” comes crashing back, but this time the recitative figure is taken up not by the lower strings, but by a human voice, a solo baritone:
Oh friends, not these sounds!
But let us sing more cheerful songs, more full of joy!
Words written by Beethoven himself. It is the turning point of the entire work.
The poem he is introducing is Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy, written in 1785. Further solo voices and a choir enter, proceeding to sing:
Joy, o wondrous spark divine,
Daughter of Elysium…
Your magic powers join again
What fashion strictly did divide;
Brotherhood unites all men.
These words are repeated several times over the course of the movement: affirming not only Schiller’s, but Beethoven’s hopes for a future world shaped by joy and human camaraderie – a hope unshaken even after the political calamities of the previous thirty years.
The musical structure of the finale is almost beyond description. After another dramatic interrupted cadence (as humankind bows before God in Schiller’s poem), there follows an almost comical sounding Turkish march, which morphs (somehow seamlessly) into a fast and virtuosic double-fugue, moving through a maze of complicated tonalities (not unlike Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue for string quartet a year or so later). Just when the music appears to be heading for complete disarray, D Major is suddenly re-asserted and the chorus and full orchestra re-enter triumphantly with the main “Ode to Joy” theme, one of the most thrilling and uplifting passages in the whole symphony.
The music concludes with two other significant sections, an almost mysterious contemplation of the divine, and then a whirling, joyous finale:
Embrace each other now, you millions!
The kiss is for the whole wide world!
Beethoven seldom wrote anything as heartfelt as his setting of Schiller’s poem. Perhaps he recognized a message that could reach far beyond his own lifetime. With its overriding mantra of hope overcoming despair, the Ninth Symphony has had a huge cultural impact across the last two hundred years. It has meant countless things to countless people. It has been used as a protest anthem as well as a rallying point for celebration. It has helped to break down national and sociological barriers. For so many, the symphony remains the ultimate symbol for human fellowship, for freedom and for hope.
As for the music’s creator, he lived just three more years after the work’s momentous premiere. He continued writing up until his death, including several superb late string quartets, the best of which are probably those in B Flat Major op 130 and C Sharp Minor op 131. Even as his body began to fail him, Beethoven’s musical brain and creative powers remained as sharp as ever.
His health, seldom problem-free, had been declining for some time, although the causes of his final illness remain a little obscure to his day (both dropsy and extensive liver damage have been suggested as the likeliest). Ludwig Van Beethoven died in March 1827 at the age of just 56.
But his death was far from an ending. At least 10,000 people turned out for his funeral procession through the streets of Vienna, with many of the finest musicians of the day among their number.
And his influence continues to be felt to this day. He would not only leave behind a colossal music legacy but through his own life-story (from the ridiculous to the out and out sublime) forever change the popular image of artistic genius. As music journalist Peter Gutmann once wrote, “Any musician who feels an irrepressible urge to do his own thing is by definition one of Beethoven’s spiritual heirs.”