Ludwig van Beethoven.
We know Beethoven was a great composer with hearing trouble.
Beethoven was deaf. He got more and more deaf.
At around age thirty, Beethoven left for Heiligenstadt, outside Vienna,
in order to rest his ears.
But his hearing problems caused a major psychological struggle,
to such an extent that Beethoven nearly decided to end his life.
But one thing stopped him:
Nur sie die Kunst, sie hielt mich zurück.
Only she, Art, held me back.
So, art saved Beethoven. Music was his medication.
And if art could save Beethoven, or change him,
then art could also change society.
And it did, thanks to Beethoven, in the year 1824,
when a new symphony premiered: Beethoven's Ninth.
Why nothing sounded the same after Beethoven's Ninth
Before we go into Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, we should zoom out.
Look at Mozart.
How many symphonies did Mozart compose? 41.
How many symphonies did Haydn compose? 107.
How many symphonies did Beethoven compose? Nine.
But that has to do with the purpose of Beethoven's symphonies.
Mozart mostly composed symphonies for cities or important people,
or as new pieces for his subscription concerts, to make money.
Haydn primarily composed symphonies for the court,
where he worked for over 30 years.
They were meant to be performed once, and sometimes never again.
Beethoven's symphonies were different. He composed for the city,
for people in the city, for real, live people.
And his symphonies had to have a message, a meaning.
A symphony had to contribute to a better world.
So, it took Beethoven years to compose a new symphony.
That's why he only wrote nine.
Beethoven always included a life lesson in them.
Of Beethoven's symphonies, the first two resemble Mozart's work,
in the classical tradition.
The Third, the Eroica symphony, is a kind of victory symphony.
The Fourth counterbalanced the Third.
Then Symphony No. 5, Fate, was also a masterpiece, of course.
The Sixth is a pastoral symphony.
It puts us in a beautiful landscape. Everyone is happy.
It's program music, with impressions of nature.
Then there's Symphony No. 7, one of great joy.
It's a big, upbeat, lively dance. It's very energetic.
The Eighth Symphony counterbalances the Seventh.
And then the Ninth Symphony, the symphony of harmony, of joy,
of the celebration for and of life, of fraternity.
The Ninth Symphony.
Why did Beethoven write the Ninth Symphony?
His first motivation was financial.
In London, he'd received a commission from the Philharmonic Society.
He had to write a new symphony to be performed in London.
Beethoven also had a personal reason for composing the Ninth:
to convince Viennese society of an important vision for life,
a vision of happiness, joy and belief in their own German culture.
And Beethoven already had an idea, which he really wanted to use
in a composition, in a symphony.
We're about to see what that idea was.
First Movement of the Ninth: Allegro ma non troppo
Listen to the symphony's first movement.
A very traditional build-up,
with certain, recognizable themes that develop and come back,
but the way in which Beethoven dealt with it was a little different.
In the beginning, it's all very slow, very mysterious, ominous.
as if violins are falling from the sky all over the place.
Symphonie No. 9, I Allegro ma non troppo
Ludwig van Beethoven (1823)
Then suddenly, in unison, everyone plays a bold, threatening theme.
No symphony had ever begun that way.
It sounds like a hopeful world that Beethoven wanted to put in its place,
including the message, as he often did:
I'm Beethoven, not anybody else.
It took some getting used to, both back in 1824 and now.
As a listener, you wonder: Is it positive or negative?
Where is this going?
Right now, we don't know.
But we can definitely say that Beethoven is building something up.
Movement 2: Scherzo
Normally, a symphony's second movement is slow,
an andante, or an adagio or a largo,
long and flowing, and tranquil, so we can catch our breath.
but no, not in Beethoven's Ninth.
Beethoven composed a fugue, with various voices imitating one another.
It's very complex.
The timpanis seem to rule over life and death.
And it's one giant, rhythmical playground.
The second movement in Beethoven's Ninth is a scherzo.
Scherzo means "musical joke." Composers had a sense of humor, too.
And a scherzo is actually a movement in a symphony
with a contrasting middle part. If this is the start of a scherzo,
then this is the middle part, which sounds totally different, the joke.
Then it returns to what you'd heard before, in the beginning.
Symphony No. 9, I Allegro ma non troppo
Ludwig van Beethoven (1823)
Movement 3: Adagio
So now, you really do need to catch your breath, to relax.
Calm down, Beethoven. And he did, in his third movement, the adagio.
It's so beautiful, it's as if it were composed by angels.
If Beethoven's tempo indication for the third movement can be believed,
it's sixty beats per minute, or one beat per second.
It's nice to say that the adagio is adapted to the rhythm of mankind.
Isn't that nice?
Symphony No. 9, III Adagio Ludwig van Beethoven (1823)
But...
If you think that this is the pinnacle
or the end of the Ninth Symphony, you've got it all wrong,
because at the end of the third movement,
Beethoven bursts the bubble.
The finale
This is what Richard Wagner called the "Schreckensfanfare,"
the fanfare of horror, of terror.
Beethoven tore down one's illusions. He wanted to make something clear.
At the beginning of the fourth, final movement of the symphony,
we hear a few fragments of the first movement,
that theme full of impatience,
of something brewing, violins falling from the sky,
We hear a small fragment of that in the fourth movement.
Symphony No. 9, IV Presto Ludwig van Beethoven (1823)
Then, again, that dark, grim atmosphere
of the horror fanfare by the deep, dark basses,
followed by a little nod to the second movement, the scherzo.
Then we're back in the reality of the fourth movement.
But what did you expect? Beethoven gives a little nod
to the third movement, the adagio. Again, the angels make an appearance.
Symphony No. 9, IV Presto Ludwig van Beethoven (1823)
And now, Beethoven must tell us what he so dearly wanted to say.
And he does, with a new melody that we all know well, even today.
The Berlin Celebration Concert Symphony No. 9
by Leonard Bernstein (1989)
Ode to Joy, the European anthem.
But is this the pinnacle of the Ninth Symphony?
Beethoven, is this the pinnacle?
No, something else was coming.
Something no one else had ever done in a symphony.
And that was...
this.
The Berlin Celebration Concert Symphony No. 9
by Leonard Bernstein (1989)
Singing in a symphony?
Up until 1824, a symphony was always a piece for a symphony orchestra.
But this man changed that.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was for a symphony orchestra,
soloists and a choir.
So, we heard singing in it, and that was new.
Beethoven really wanted to keep it a surprise until the finale.
Innovation one: there's singing in a symphony.
Two: what's being sung.
It starts with: O Freunde, nicht diese Töne.
Sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere.
That means: Friends, not these tones,
but let's start more pleasantly, more joyfully.
In other words, it's time to celebrate life.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was like a pamphlet for German culture.
The message had to be joyful.
And it had to be performed in Vienna, not in London,
where the commission originated.
And the lyrics also had to evoke that entire message.
So, Beethoven chose a poem written by Friedrich von Schiller in 1785:
Ode and die Freude, or Ode to Joy.
Originally, Schiller's poem was a kind of drinking song.
Beethoven learned it in his twenties.
He toyed with the idea of doing something with the poem
for a long time.
And finally, he did, in his Ninth Symphony.
He did alter it a bit: the drinking connotations from the original poem
from 1785 were left out.
Beethoven also tossed out the overly political messages.
This gave Schiller's poem a whole new spin.
It became an almost prophetic hymn.
Beethoven played it smart
by putting the lyrics to music in a simple way:
every syllable in the lyrics is given the same count, a quarter note.
When they sing that all people are brothers, it goes:
Al-le Men-schen wer-den Brü-der.
And it carries on like that, so it was very easy to sing along
and to remember it. And that's how the message in the lyrics stuck.
And what is it actually about?
And now... Now, we can give an answer
as to what Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is about.
It's about living joyfully.
Millions of people coming together, with a kiss from the whole world.
"Oh, beautiful spark of the gods."
Schöner Götterfunken. That's what Beethoven's Ninth is about.
Fraternity, cohesion, faith in the future and each other.
It's a universal message, which still holds true today.
The première
It premièred on May 7, 1824, three years before his death,
in Vienna's Kärntnertor Theater.
There were 3 conductors on stage:
a head conductor, an assistant conductor amid the musicians
and Beethoven, diagonally behind the head conductor,
so he could set the beat
and to guide the musical expression using broad gestures.
After the second movement, the scherzo,
there was already tremendous enthusiasm and applause.
Beethoven, deaf, didn't realize it.
He had to be turned to the audience to receive the applause.
After the finale, Beethoven had to return to the stage five times,
because everyone was so enthusiastic about his Ninth Symphony.
Clip from Copying Beethoven Agnieszka Holland (2006)
Now, that message of fraternity and togetherness,
of embracing one another, was shattered right after the première.
Because Beethoven calculated the bill,
and he saw that the première had only earned him 420 guilders.
That was very little money indeed.
Beethoven thought that his friends had pocketed some of the money.
So, after the première of the Ninth, Beethoven sent all his friends home.
Why is the Ninth a masterpiece? Beethoven was deaf at the time.
Hearing. Beethoven was already completely deaf in 1824.
Even so, he was able to write something like this, a new symphony.
He could translate his thoughts into notes on paper.
He didn't need a piano or other means of making sounds.
The sound was entirely in his head.
He could sense the sound very well and note it down correctly.
In that way, Beethoven consciously or unconsciously
broke with tradition, the forms and sounds of the time.
Beethoven was physically isolated from the world,
so he did what he, himself, felt. So, Beethoven was also innovative,
because he couldn't listen. He didn't need to.
It's a reference piece.
Beethoven's Ninth was a point of reference.
Look at Johannes Brahms, with his First Symphony.
It's seen as Beethoven's Tenth. That's a nice compliment.
Antonín Dvorák also used Beethoven as a reference,
above all for the number of symphonies he wrote: nine.
Dvorák also literally cited Beethoven in his scherzo,
in his Symphony No. 9.
So, Beethoven was an invaluable influence.
And Beethoven's Ninth is cultural heritage, even today.
In 1985, the famous melody from the finale of the Ninth
was made the European anthem.
And in 2002, the manuscript of Beethoven's Ninth
was named Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
It's also nice to see, for example, how in the 1980s,
the value of Beethoven's Ninth was recognized.
That's when the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989.
Something wonderful happened: Leonard Bernstein, 71, went to Berlin
to give a concert with Beethoven's Ninth on the program.
So, the message was very clear.
Fourth, it's wonderful to listen to...
if you can listen, at least.
Poor Beethoven.
Klara Stay amazed.
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