PROGRAM NOTES LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN born: December 1770 in Bonn, Germany died: March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor “Choral,” Opus 125 composed: 1822-4 premiere: May 7, 1824 in Vienna
The Journey to the Ninth Symphony Beethoven’s Ninth and final Symphony (“Choral”) represents, on a number of levels, a summit of the immortal composer’s artistic life. The Ninth is by far the most epic of Beethoven’s symphonies, both in terms of length and performing forces. The revolutionary introduction of vocal soloists and chorus in the finale was a bold masterstroke that forever expanded the potential of symphonic expression. Richard Wagner hailed the Beethoven Ninth as: the redemption of Music from out her own peculiar element into the realm of universal art. It is the human evangel of the art of the future. Beyond it no forward step is possible; for upon it the perfect artwork of the future alone can follow, the universal drama to which Beethoven has forged for us the key. The text of the Symphony’s finale, based upon the 1785 “Ode to Joy” (“An die Freude”) by the great German poet Friedrich Schiller, held a lifelong attraction for the composer. Beethoven first became acquainted with Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” when the composer was a student in his native Bonn. In his 1790 Cantata on the Accession of Emperor Leopold II, Beethoven briefly quotes Schiller’s Ode. Evidence suggests that a young Beethoven may have even set the text of Schiller’s 18 program notes
poem to music in the 1790s — but if the song did exist, it has been forever lost. The beloved melodic setting of the “Ode to Joy” itself was also the product of an extended genesis. A version of the melody first appears in a song Beethoven composed in the mid-1790s, entitled “Gegenliebe” (“Mutual Love”), based on a poem by Gottfried August Bürger. An even more startling premonition of the Ninth Symphony may be found in Beethoven’s 1808 Fantasia for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80. In that work, the melody — in this case, a setting of words by Christoph Kuffner — receives a treatment quite similar in many ways to that found in the “Choral” Symphony. And the sublime writing for the vocal soloists and chorus in the final scene of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, looks forward to the last movement of the Ninth. Although the notion of presenting Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” in a symphonic context seems to have been on the composer’s mind for several years, it was not until the spring of 1823 that Beethoven was finally able to focus his attention upon this landmark work. Beethoven completed his Ninth Symphony the following January. It is not surprising that Beethoven struggled with the revolutionary finale of his Ninth Symphony. Indeed, as late as the Notes on the Program by Ken Meltzer
