Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as relevant as it was 200 years ago

National Post, 19 May 2024

Nothing else can compete

In remembering Rex Murphy last week, I quoted his description of his “favourite place,” Gooseberry Cove on the Cape Shore road. To capture its rugged Newfoundland beauty, Rex advised invoking your “favourite Beethoven adagio.”

If an adagio was needful for Gooseberry Cove, for what would the Ninth Symphony be suitable? The entire Atlantic Ocean? At least that.

Rex died two days after the bicentennial of the debut of the Ninth, and I hope that in his last hours he had the comfort of Beethoven’s preternatural — if not supernatural — achievement. Rex loved classical music. Not everyone does. But the soul that does not love the Ninth is not capable of love.

In the entirety of human history, the Ninth is surely a contender for the greatest single achievement. Beethoven composed it (1822-1824) as he was going almost completely deaf. It is one of those rarities that can only be believed because it is true; otherwise it would remain impossible to conceive.

To compose a symphony while deaf? To compose one of the greatest musical works in history? To compose a choral symphony — itself something of a novelty — that would give voice to the profound aspiration for universal brotherhood and harmony among men?

Such was Beethoven’s vocation. The Ninth’s fourth movement, the Ode to Joy, has resounded around the world like no other since the angels sang at Bethlehem of God’s glory and of peace to all men.

The power of the Ninth through the first three movements is noteworthy enough. Yet the fourth movement finds them all somehow unsatisfactory. It opens by revisiting the previous themes in sequence and rejecting them in turn. The symphony is unhappy with itself, it appears. There is no question that its grasp is grand; it is that Beethoven’s reach is more remarkable still.

The human voice is then heard. A choral symphony! The deaf Beethoven was not simply relying on memories, coasting on previous compositions. The standard of excellence which he set is evident in his boldness; in the Ninth he is still doing new things.

And so the voice breaks in: O friends, not these tones! Let us raise our voices in more pleasing and more joyful sounds!

The music is not lacking as much as the human voice brings something more than the music alone. The human voice brings language. Literature reaches another level. To be sure, Friedrich Schiller’s poem is rather workmanlike. Yet it captured Beethoven’s imagination a half century later. Poetry does that. Together, Schiller’s words and Beethoven’s music made for pure joy.

Schiller’s poem gives voice to a joy that the world cannot give. That joy is the fruit of peaceful brotherhood, and the capacity for that brotherhood is a heavenly grace. The desire for harmony amongst peoples is a natural desire, Schiller argues, but a desire that points beyond nature alone. A fractured creation looks to its creator for fulfillment, for a liberty that bears fruit in harmony, fraternity and peace.

Hence the Ode to Joy reaches beyond the German Christian culture in which it was composed. It is the anthem of the European Union, chosen by nations amongst which are numbered Germany’s former enemies.

In June 1989, the Chinese students protesting for liberty in Tiananmen Square played the Ode to Joy. There are good arguments in political philosophy to refute the Chinese communist claim that human rights are a foreign idea. The Ninth is a more convincing refutation still; it resounds in every heart, regardless of race.

Just months after the butchers in Beijing massacred their own sons and daughters, the Berlin Wall was torn down. How to express the joy of the German spirit, freed from the twin tyrannies of the twentieth century?

The Ninth. There was no other option.

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