With the Ninth, Ludwig van Beethoven created more than a symphony. Almost as soon as it was written, the Ninth Symphony became an icon of Western culture for at least two important reasons: its message affirms the triumph of joy over adversity like no other piece of music had ever done; and its revolutionary form — its unprecedented size and complexity and, above all, the introduction of the human voice in a symphony — changed the history of music forever. The work’s import and the means by which it is expressed are both unique: each explains and justifies the other. 

Everything in Beethoven’s career seems to have prepared the way for this exceptional composition. It is the culmination of his so-called “heroic style,” known from the Third and Fifth symphonies, among others. But it is also the endpoint of a series of choral works with all-embracing themes, including the 1808 Choral Fantasy, which is certainly the most direct precursor of the Ninth Symphony. 

Friedrich Schiller’s poem An die Freude (Ode to Joy) had preoccupied Beethoven since at least 1792. In that year, an acquaintance of the composer’s informed Schiller’s sister that “A young man of this place whose talents are universally praised ... proposes also to compose Schiller’s Freude. … I expect something perfect for as far as I know him he is wholly devoted to the great and the sublime.” 

Thus, musical and literary roads converge in the Ninth Symphony. In a way, Beethoven was getting ready to write this work all his life. The actual compositional work took about a year and a half, from the summer of 1822 through February 1824. 

Beethoven’s plans to set Schiller’s An die Freude began to take a new shape in 1816 –17, around the time he received a commission for a symphony from the Philharmonic Society of London. He long hesitated over whether or not the last movement of a symphony was the proper place for such a setting. He felt that the introduction of voices needed special justification. At one point, for instance, the rejection of the themes from the first three movements was entrusted to a singer (not the cellos and basses as in the final version). The singer, after dismissing the scherzo as Possen (farce) and the Adagio as “too tender,” exclaimed: “Let us sing the song of the immortal Schiller!” 

The opening of the symphony, with its open fifths played in mysterious string tremolos (rapid, repeated notes), has been described as representing the creation of the world, as a theme emerges from what seems an amorphous, primordial state. The atmosphere of intense expectancy continually grows until the main theme is presented, fortissimo, by the entire orchestra. The Allegro follows the outlines of a sonata form, but the individual stages do not quite function in the usual way. In a traditional Classical sonata form, the tensions that build up in the middle development section are resolved in the recapitulation. But in Beethoven’s Ninth, the tensions keep increasing to the end. The movement’s lengthy coda contains highly dramatic material; it ends on a climactic point, without a feeling of resolution. 

The first movement is followed by a scherzo, although Beethoven refrained from labeling it as such. Here, the mood is dramatic rather than playful. It is based on a motive of only three notes, played in turn by strings, timpani, and winds. The motive is developed in a fugal fashion, with subsequent imitative entrances. The central trio switches from triple to duple meter, and from D minor to D major, anticipating not only the key of the finale but the outline of the “Ode to Joy” theme as well. This is soon brushed aside by the repeat of the dramatic Molto vivace. At the end, Beethoven reintroduces the trio a second time but abruptly breaks it off to end the movement with two measures of octave leaps in unison. According to one commentator, this ending suggests an “open-ended” form that could “move back and forth between scherzo and trio endlessly.” In other words, we cannot at this point tell for sure whether the finale will be tragic or joyful. 

But before we reach the finale, there is one more movement: the sublime Adagio, one of Beethoven’s most transcendent creations. It has two alternating melodies: one majestic, the other tender. Each recurrence of the first theme is more ornate than the preceding one, while the second theme does not change. The movement culminates in a powerful brass fanfare, followed by a wistful epilogue. 

We are jolted out of this idyll by what 19th-century ears must have heard as the most jarring dissonance ever written. Wagner referred to this sonority as the Schreckensfanfare (fanfare of horror), and it opens the finale at a point where all previous rules break down; what follows had absolutely no precedent in the history of music up to that point. 

After the Schreckensfanfare, Beethoven evokes the past: the themes of the first three movements appear in the orchestra, only to be emphatically rejected by a dramatic recitative in the cellos and basses. A two-measure fragment of the “Ode to Joy” theme, however, is greeted by a recitative in a completely different tone as the tonality changes to a bright D major. 

The “Ode to Joy” theme is first played by the cellos and double basses without any accompaniment. It is subsequently joined by several countermelodies and finally repeated triumphantly by the entire orchestra. Then the Schreckensfanfare suddenly returns, followed by the entrance of the bass soloist who, in a solution to Beethoven’s earlier dilemma of how to introduce voices into the symphony, declares words the composer himself wrote as a lead-in to Schiller’s poem: “O friends, not these sounds! Let us sing more pleasant and more joyful ones instead!” The rest of the soloists and chorus then enter with an exuberant call-and-response presentation of Schiller’s text. 

After a shocking interruption on the words vor Gott (before God), the second major section of the movement starts, with a jaunty march for tenor solo and percussion. Featuring a musical style influenced by Turkish janissary bands popular in Vienna at the time, its theme is a variation on the “Ode to Joy” melody. This episode is followed by an orchestral interlude in the form of a fugue, also based on the ubiquitous theme. The melody is repeated in its original form by the orchestra and chorus, and then the music stops again. 

In the third section, the tenors and basses introduce a new theme on the words Seid umschlungen, Millionen! (Be embraced, you millions!). If the beginning of the “Ode” celebrates the divine nature of Joy, this melody represents the Deity in its awe-inspiring, cosmic aspect. Whereas the first theme proceeded entirely in small steps, the second one is characterized by wide leaps, conjuring a sense of the infinite and God’s throne above the starry skies. 

The last section begins with the two themes heard simultaneously in what musicologist David Benjamin Levy calls a “symbolic contrapuntal union of the sacred and the profane.” The vocal soloists return to the first strophe of Schiller’s poem, and the music starts to rise to new heights of joyful energy. Though three slow sections intervene to delay this ascent — including a cadenza for the four soloists — nothing can stop the music from reaching a final state of ecstasy. After the last unison note in the orchestra, the journey is completed, and there is nothing left to say. 

— adapted from a note by Peter Laki 

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor at Bard College. 

Sung Texts

Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, “Choral” | Fourth Movement
by Ludwig van Beethoven
Text adapted from An die Freude (Ode to Joy) by Friedrich Schiller
English translation by Eric Sellen

BASS-BARITONE
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen,
Und freudenvollere.

O friends, not these sounds!
Let us sing more pleasant
And more joyful ones instead.

BASS-BARITONE & CHORUS
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum.
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Joy, beautiful divine spark,
Daughter of Paradise,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly One, into your sanctuary.
Your magic reunites what daily life
Has rigorously kept apart,
All men become brothers
Wherever your gentle wings abide.

SOLOISTS & CHORUS
Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen,
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen,
Mische seinen Jubel ein!
Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!
Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund.

Freude trinken alle Wesen
An den Brüsten der Natur,
Alle Guten, alle Bösen
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod,
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.

Anyone who has been greatly fortunate
To be a true friend to a friend,
Each man who’s found a gracious wife,
Should rejoice with us!
Yes, anyone who can claim but a single soul
As his or her own in all the world!
But anyone who has known none of this, must steal away,
Weeping, from our company.

All beings drink of Joy
At Nature’s breasts,
All good creatures, all evil creatures
Follow her rosy path.
She has given us kisses and vines,
A friend loyal unto death,
Pleasure was given to the worm,
And the angel stands before God.

TENOR & CHORUS
Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen
Durch des Himmels prächt’gen Plan,
Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn,
Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.

Happily as the sun flies
Across the sky’s magnificent expanse,
Hurry, brothers, along your path, Joyfully, like a hero to the conquest.

CHORUS
Freude, schöner Götterfunken …

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt!
Brüder, überm Sternenzelt
Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen.

Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?
Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?
Such’ ihn überm Sternenzelt!
Über Sternen muss er wohnen.

Joy, beautiful divine spark …

Be embraced, you millions!
This kiss for the entire world!
Brothers, beyond the starry canopy
A loving Father must dwell.

Do you fall to your knees, you millions?
Do you sense the Creator, world?
Seek Him above the starry canopy!
Beyond the stars He must dwell..

SOLOISTS & CHORUS
Freude, Tochter aus Elysium,
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Seid umschlungen, Millionen! …
Freude, schöner Götterfunken …

Joy, daughter of Elysium,
Your magic reunites what daily life
Has rigorously kept apart,
All men become brothers
Wherever your gentle wings abide.

Be embraced, you millions! …
Joy, beautiful divine spark …