Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was premiered exactly 200 years ago on Tuesday and has since become perhaps the work most likely to be adopted for political purposes.
It was played at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin; it was performed again in that city at Christmas 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Leonard Bernstein replaced the word “Joy” in the choral finale with “Freedom”; the European Union adopted the symphony’s “Ode to Joy” theme as its anthem. (These days, the Ninth is played in concert halls around the world in commemoration of the First. The classical music world loves anniversaries.)
Beethoven might have been surprised by the political appeal of his masterpiece.
He was interested in politics, but only because he had a deep interest in humanity. The story goes that he originally wanted to dedicate his “Eroica” symphony to Napoleon – it was to be called “Bonaparte” – but he changed his mind after Napoleon abandoned the ideals of the French Revolution and was crowned emperor.
However, I don’t believe that Beethoven was interested in everyday politics. He was not an activist.
On the contrary, he was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the term. He was interested in moral behavior and the broader questions of right and wrong that affected society as a whole. Freedom of thought and personal expression, which he associated with the rights and responsibilities of the individual, was particularly important to him. He would have had no sympathy for the now widely held idea that freedom is essentially economic and necessary for the functioning of markets.
The closest thing to a political statement in the Ninth is a phrase at the heart of the last movement, in which voices are heard for the first time in a symphony: “All men become brothers.” We now understand this more as an expression of hope than as a confident statement, given the many exceptions to this sentiment, including Jews under Nazism and members of minorities in many parts of the world. The quantity and scale of crises facing humanity severely test this hope. We have experienced many crises before, but we do not seem to learn from them.
I also see the Ninth in another way. The music itself represents nothing other than itself. The greatness of the music, and of the Ninth Symphony, lies in the richness of its contrasts. Music is never just about laughing or crying; he always laughs and cries at the same time. Creating unity from contradictions is Beethoven for me.
Music, if you study it properly, is a life lesson. We have much to learn from Beethoven, who was, of course, one of the strongest personalities in the history of music. He is the master of the union of emotion and intellect. With Beethoven you have to be able to structure your feelings and feel the structure emotionally – a fantastic life lesson! When you are in love, you lose all sense of discipline. Music doesn’t allow that.
But music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different times. It can be poetic, philosophical, sensual or mathematical, but it must have something to do with the soul.
It is therefore metaphysical – but the means of expression is purely and exclusively physical: sound. It is precisely this permanent coexistence of the metaphysical message by physical means that is the strength of music. This is also why when we try to describe music in words, all we can do is express our reactions, not capture the music itself.
The Ninth Symphony is one of the most important works of art in Western culture. Some experts call it the greatest symphony ever written, and many commentators praise its visionary message. It is also one of the most revolutionary works by a composer primarily defined by the revolutionary nature of his works. Beethoven freed music from the dominant conventions of harmony and structure. Sometimes I sense in his late works a desire to break any trace of continuity.
The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci said a wonderful thing in 1929, when Benito Mussolini had Italy under his thumb. “My mind is pessimistic, but my will is optimistic,” he wrote to a friend from prison. I think he meant that as long as we are alive, we have hope. I still try today to take Gramsci’s words to heart, even if it is not always successful.
By all accounts, Beethoven was courageous, and I consider courage to be an essential quality for understanding, let alone interpreting, the Ninth. One could paraphrase much of Beethoven’s work in the spirit of Gramsci by saying that suffering is inevitable, but the courage to overcome it makes life worth living.
Daniel Barenboim is a pianist and conductor, co-founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and founder of the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin.
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