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Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 "Choral"

In his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven departed radically from existing models, including his own. True, one can still detect the outlines of the four-movement symphony of the late eighteenth century, and lingering features of Beethoven’s own “heroic” middle-period style, but the scale and ambition and expressive power—and sheer difficulty—of this music were new. The vast, turbulent first movement, for instance, from its hushed, expectant opening (conveying unforgettably the image of a world coalescing out of a cosmic void) to its resigned, tragic coda, has the heightened drama of a tone poem. The scherzo is unusually long and grim and driven (note the striking timpani solos), pervasively ironic, too, though the Trio seems to offer a glimpse of some distant Elysium. And the slow movement, though outwardly conventional in form (two themes, varied alternately), taps the profundest depths of feeling.

The addition of voices to a symphony was, of course, Beethoven’s most startling innovation in the Ninth, and it had an incalculable influence on later composers—Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Mahler. The literary source for the finale, Schiller’s ode An die Freude [to joy], of 1785, was close to Beethoven’s heart and had long been on his mind (he was no older than twenty when he first considered setting it to music). The opening of the finale, in which the music seems to finds its way gradually (first instrumentally, then vocally) toward its principal subject, the famous “Joy” theme, was particularly radical, though the whole movement is an astonishing and unique synthesis of formal principles (sonata, concerto, cantata, variations). It can even be heard as a four-movement symphony in microcosm—and this several-movements-in-one scheme influenced the structural thinking of many later Romantic composers.

The Ninth was thunderously received at its première, on May 7, 1824—such was Vienna’s respect for the aging composer—though most listeners were puzzled and disturbed by it, especially by its dizzying, seemingly contradictory extremes of expression and style. The Ninth is a whole world, incorporating tragedy and parody, tenderness and violence, the religious and the mundane, hymns and drinking songs, philosophy and kitsch. Ultimately, it is a sublime work—proof that symphonic music could tackle the weightiest philosophical and personal issues. To this day it remains central to our classical-music tradition, though no amount of overexposure can sap its power to startle and impress and move us.

Programme Note by Kevin Bazzana

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