Beethoven’s Ninth still spreads the joy
Shockingly, apparently not everyone is a fan of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
You know the one — it famously ends with the “Ode to Joy” chorus. The one that celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, that inspired the hymn “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” The first composition added to UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage list — alongside treasures such as the Gutenberg Bible.
Yet a certain Philip Hale summed up the work in an 1899 edition of the Boston Musical Record as follows: “The pages of stupid and hopelessly vulgar music! The unspeakable cheapness of the chief tune!” Ouch. No less an august personage than Giuseppe Verdi, composer of beloved operas “Aida” and “Rigoletto,” thumbed his nose at the work’s finale, calling the symphony “marvelous in its first three movements, very badly set in the last.”
He kept on throwing shade at Beethoven, in a letter to a friend: “It will be an easy task to write as badly for voices as is done in the last movement.” As they say, everyone’s a critic. Of course, that last movement despised by Verdi with the soaring melody Hale called “cheap” is why the Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 — to be formal — transcended the classical-music world to become a cultural touchstone.
The Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra will open its 25th-anniversary season with two performance of the great work Saturday and Sunday.
“It’s more than music; it stands for something,” says Eric Jacobsen, the Philharmonic’s music director. “It stands for what humans are capable of.”
The words say joy can bring together those who are divided and make all men brothers. They were taken from “Ode to Joy,” a poem by Friedrich Schiller.
Completed in 1824, the work marked the first time a composer of Beethoven’s stature used a chorus of voices in a symphony. The UCF Chorus and four soloists will perform with the Phil.
“The orchestra’s civic duty is to present a piece like this when the time is right,” Jacobsen says. “It feels timely now, not only for the Philharmonic but for the world.”
Chris Barton, the orchestra’s executive director, recalls using the roughly hourlong symphony to fuel a senior project in high school.
“I’m sorry to say now it was background music,” he says sheepishly. “I wrote an entire paper over the course of the symphony.”
Today, the work holds Barton’s attention — not just the finale but the three previous movements. Beethoven’s musical build-up makes the joyful conclusion that much more meaningful, he says.
“Until you’ve experienced everything before the end, until you arrive at that glorious moment…” Barton pauses as a smile crosses his face. “You just don’t know how that feels.”
Jacobsen says the Ninth — “so simple and yet so deep” — has earned its place in the classical-music pantheon.
“It’s a pillar of Western music, of Western art,” he says. “It’s one of the greatest creations of all time.”