Would Beethoven really have sung the praises of the European Union?
The EU uses Ode to Joy not as a lover’s knot but to bind disparate cultures and nations under one identity
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was performed at the Proms on Sunday, on this occasion in its proper context, the final movement of his Ninth Symphony, also known as the Choral. It was the second outing of the festival for this magnificent theme. On the opening night, the pianist Igor Levit played Liszt’s transcription of the Ode as an encore in what was taken (and was intended) to be a political statement about Brexit. To make sure we got the message, Levit was wearing a European Union pin in his lapel.
On Sunday, a small group of promenaders tentatively flourished EU flags, to the evident consternation of the stewards. The Proms are, after all, run by the BBC, which is supposed to show balance on what is the most important issue of the moment. They must not become a political platform.
But it is hard to get away from politics when it comes to Beethoven’s Choral symphony. Its setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem An die Freude has been appropriated by myriad causes, all claiming to share its idealised vision of the brotherhood of man. Hitler greatly admired its Teutonic triumphalism, using it to open the Berlin Olympics in 1936. He is also said to have had Wilhelm Furtwängler conduct it at his birthday concerts in 1937 and 1942. Ian Smith made it Rhodesia’s national anthem.
Ode to Joy was played at Emmanuel Macron’s victory rally after the French presidential elections; and a few weeks ago, at the G20 summit in Hamburg, world leaders were regaled with a performance of the Ninth which a German government spokesman said represented “a hymn to humanity, peace and international understanding”. It has, in other words, been used as a musical symbol of nationalism and of globalism, of colonialism and of freedom. Today it is best known as the anthem of the EU, hence the controversy over Levit’s rendition at the Proms.
There is a certain irony in adopting a piece that is so manifestly German to represent the hopes and aspirations of a continent that was twice in the 20th century dragged into war by Germany and which is, once again, dominated by Germany. The point, I imagine, is to emphasise the universality of Beethoven’s stupendous work – one that transcends nations and seeks to knock down barriers between peoples. But that is not how it would necessarily have looked at the time of its composition; and I am not sure that Beethoven, who took umbrage at Napoleon Bonaparte’s imperialist proclivities, would approve of its use to aggrandise a supranational body such as the EU.
As an anthem, the Ode to Joy is one of the trappings of an embryonic superstate. It was to have been an official emblem of the EU under the proposed European Constitution that was junked after being rejected by the French in a referendum. The Treaty of Lisbon, which took its place, was shorn of such symbols of nationhood but still reflected the EU’S federalist ambitions. Indeed, 16 nations signed a declaration formally recognising the proposed symbols; and, since 2008, the anthem has rung out in the European parliament after elections and at formal sittings.
Playing the Ode to Joy at EU events, therefore, is not about expressing a commitment to peace and fraternal love; it is primarily designed to bind together disparate European nations and their cultures under one identity. Arguably, in view of continental Europe’s recent history of carnage and calamity, that is no bad thing. But it is not a road that the British ever wanted to go down.
Even many who voted to remain in the EU did so because they feared the economic disruption of leaving rather than because they embraced the idea of a common European character. The positive case for membership was rarely made during the referendum by Remainers. They knew that any hint that Britain may become more deeply integrated in Europe would be rejected by voters. It is true that we opted out of the euro and the borderless Schengen system; but a vote to remain would have revived pressure to do both. Moreover, the Lisbon Treaty empowered the EU to encroach further on the most fundamental aspect of national sovereignty, namely the justice system. We were being drawn in, like it or not. And it turned out that we did not.
Which is why Cabinet quarrels over whether a transition should last two years or three are irrelevant (unless they are proxies for staying or departing, which is always possible). Since we have had a democratic vote to leave, they are as pointless as the wars between the Big Endians and the Little Endians in Gulliver’s Travels. Brexit – or, more accurately, a return to national independence – will be a permanent condition, so it does not matter whether it is completed inside two or three years so long as we get there in the end. To my mind, this could best be done by joining the European Economic Area on a temporary basis; but if a bespoke deal can be negotiated all well and good.
But please, let’s not lose sight of what this whole process was supposed to be about. It is depressing to watch the cause of national sovereignty descend into an enervating row about chlorine-washed chickens or migrant fruit pickers. This was about making a reluctant, but definitive, breach with the emerging state we were always assured the EU would not become: one with a single currency, a central bank, no frontiers, a supreme court, a police force and judicial system, its own foreign policy and an embryonic European army. It is that long-term prospect which many of the 17 million voted Leave to avoid, not to damage our alliances and trading relationships with our closest neighbours. It had nothing to do with being antieuropean.
The fact that the EU is a collection of democracies does not detract from the reality that it is a profoundly undemocratic institution. All those brandishing their EU flags in time to the Ode to Joy should consider that even if this agglomeration of erstwhile enemies is, by definition, a better arrangement than continental warfare, the framework within which it operates is centralist and unaccountable. The British, with a different culture and a historic love of liberty, never warmed to this aspect of the EU. And neither, I suspect, would Beethoven.