Ode to Joy - Beethoven - the lost 6 1/2 minutes

The Ode to Joy is quite long so [apart from snippets from the Choral part itself] it seems that the first
casualty is the 6 1/2 minute "introduction to the Singers" in the 4th movement. It seems, as a consequence,
that this introduction gets discarded as "unimportant". For example the version at the Nagano Olympics
being sung at 5 places around the world at the same time did not include this introduction.

Well here is my slant on this. To me, this introduction has great meaning [as explained below] and is vital
to the whole structure of the 9th.

In saying this, I am unaware of any composer who has done this "reversion" to earlier movements [and as
such perhaps to earlier symphonies]. In this introduction Beethoven performs multiple "interlaces" between
the first three movements of the 9th and the emerging [sometimes furtive, sometimes forte] Ode to Joy.

And in my humble opinion this is totally brilliant, but it seems to have escaped everyone's radar. We know
Beethoven decided after Symphony #2 that he was not pleased with his "career path", and after writing a
more powerful #3 and about to name it after Napoleon, he then screwed the Title Page up in disgust when
Napoleon became "just another dictator".

He then delved in death [it is said] with #5, nature in #6 etc but it seems to be agreed that the 9th was to be
the culmination of his works, and to some extent "putting down" his other Symphonies in favour of a
childlike [see Bernstein interview] reversion to "all things bright and beautiful", both in nature AND
mankind, even if mankind had not been kind to Beethoven.

To me the first three movements of the 9th are sort of "look alikes" to the other Symphonies, as if to say
"this is the path I have been travelling, but in lots of ways it was all just red herrings to distract me, and now
I am back on mission".

But in the 4th movement [please see my video] he starts with exactly the same "Fanfare" which he repeats 6
1/2 minutes later, at the start of the Choral section [which is where most videos of the 9th start]. However
to me there is great importance in this "prelude" 6 1/2 minutes.

In the first 2 minutes all of the earlier movements seem to try to put him off his Ode to Joy ideas, but
"fragments" of Ode to Joy keep driving the demons back. Then he fully tests the water with first continuous
Ode to Joy but almost inaudible. At 5 minutes he seems to say the coast is clear and the orchestra goes full
throttle, a sort of GO sign for the singers to do the same, once the fanfare fires the starting gun as it were.

And here's the catch. I first heard the 9th in 1974, after being a fan of 5th 6th and 7th, and at first I was not
impressed. But it grew on me every time I played it, albeit I never detected what I report hereabove. But in
March 1977, two great "Joys to My World" coincided with the birth of my first child and the Royal Albert
Hall concert series over that full week to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Beethoven's death, and I
was dead lucky on 13th March to arrive at the Albert Hall, after a joyous day at the hospital at Euston, just
in time for the 9th [after missing the 8th, before interval], managing to "snag" a prime seat by just milling
around the crowd at interval [tickets had been sold out weeks before].

Anyway, it was as if I was listening to the 9th for the first time. I am not sure if the conductor emphasised
this aspect or it was my heightened euphoria of getting both a son and Beethoven in the one day, but this
aspect was clear as a bell to me [as if struck by a diamond bullet, to use Col Kurtz terminology].

So from that time forth I have always valued the "lost 6 1/2 minutes" as an integral part of the Symphony,
and in fact the glue that ties the latter to the former. And I should also mention [please see my video with
the words of Ode to Joy] that while Ode to Joy was written by Schiller, Beethoven provides the first 4 lines
as if to verify the casting out of the old demons and getting back to a simplistic view of what is really
important, per:

Oh friends, not these tunes!
Rather let us sing more
cheerful and more joyful ones.
Joy! Joy!

I don't think there can much doubt as to what Beethoven had in mind.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Ode
• to
• Joy
• Beethoven
• 9th
• Symphony
• ninth

[Ascaidh]

It amazes me to read all of the fights in the comments. Concidering the music.... I gather people failed to understand?

[wongadonga]

@Ascaidh

yes indeed, I tell it above as I clearly saw it back in 1977 at RAH and all peices fit, especially the "OK dudes let's forget all I've done here [and probably 1 to 8 as well] because this will knock your socks off".

why else would he add that to Schiller's words of Hallelujah?

the Baffled King composing Hallelujah - Cohen

[BorisGodunov]

Beethoven had to "recap" the first three movements because the last movement is not thematically related to them in any way, which was unheard of in symphonic writing at the time. It has been argued that while the 9th is one of the greatest works of Western art, it's actually not a very good "symphony," precisely because the finale fails to resolve the symphony's thematic material introduced in the first movement. The finale is its own creature, standing apart from the rest.

[wongadonga]

@BorisGodunov

not a very good "symphony," precisely because the finale fails to resolve the symphony's thematic material

---------------------

well according to YOU as a Politically Correct Dude

but Beethoven was NOT PC and that is where you fail

eg he deliberatly sought to offend the PCs then and now by juxtaposition of slow movement

[BorisGodunov]

@wongadonga How do I "fail" by pointing out something that you just admitted was likely fully realized by Beethoven? How is it "PC" to note something that Beethoven himself would have likely acknowledged, that the 9th's finale does not resolve the thematic material of the symphony? That doesn't in any way detract from the musical majesty of the movement, any more than it does to point out the same thematic "shortcomings" of Tchaikovsky's symphonies, which also don't do thematic development.

[wongadonga]

@BorisGodunov

Dude, get off your "thematic" PRONK and talk to this:

friends, not these tunes

let us raise our voices in

more pleasing and more

joyous sounds

and this was NOT Schiller

[crocfme]

This was never 'lost' to me. Listenning to part of a symphony is the same as watching part of a movie, particularly so in the works of Beethoven who always expressed a mood or event in precise order in his music.

[Babyhowdy233]

THANK YOU so much for posting this!!!

I seriously haven't heard this in over twenty years, not since I took my university class in Music Theory! It surely remains one of the sterling achievements in the history of Music!!

[MEMBRA1N]

Hey guys check out my orchestra its called Vast Universe. I just finished it yesterday. Here's the URL tell me what you think!

watch?v=afCA261oIJ0

[soccerhawkins]

I'm only a listener, not an expert. I never noticed the lack of relationshipo between the choral movement and the rest of the symphony...just luxuriated in the whole thing everytime I heard it

[Garpinator]

@Garpinator Sorry, that should have been "spark". Note to self: Use spell checker.

[Garpinator]

@regg131 Beethoven became deaf during his composing career. By the time he premiered this Symphony, he could no longer hear the applause of the audience and had to be turned around by one of his musicians in order to see and acknowledge it.

[Garpinator]

@nmmoise He means they get "lost" in 10 minute Youtube videos that require cropping. Please get off your high horse and enjoy the music already!