What can Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony’ teach us in 2024?

Today marks exactly 200 years since Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was performed for the first time. Perhaps no other piece of music has been used more for political purposes than the Ninth. She was played at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. It was performed again in that city on Christmas in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Leonard Bernstein then replaced the word “joy” in the choral finale with “freedom.” The European Union adopted the symphony’s ‘Ode to Joy’ motif as its anthem.

Ludwig van Beethoven might have been surprised by the political allure of his masterpiece. He was interested in politics, sure, but only because he was deeply interested in humanity. The story goes that he is Eroica initially wanted to dedicate to Napoleon – it would Bonaparte – but changed his mind after Napoleon renounced the ideals of the French Revolution and crowned himself emperor.

However, I do not believe that Beethoven was interested in everyday politics. He was not an activist. Instead, he was outspokenly political in the broadest sense of the word. He was concerned with moral behavior and the larger questions of good and evil that affected society as a whole. Freedom of thought and personal expression, which he associated with the rights and responsibilities of the individual, were especially important to him. He would have had no sympathy for the now widespread view of freedom as something essentially economic, something necessary for the functioning of markets.

The closest thing to a political statement in the Ninth is a phrase at the heart of the final movement, in which voices are heard for the first time ever in a symphony: “All men become brothers.” We now understand those words as an expression of hope rather than a confident statement, given the many historical exceptions to this idea; just think of the Jews under the Nazis and members of minorities in many parts of the world today. The number and scale of crises facing humanity severely test that hope. We have experienced many crises, but we don’t seem to have learned any lessons from them.

Emotion and intellect

I myself see the Ninth also in a different way. Music alone does not stand for anything but itself. The greatness of music, and therefore also of the Ninth Symphony, lies in the richness of its contrasts. Music never laughs or cries exclusively, it always laughs and cries at the same time. Unity created from opposites, that is Beethoven for me.

Music, if you study it carefully, is a life lesson. We can learn a lot from Beethoven, who is one of the greatest personalities in music history. He is the master of bringing together emotion and intellect. When listening to Beethoven you should be able to structure your feelings and feel the structure emotionally: a fantastic lesson for life! When we are in love, for example, we lose our 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 always has to do with the soul.

Therefore, music is metaphysical, even though the means of expression is purely and solely physical: sound. It is precisely that permanent coexistence of a metaphysical message and physical means that constitutes the power of music. That is also why when we try to describe music with words, we can only express our reactions to it and not the music itself.

Courage

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 praise its visionary message. It is also one of the most revolutionary works by a revolutionary composer. Beethoven liberated music from the harmony and structure conventions prevalent in his time. Sometimes I feel in his late work the will to break through all signs of continuity.

I am reminded of the wonderful words of the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci in 1929, when Benito Mussolini was in control of Italy. “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 live, there is hope. I still try to take Gramsci’s words to heart, even if I don’t always succeed.

Everything indicates that Beethoven was courageous. I think courage is an essential quality to have Ninth to understand and certainly to implement them. One could paraphrase much of Beethoven’s work in the spirit of Gramsci by saying that suffering is inevitable, but the courage to endure it makes life worth living.

_{© The New York Times}