Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is based on a simple musical theme, yet it has magic beyond words! Not only grabs the heart, but its message represents everything humanity should stand and fight for! This article will uncover both the poem and the music.
Ode to Joy
The Ode to Joy (An die Freude) is an ode composed by the German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller in the summer of 1785 and published the following year in the magazine Thalia. A slightly revised version was published in 1808, changing two lines of the first stanza and removed the last one.
The poem in the first version was composed of 9 stanzas of eight lines each and then reduced to 8 in the second version. Each verse is followed by a 4-line refrain, which is characterized as “chorus.”
It is well known throughout the World for having been used by Ludwig van Beethoven as a text of the choral part of the fourth and final movement of his Ninth Symphony. The theme composed by Beethoven (but without the words of Schiller) was adopted as the Hymn of Europe by the Council of Europe in 1972, and later by the European Union.
What is the concept behind Schiller’s Ode to Joy?
With great pathos the ode describes the typically romantic ideal of a society of men equally bound together by bonds of joy and universal friendship. This concept is experienced as a true “return” to the divine dimension of the human being, idealized in Ancient Greece. As the musicologist Luigi Magnani wrote:
“The new kingdom, cherished by the romantics as a new golden age, if it meant the affirmation of freedom and human fraternity, the exaltation of all the values of the spirit, nevertheless appeared as a return to the ideals of ancient Greece. The widespread humanism, aiming at the re-conquest of the integrity of man, placed Greek poets, philosophers, and tragedians as supreme models and called for the advent of the “state of nature.” They were not intended as primitive savage barbarism, but as the mythical “Arcadia” in which the deified nature was identified with the ideal and in which man, in full agreement with society, could have implemented that harmony of spirits which, for the poet of Hyperion, would have marked the beginning “of a new history of the world”, of a renewal of humanity.”
Ode to Joy – as Beethoven’s music
Beethoven has been considered the last of the classical composers and the first of the romantic composers. He was, without a doubt, the architect of a great stylistic transformation in the history of music.
|Related: Was Beethoven Classical or Romantic era composer?
In 1793, at the age of 23, Beethoven discovered the work of the German writer and from that moment he expressed his inspiration and desire to put it in music. In 1817 the Philharmonic Society of London commissioned the composition of the symphony (the one later was to be known as the Ninth Symphony). Beethoven began composing it in Vienna in 1818 and finished its composition in early 1824. However, both the choral part and the symphony notes have sources to date them at earlier time in Beethoven’s career, showing that the composer had been working on the piece time and again.
The yearning for equality, fraternity, and freedom in German culture had been expressed three years before the French revolution, in 1786, when Friedrich Schiller published Ode to Joy. Schiller was part of the generation of Sturm und Drang (‘Storm and Drive <or stress>), a proto-Romantic movement that claimed those values through the arts.
On the 7th of May of 1824, ten years after the Eighth Symphony, Beethoven presented at the Theater of the Imperial Court of Vienna his Ninth Symphony in D minor, Op 125 -later known as “Choral.” The fourth, last movement conceived to be performed by a choir and soloists based on the Ode to Joy!
What is the story behind the adoption of Ode to Joy as a European Union Anthem?
In 1971, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (not to be confused with the Council of the European Union) decided to propose the adoption of the prelude of the Ode to Joy of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a hymn, taking the suggestion made by the Austrian count Richard Nikolaus Graf von Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1955. Beethoven was generally seen as the best choice for a European anthem. On January 19, 1972, the Council of Europe finally announced the election of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy as a European anthem.
Herbert von Karajan, one of the famous contemporary conductors, agreed to a request from the Council of the European Union to write three instrumental arrangements for solo piano, wind, and symphony orchestra. With this it became official in 1985 as the Hymn of the European Union after the approval of the heads of State and Government of the EU – being played for the first time officially on May 29 of that same year.
The anthem of the European Union, officially European Anthem, is one of the four official symbols of the European Union.
This anthem, according to the European Union, does not replace the national anthems of the EU countries, but celebrates the values they all share.
Lyrics of Ode to Joy in the Ninth Symphony
Oh friends, not these sounds!
Let us instead strike up more pleasing
and more joyful ones!
Joy!
Joy!
Joy, beautiful spark of divinity,
Daughter from Elysium,
We enter, burning with fervour,
heavenly being, your sanctuary!
Your magic brings together
what custom has sternly divided.
All men shall become brothers,
wherever your gentle wings hover.
Whoever has been lucky enough
to become a friend to a friend,
Whoever has found a beloved wife,
let him join our songs of praise!
Yes, and anyone who can call one soul
his own on this earth!
Any who cannot, let them slink away
from this gathering in tears!
Every creature drinks in joy
at nature’s breast;
Good and Evil alike
follow her trail of roses.
She gives us kisses and wine,
a true friend, even in death;
Even the worm was given desire,
and the cherub stands before God.
Gladly, just as His suns hurtle
through the glorious universe,
So you, brothers, should run your course,
joyfully, like a conquering hero.
Be embraced, you millions!
This kiss is for the whole world!
Brothers, above the canopy of stars
must dwell a loving father.
Do you bow down before Him, you millions?
Do you sense your Creator, O world?
Seek Him above the canopy of stars!
He must dwell beyond the stars.
Instruments played in Ode to Joy
The final movement of the Ninth Symphony is approximately 18 minutes long and is in D minor. It is played by the following instruments.
Woodwinds
Piccolo (fourth movement only)
2 Flutes
2 Oboes
2 Clarinets in A, B♭ and C
2 Bassoons
Contrabassoon (fourth movement only)
Brass
4 Horns
2 Trumpets
3 Trombones
Percussion
Timpani
Bass drum (fourth movement only)
Triangle (fourth movement only)
Cymbals (fourth movement only)
Voices (fourth movement only)
Soprano solo
Alto solo
Tenor solo
Baritone
Choir
Strings
Violins I-II
Violas
Cellos
Double basses
