Ode to Joy

Beethoven's 575 worksheets for his final Ninth Symphony were auctioned for nearly 3.5 million. The highlight was his score for the final ch...

Beethoven8217;s 575 worksheets for his final Ninth Symphony were auctioned for nearly 3.5 million. The highlight was his score for the final choral movement, Ode to Joy, the anthem of the European Union since the 1980s. Beethoven wrote this in 1824 after he had gone deaf but he said he could hear it all in his head. Friedrich von Schiller wrote Ode to Joy in 1785 in a country cottage in Loschwitz near Dresden. Fascinated by these verses for thirty years, Beethoven had long resolved to set them to music in a worthy manner. It came as a final glorious burst of sound in the revolutionary Ninth, a symphony premiered in Vienna on May 7, 1824. The Ninth, say experts, broke new musical ground in the way it played with scale and introduced choral forces for the first time into the structure of a symphony.

When first played, the Ninth, especially Ode to Joy, made not only the audience but also members of the hardboiled orchestra weep with emotion. The way Beethoven set it, the human voice broke the limits of 8220;pure music8221; and swept all the instruments along, one by one, into a tide of glorious sound. For a century-and-a-half after, An die Freude its German name has stirred very deep feelings in listeners. I know it knocked me sideways at age thirteen, when my father made me mug it up and my aunt first played the Berlin Phiharmoniker version conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Thereafter I have sat through furious debates between music-mad friends on who was the better conductor: Toscanini, Klemperer, Furtwangler, Bohm or Karajan. What makes Ode to Joy sublime, despite its later Nazi taint? Dazzling form, uplifting content. An Upanishadic seer could have written it! The first three movements seem to explore the world of Illusion 8212; the liberation of Europe from Napoleon, the rich merchants, the song and dance, are superficial fizzings distracting the hidden power of the soul from building a new Jerusalem right here on earth.

The fourth movement takes us into the realm of Truth, hidden in the human heart. It is 8216;Sat-chit-anand8217;, the true, blissful joy of realising God through living in harmony with each other: Freude, schoner Gotterfunken/Tochter aus Elysium/ Wir betreiten feuer-trunken,/ Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!/Deine Zauber binden wieder/Was die Mode streng geteilt;/Alle Menschen wirden Bruder,/Wo dein sanfter Flugel weilt. Joy, beautiful, divine spark/Daughter of Elysium. We enter, drunk with fire, O heavenly one, your holy shrine. Your magic once again bonds together what custom strictly divided. All Mankind become brothers where your gentle wings hold sway. At the end it says, Dieser Kuss der ganzen Welt! This kiss is for the whole world! As Indo-Pak noises resume, wish we8217;d play it, too.