Was it the Ode to Freedom?

15 December 2024

With his ears and his general health failing, Beethoven is said to have composed much of his famous 9^th Symphony on a piano with sawed-off legs, kneeling on the wooden floor with his ear near the boards so he could feel, as much as hear, the sounds he was fitting together.

But maybe by that time—like many musicians—Beethoven could hear the music anyway, playing in his mind: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vxZUnClmZnE

This thundering end to Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, called the Ode to Joy, was sung in Germany in 1989 to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. A Japanese choir of 10,000 sings it every year in Osaka. It’s a worldwide favorite.

Beethoven’s song began as a poem by Schiller that was originally called the “Ode to Freedom.” So it’s no surprise that (in spite of anything the words say) Beethoven’s version is known around the world as an anthem that declares the triumph of the human spirit over oppression.

We can only guess what would have become of all this joy if Beethoven had given up before he finished composing it. His ears gave out completely by the time it was performed. In fact, historians invite us to be sad that he never heard it.

But he must have heard it all, to make it so real for the rest of us. It must have been there all along in the world of his own imagination.