Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: The Music That United Europe

Where did the canon break?

Before Beethoven, the classical symphony was purely an instrumental genre. Neither Mozart nor Haydn ever introduced a human voice into it. Beethoven took a radical step:

1. The limit of possibilities

By the finale of the Ninth Symphony the composer realized that instruments alone could no longer express the scale of his thought.

2. The voice as the absolute

To proclaim freedom and equality, the orchestra needed the living human word.

3. “Ode to Joy”

Beethoven took Friedrich Schiller’s poem with its great call, “Be embraced, you millions!”, and wove a chorus and soloists directly into the fabric of the orchestra.

4. A shock for his contemporaries

For 1824 this was audacious innovation. Turning a symphony into a monumental cantata was like combining a rap battle with an opera house today.

How Karajan turned the symphony into the anthem of the European Union

A hundred and fifty years later this music became a political symbol. In 1972 the Council of Europe chose the “Ode to Joy” theme as its anthem, but it had to be adapted. The greatest conductor of the twentieth century, Herbert von Karajan, took on the task.

He removed the German text

So that the anthem would belong to all of Europe and not only to Germany, Karajan dropped Schiller’s verses. Only the music remained, a universal language understood without translation.

He made it practical

Beethoven’s original finale lasts almost half an hour, requires a gigantic chorus and is difficult to perform. Karajan wrote three short, compact instrumental arrangements: for piano, for wind band and for symphony orchestra.

The idea of reconciliation

After the horrors of the Second World War, it was Karajan’s version of the Ninth Symphony that became the ideal sound embodiment of European unity, peace and the erasing of borders.