From the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has served as a symbol of hope and unity for 200 years. Bronwen Everill examines the piece’s legacy through five key performances…
The Ninth Symphony bursts into life
Theater am Kärntnertor, Vienna, Austrian empire
7 May 1824
When Ludwig van Beethoven completed his Ninth Symphony in the early months of 1824, he gave voice to humanity’s desire to make order out of chaos, to overcome division, and to create joy through brotherhood. Over his lifetime, the wars and revolutions that shook Europe had transformed politics; now the composer wanted to offer a cultural transformation through his music.
Beethoven had first begun writing his last, great masterpiece – the world’s first choral symphony – after receiving a commission from London’s Philharmonic Society in the November of 1822. But although London had commissioned the work, admirers in Vienna published an open letter calling for Beethoven to premiere the symphony there instead.
Vienna was the ideal location for the piece’s first outing. As well as being familiar territory for the composer (he had lived there on and off for much of his adult life), the capital had also been the setting for the 1814–15 Congress of Vienna – the series of diplomatic meetings that had sought to create a lasting peace after the Napoleonic Wars. The symphony’s final movement – requiring the services of four vocal soloists and a full chorus – had been written to include words from Friedrich Schiller’s 1785 poem An die Freude (‘Ode to Joy’), and its message of “all men becoming brothers” thus felt fitting.
But despite the piece’s bold statements, the first performance was informal by modern standards. Vienna did not have its own concert hall in 1824, and Beethoven was instead restricted to using the modest Theater am Kärntnertor. Furthermore, many of the performers were amateurs rather than professionals, and there was only time for two full rehearsals before the symphony received its premiere on 7 May 1824.
The performance could have easily been a disaster, but when the final movement reached its conclusion, the theatre was filled with the sounds of applause – even if Beethoven did not initially realise it himself. According to violinist Joseph Böhm, the profoundly deaf composer (who had spent the evening on stage next to conductor Michael Umlauf) had to be turned around by one of the soloists to see the audience waving their handkerchiefs in celebration.
One London music journal reported that the new symphony would need “to be heard frequently in order to be duly appreciated” – and appreciated it certainly has been. In the 200 years since its debut, people all over the world have come together to perform its call for peace, its ode to the brotherhood of all humanity, and its celebration of freedom.
Americans unite on the eve of civil war
Odd Fellows’ Hall, New Orleans, United States
10 November 1859
The first US performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony took place in December 1824, a mere seven months after the piece’s Vienna premiere. In this period, it was typical for the country’s largely amateur orchestras and music societies to perform extracts – one movement of a symphony, for instance – or arrangements of the music for smaller chamber ensembles. Indeed, for the first few US performances of the Ninth, only the final movement and its setting of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy was heard.
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Interestingly, this was also the case 35 years later, when the final movement was performed in venues across the US as part of an International Schiller Festival marking the 100th anniversary of the poet’s birth. In a country that had welcomed more than a million German-speaking immigrants over the previous decade, the Württemberg-born writer remained an important cultural figure, and his call for brotherhood was well-received as fresh arrivals settled into their new home.
In New Orleans – which hosted a Schiller play, Schiller parade and ‘grand concert’ featuring settings of the writer’s poems to music – there was strong encouragement for people of all nationalities to join in. One newspaper noted that, “we hope to see at the festival this evening a mingling of the lovers of poetry and song of various races, and tongues, for they are no barriers to brotherhood”.
This warm-hearted sentiment, and the performance of Schiller’s Ode to Joy at Odd Fellows’ Hall, was not, however, open to the 13,385 people who were enslaved in New Orleans. And the message of peace in Schiller’s poems that Beethoven’s music hoped to capture would be shattered with the secession of the Southern states in late 1860 and early 1861, and the outbreak of the American Civil War soon after that.
At the end of the conflict – the bloodiest in the country’s history – the Ninth Symphony was supposed to be performed by the Philharmonic Society of New York on 29 April 1865. But the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln a fortnight earlier led the Philharmonic to change the programme at the last minute. Instead of the Ode to Joy, which the New York Times reported “would have been manifestly improper to have performed”, the orchestra instead played the sombre Funeral March from Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony after the first three movements of the Ninth.
WWI prisoners play Beethoven for their captors
Bandō Prisoner of War Camp, Shikoku, Empire of Japan
1 June 1918
In 1898, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered the construction of a new naval port in the Chinese bay of Jiaozhou. The territory next to the port, Qingdao, had been seized by the German empire as part of its 19th-century scramble for colonies, and the area was to be transformed into a formidable east Asian stronghold. But when the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914, Japan – allied with Britain – attacked the port and captured nearly 5,000 soldiers.
The men were subsequently taken to live in prisoner of war (PoW) camps across Japan but, surprisingly, were still allowed to indulge in their musical hobbies. This included teaching music lessons to Japanese troops and playing concerts as members of amateur orchestras and choirs. One of the most powerful concerts was undoubtedly that staged at the Bandō PoW Camp on the island of Shikoku in June 1918, when its resident orchestra played Beethoven’s Ninth.
Building their own instruments where none were available, and with a chorus made up entirely of men, the soldiers made every effort to perform the symphony in its entirety, and even produced a homemade concert programme. Then, when the war ended later that year, the Bandō PoWs performed the Ode to Joy again – for the general public – to celebrate peace.
The prisoners were repatriated the following year, but the Ninth remained, with its Tokyo premiere taking place in 1925. The symphony soon gained the nickname Daiku, meaning ‘Number Nine’, and Japanese orchestras began performing it to coincide with midnight on New Year’s Eve. The Daiku has since become a part of Japanese musical tradition, and at the annual performance in Osaka, the chorus is 10,000 singers strong.
Leonard Bernstein calls for freedom as the Berlin Wall falls
Schauspielhaus, East Berlin, German Democratic Republic
25 December 1989
The Ninth Symphony has been used time and again as a call for human brotherhood in times of revolution and conflict. But in 1989, the words were rewritten to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. When the colossal structure started to come down on 9 November, it was largely unexpected. The German city was reunited for the first time in decades, and the end of the Cold War looked imminent.
The conductor of the West German Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Justus Frantz, came up with an idea to put together an impromptu orchestra made up of musicians and singers from both sides of the Cold War divide. He approached the famed US conductor Leonard Bernstein to conduct a performance of the Ninth to celebrate the fact that Germans were again “brothers”. Bernstein was in London to conduct a performance of his operetta Candide, and asked several of the lead singers to perform the solos in the final movement.
They were joined by members of the Kirov Theatre, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris. The group were no amateurs, but they had had little time to rehearse between the inception of the idea in mid-November and the performance on Christmas Day. Reviewers noted as much, just as they had at the piece’s debut in Vienna. But Bernstein didn’t merely want to conduct the celebration of reunification – he wanted to commemorate it. He therefore decided to change the words of the chorus, with Freude (‘joy’) becoming Freiheit (‘freedom’).
Beethoven brings hope to the DRC
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
30 June 2010
Beethoven’s Ninth has long been a favourite of amateur orchestras, united in their aim of bringing people together through music. One such ensemble – the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste – was established in Kinshasa, capital of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC), in 1994. The orchestra’s founder and conductor, Armand Diangienda, had previously been a pilot, but decided to pursue his musical dreams after being laid off from his job.
Two years after Diangienda’s life-changing decision, however, the First Congo War began, culminating in the overthrow of the nation’s authoritarian ruler, Mobutu Sese Seko, in 1997. But the orchestra remained resilient throughout the conflict and the Second Congo War that followed.
Recalling the events years later, Diangienda claimed that “making music together [became] a compensation for lots of problems”. Beginning with just 12 amateur players, the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste eventually grew to comprise more than 200 members, including singers. As a result of the turmoil and hardship caused by the wars, members of the group were forced to make some of their own instruments and sheet music: violin strings were improvised from bicycle brake wire, and scores were meticulously copied out by hand.
In 2010, the orchestra put on an open-air performance of Beethoven’s Ninth to mark the 50th anniversary of the DRC’s independence from Belgium – a musical experience that inspired the ensemble’s concertmaster, Héritier Mayimbi Mbuangi, to become a composer himself. Mbuangi’s new solo piano piece, Kintuadi (‘Let’s Unite’), receives its premiere in May 2024, and is dedicated to the victims of the latest tensions between the DRC and Rwanda, which began in 2022.
Two hundred years after Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony entered the world, its message of peace lives on.
Bronwen Everill is a historian and fellow at Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. Her books include Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition (Harvard University Press, 2020)