Why do certain music works become the most performed in music halls of the world? To think about it, the list of such classical compositions is not that long considering the scale of the planet. So what made them cross the numerous borders and penetrate into so different cultures of the world? Let’s see how this happened at the example of one of world’s most well-known compositions to date – Beethoven’s SymphonyNo.9.
Since the bright premiere night of the symphony in Vienna in 1824, with Beethoven’s own rare appearance on the stage, the sounds of composer’s greatest work have been so widespread that there is hardly any hall – big or small – where it wasn’t performed. The symphony is known as ‘choral’ due to the vocals added to it: the final movement contains words from the poem by Friedrich Schiller “Ode to Joy”. This made a big novelty in classical music and made Beethoven (who was almost deaf at that time, by the way) the first composer to use voice in a symphony. Some experts criticized him for that but in the end many outstanding composers to come were deeply influenced by this work – Brahms, Bruckner, Dvořák, to name some.
The symphony became so iconic that a lot was measured by it. Just take the regular CD that was designed in such a way that it could be enough to hold the complete recording of the 9th.
Today, the 9th voices sound all over the world, words sung by so many different people from different cultures. Beethoven’s masterpiece is not just a symphony, it can be literally called an Ode to Joy in so many ways. The ‘ode’ used to sound as the Olympic Games anthem, it’s the Anthem of European Union and it’s been more than popular in Japan until now, sounding at all major symbolic events.
It’s something that’s already universal, no matter where it came from. The music legacy of humanity.
Since the bright premiere night of the symphony in Vienna in 1824, with Beethoven’s own rare appearance on the stage, the sounds of composer’s greatest work have been so widespread that there is hardly any hall – big or small – where it wasn’t performed. The symphony is known as ‘choral’ due to the vocals added to it: the final movement contains words from the poem by Friedrich Schiller “Ode to Joy”. This made a big novelty in classical music and made Beethoven (who was almost deaf at that time, by the way) the first composer to use voice in a symphony. Some experts criticized him for that but in the end many outstanding composers to come were deeply influenced by this work – Brahms, Bruckner, Dvořák, to name some.
The symphony became so iconic that a lot was measured by it. Just take the regular CD that was designed in such a way that it could be enough to hold the complete recording of the 9th.
Today, the 9th voices sound all over the world, words sung by so many different people from different cultures. Beethoven’s masterpiece is not just a symphony, it can be literally called an Ode to Joy in so many ways. The ‘ode’ used to sound as the Olympic Games anthem, it’s the Anthem of European Union and it’s been more than popular in Japan until now, sounding at all major symbolic events.
It’s something that’s already universal, no matter where it came from. The music legacy of humanity.
