Posted on 06/05/2019 9:35:54 AM PDT by Borges
It is a rare piece of music — any kind of music — that can bolster good as well as evil intentions. One classical work in particular has an uncanny, seductive power to become exactly what its fans want it to be.
When the Canadian Opera Company opened the doors to its new opera house in 2006, the gala concert included “Ode to Joy,” the last movement from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Music director Peter Oundjian has chosen the whole, 75-minute-long composition to cap and celebrate his 14 years with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on June 28, 29 and 30.
Adolf Hitler adored the Ninth Symphony. Musicians waiting for their deaths in Nazi concentration camps were ordered to play it, metaphorically twisting its closing call to universal brotherhood and joy into a terrifying, sneering parody of all that strives for light in a human soul.
More than four decades later, Leonard Bernstein conducted several performances to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, substituting the word “freedom” for “joy” in Friedrich Schiller’s 1785 poem to which Beethoven’s movement was set. And Emmanuel Macron chose this music as the backdrop for his victory speech after winning the French presidential election last year.
Western classical music usually thinks of itself as being apolitical. But the Ninth is political. Beethoven saw it as political when he wrote it in the early 1820s. And his fellow Germans, looking for a sense of identity, embraced it with fervour.
Beethoven’s Ninth became the musical flag of Germanness at a time when nationalism was a growing force in all of Europe. It also became a Romantic monument to the artist (Beethoven, in this case) as a special creature worthy of special treatment.
Franco-Argentine scholar Esteban Buch analyzed these intersections and the good-evil paradox in an insightful book, Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History. Buch argued that the Ninth was the right piece of music at the right time — socially, politically and aesthetically.
But from today’s perspective we know that unilateral calls to world brotherhood in joy have a flip side, which is tyranny. We appreciate now more than ever that joy is accessible to everyone only if some people are taking antidepressants.
We live in a time no more peaceful than Beethoven’s. Our conflicts today pit the great traditions and ways of thinking of the 19th century against a (hopefully) freer, more spontaneous, more shared, more inclusive 21st century.
We have the 19th-century ideal of strength in unity — expressed in the “Ode to Joy” — scraping up uneasily against a 21st-century ideal of strength in diversity. The change in perspective makes some people afraid and angry. It makes others hopeful and optimistic.
Until we see whether we can achieve a paradigm shift or whether we fall back into something like the genocidal chaos of the mid-20th century, I think we should press pause on Beethoven’s Ninth.
I, personally, would be satisfied to never hear it again.
Am I saying we should destroy an icon? Of course not. We should treat it as any other piece of fine art — and take time to appreciate how difficult it actually is to parse.
Besides, shouldn’t we be encouraging — and showcasing — Canadian composers who might be able to galvanize us into attention with something homegrown?
Beethoven’s Ninth has three long movements before the “Ode to Joy” finale, each filled with contrasts and discontinuities. The Ode itself shouts its message at us unrelentingly, insistently, sometimes more as a taunt than an exhortation.
Don’t we have enough shouts and taunts in our world? Let’s stash Beethoven’s musical rant down back up in the pantheon of musical treasures and give other works some ear time instead.
That song was absent from the novel.
Another notable change from the novel was Georgie being a policeman after Alex was released from prison after the Ludovico technique brainwash; in the book, Georgie was killed during a botched robbery while Alex was still in prison, and the policeman with Dim was Billyboy. (Alex also committed another murder while in prison; he killed a fellow inmate who tried to rape him.)
This is simply another attack against Christianity, because Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11). Christians having joy in their faith is an incitement to the heathen.
The only joy we see among the ungodly today is when an elderly man in a MAGA hat is knocked to the ground and threatened, as shown in the jolly video from the streets of London yesterday. Look at the faces of the bystanders and see evil joy.
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, especially the 4th movement, has been, is and most likely will forever remain mankind’s greatest musical expression. The music speaks for its self.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bgSOeGKifI
Canada 'complicit in race-based genocide' of indigenous women
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48503545
I would think this author should take up arms againt the genocide instead of fretting over whether Beethoven was a tad too idealistic.
Good grief ...now even music needs its PC credentials. This author should go reproduce himself and assume room temperature.
“Ode to Joy” has the distinction of bearing easy enough for a 6 year old to learn how to play on piano in a relatively short time, and make it sound like he’s been playing for a year already.
My, they do project, don’t they? Unity is now to be discouraged in place of the god Diversity, and anything alluding to it must be suppressed. This is not presented as an argument, it’s presented as an immutable principle. By an idiot.
Beethoven was certainly political, however - he famously tore up his dedication of the 3d Symphony when Napoleon declared himself Emperor. He’d mistaken Napoleon for a liberator. Quite a few Enlightenment believers did and would quickly find out differently.
Still, Schiller’s Ode isn’t to Unity, it’s to Joy. And it wasn’t expropriated by Hitler at all except for the fact that Hitler liked it. It has, however, been expropriated by the European Union as an anthem. I’m guessing old Ludwig would have torn that one up too but he wasn’t around to ask.
Obviously all of Canada’s other problems have been solved and they’re now down to this, eh?
So just because some
Miscreants like this timeless classical piece, it should be rejected? I don’t think so. These Leftists fools need to be horse whipped.
Hitler liked abortion too. Why the disparity?
Sacreligious folderol. Beethoven’s Ninth — particularly the Chorale — is the finest piece of music ever written. Bar none.
Beethoven did not write the libretto. It was derived from a poem — “An die Freude” (”Ode to Joy”) — by Friedrich Schiller in 1785. Beethoven adopted the sentiments of the poem to extoll a vision of a world united in brotherhood and the sheer splendor of life itself — the commonality of humanity. Just because the paltry humans of the early nineteenth century (and our own) cannot rise to the glorious vision in those words doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aspire to them.
It strikes me that this author is tired of being reminded of his own inadequacy, and is seeking to stifle the voices that prod his conscience.
The author is kind of treating Naziism like it was a normal (if bad) development or maybe even the ultimate expression of German culture, and not like it was a cancer, all the worst things in that society and period of time and circumstances that came together.
What an ignorant article. Beethoven was a famous “little d” democrat at a time of kings and emperors and aristocrats. He was a champion of personal liberty and immediately and violently turned against the dictator Napoleon as soon as Boneparte had himself declared emperor. The Allies adopted the opening of Beethoven’s 5th as their symbol. Unlike this ignoramus, they understood that Beethoven was a champion of freedom - not tyranny.
Hitler was also a fanatical anti smoker, loved extremely strict gun control and was vehemently opposed to state’s rights. :^)
> These fools have WAY to much time on their hands. <
I see it a bit differently. Many of today’s liberals are really fascists. And this was a probe: Let’s see if we can get a symphony banned for not being up to our PC standards.
Recall how Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” book recently got banned from many libraries. The complainers weren’t bored readers. They were fascists trying to control society.
And these guys are winning round after round.
Then there’s this...
Appalachian-Irish scholar Cletus D. Yokel analyzed these intersections and the good-evil paradox in an insightful book, Tupac’s “Thug’s Life”: A Political History. Yokel argued that Thug’s Life” was the right piece of music at the right time — socially, politically and aesthetically.
Music by R. Wagner is judged with the same nervous ambivalence by some. While others refuse to worry about it.
I.E., Ice Cream is ice cream, regardless of who’s making it.
Either you like this flavor or you have no use for it.
So don’t buy it.
How else would Ben & Jerry’s have survived?
There is nothing Nazi-like in Beethoven. I am tired of anti-western “thinkers” who see a proto-Nazi in every great German from the past.
Hitler liked dogs. I like dogs. Does that make me a Hitler wannabe?
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