Ode to Joy
Saturday, September 26, 2009 8:30 PM

Christopher Wilkins, conductor
Orlando Opera Chorus & UCF Choir
Stella Zambalis, soprano
Susan Platts, mezzo-soprano
Yeghishe Manucharyan, tenor
Peter Van de Graaff, bass

Brahms: Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, op. 56a
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, op. 125, D minor (Choral)

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He couldn’t hear.  Of all people.  Not a thing.  And because Beethoven couldn’t hear, the thought of him conducting – let alone composing – was pathetic to most people.  And so to answer them he composed the 7th symphony.  Just try to imagine Beethoven standing on that podium holding that baton, his hands waving gracefully through the air.   And the orchestra in his mind was playing perfectly and the orchestra in front of him trying desperately just to keep up…  There is a story that in order to write his music Beethoven literally sawed the legs of his piano so that he could lay the body flat on the ground, and then he would lay down on the ground with his ear pressed to the floor and he would push the keys with his fingers in order to hear his music through the vibrations of the floor.

Mr. Holland’s Opus (1985)

In his final years Beethoven was stone cold deaf.  It is not easy to imagine the tragedy this circumstance must have been for this greatest of musicians.  Beethoven had written about his deafness more than 20 years earlier:  “How can I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection?  My misfortune is doubly painful to me… [for] I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished.”

And yet, what was the subject of his final symphony, the great 9^th symphony?  Joy!  It concludes with an ecstatic vision of how wonderful life can be, creating a musical picture of a love-filled world where “all creatures drink of joy.”  And in the penultimate movement – the third – he seems to offer a vision of heaven on earth, a kind of musical utopia.  And there’s even more to it than that.  In the 9^th symphony, Beethoven challenges all of us to live the life we dream of, beyond circumstance, beyond what life deals out.  Is there any more convincing proof that human beings can affect the quality of the day?

His achievement did not come easily.  He had begun sketching musical ideas for Schiller’s An die Freude (“To Joy”) more than thirty years earlier.  Even after the famous hymn finally took shape, he struggled to find the “musical motivation” necessary to introduce human voices into a symphony (for the first time in history).   In the end, he hit upon a brilliant idea:  that the first sung words should be his own, not Schiller’s.  He would address every human being within earshot:  “Friends, not these sounds!”  – not the music of battle, conflict, and hatred – “Rather, let us sing together more comforting and joyful tones.”  And then… the utopian hymn to joy.

Beethoven’s joy is hard won in another respect, too.  The 9^th symphony begins not with the sounds of jubilation heard in the finale, but at the opposite end of the expressive spectrum, with ominous trembles and shudders, music shrouded in mystery.  These dark musical clouds soon grow threatening, and are revealed to contain within them terrorizing thunder.  The opening phrase repeats several times with increasing energy, each time culminating in great explosive outbursts.  It all proves prophetic of the struggle to come.  The whole of the 9^th symphony follows this course, moving from trickle to torrent, from darkness to light.

Beethoven’s resources in the 9^th symphony are the most lavish and potent yet devised in orchestral music.  He greatly expands the orchestra from its usual size; his musical structures are enormous; his tempos and dynamics constantly shift from one extreme to another; and then there is that immense chorus.

It is as if Beethoven is acknowledging right from the outset that extraordinary measures are required to achieve great things.  To live beyond fashion – in Schiller’s words – we must break free from our “business-as-usual” approach to life.  If we do not, we run the risk of returning to our petty, self-interested, small-minded, squabbling selves.

With the 9^th symphony Beethoven had an instant hit, but the work was also immediately recognized as something more.  Ever since that extraordinary first performance in May 7, 1824, when Beethoven stood before his orchestra making the gestures of a conductor though he could not hear a note, this symphony has been universally recognized as a kind of mountaintop, as an unrepeatable achievement.  And it will probably always be thus.  There is only one Hamlet, one Sistine Chapel, and only one 9^th.  All composers writing a symphony since Beethoven’s 9^th have had to come to terms with its legacy and its reputation.

The young Johannes Brahms felt that pressure as much as anyone.  His self-conscious need to become “Beethoven’s successor” was partly the result of a public declaration made by his mentor Robert Schumann, who made exactly such a prediction in print.  Brahms delayed composition of his first symphony until well into his middle age for this reason.

The first orchestral music he published was not a symphony, but rather his Haydn Variations.  Although they were an extension of Beethoven’s use of variation form, the Haydn Variations did not bear any obvious relationship to any Beethoven symphonic work.  And although they were modest in ambition and slight in scale, they did bring fame and admiration to Brahms, ultimately paving the way for the confident (and Beethovenian) symphonies he did write many years later.

On the OPO’s opening night program, it is fitting that we perform two related monuments of the repertoire:  the last symphonic work by the greatest composer of the Classical era, and the first by the greatest symphonist of the Romantic age.  Like good dinner guests, they will go wonderfully together and have a great deal to say to each other.

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