Unequivocally. The. Greatest. Work. Of. Art. Of. All. Time.
The first sentence of my senior year English lit term paper (which I lightly titled Ludwig van Beethoven : Symphony 9 in D minor, Opus 125, the "Choral" : The Celebration of the Fraternity of Mankind : An Historical Outlook and Critical Analysis of Beethoven's Greatest Work - and no, I am not kidding) reads ~
Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in D minor, the "Choral," his one hundred and twenty-fifth work, is and will always remain his greatest, most monumental gift to all mankind.
The first sketches of what were to eventually become the first movement of the Ninth Symphony appear on loose leaves written during the last months of 1817 and the first months of 1818 I went on to write in the first few paragraphs. In typical Beethoven fashion (he constantly re-wrote and re-worked music on scraps of paper or the walls of wherever he happened to be living at the time) he was unhappy with and unconvinced of the rightness of the choral finale even after the first performance, and he meant to write a fresh fourth movement - one without voices. Thankfully he never followed through.
There is a quote pulled out of the pages and pages and pages I scrawled for my lit professor (who was herself - as it turned out - an ardent admirer of Beethoven) that I noticed re-reading this tonight ~
"Of all single works of art, of all passages in a work of art, the first subject of the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has had the deepest and most profound influence on later music."
It begins quietly. Inaudibly in fact. Pianissimo fifths, subdominant and dominant in the key of D minor. Gradually they quicken. And build. And pile into a colossal wave of a descending D minor triad - the most powerful and suspenseful opening of any piece of music ever written.
And so on. And so on I write. I scrawled notes in the margins of the Kalmus score I used to study the themes and tempos and orchestrations and counterpoint that Beethoven wove in this most intrinsic work of art some of the pages now fragile and torn. I would sit in my bedroom headphones on following along to the music with the score flipping the pages furiously during the passages of quick tempo. My dad had a recording on CD that I borrowed and never gave back of Zubin Mehta conducting the New York Philharmonic in which I was convinced was the perfect performance and no other even came close to comparing (I am still convinced of that to this day).
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I was eighteen. I'd be curious to see - if I rewrote this paper now - how my perspective would change. Not in the rightness of my contention that it is and will always remain the greatest work of art in all of history. But more so my analysis - not so much of the theory and counterpoint of the work - but of the background to the work (of which I did not touch in my senior year of high school). Snippets that were brought up in that (albeit, somewhat bizarre) trailer. About how in 1814 Beethoven's deafness fully fell on him and in those following years - could anyone imagine a greater loneliness?
Beethoven was shunned. He was scoffed at and ridiculed. He was an oaf at times. He was also more passionate than any I can imagine (um, just take one listen to his Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor "Quasi una fantasia"). He loved women deeply (at least one in particular all the way up to his death - I would refer you back to that sonata which was written for her) but none returned the sentiment. And not at all least he - a composer, arguably the greatest composer of all time ... went deaf.
Why - with so much despair - did he not just withdraw the final ounce within himself? Concede to his deafness given all that he had already composed? Simple. He said it himself to his most prolific student (Carl Czerny, who went on to become a very accomplished pianist himself) ~
"I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must [get] out; that is the reason why I compose."
He was not finished.
From out of the depths of his despair he created this symphony which is likely more recognizable to more people on this planet than any other piece of music ever written, recorded or performed. A piece of music that exudes every conceivable human emotion - from the deepest hopelessness to the most abundant joy and exuberance. It resounds with Schiller's words of bringing together all of mankind in hope (perhaps and not coincidentally the official antonym for dispair) and a kinship that strikes something deep and profound within all of us. We rise up (metaphorically, even) as the fourth movement - Presto allegro ma non troppo - comes to a crashing finale and the final words are sung fortissimo at the top of the chorus' lungs ~
"Freude schöner Götterfunken!"
(translated "Joy, beautiful spark of God!")
It is of things like that I would be interested in re-examining - attempting not to bias it too much with my own personal saga of sorts but at least to dig deeper (if only for myself) into more of the meaning of this - Beethoven's greatest work.
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And lastly - an interesting and wholly modern bit about the Ninth: when the compact disc was being designed, there were two competing designs - one from Philips and the other from Sony. Both companies disputed each other over what should be the diameter of the disc. But someone at Philips argued - and ultimately prevailed - that the disc should be able to contain a single performance of Beethoven's Ninth (the longest known recording was seventy-four minutes by Wilhelm Fürtwangler of which I will not get into mainly because Fürtwangler's interpretations were not true to Beethoven's metronome markings but I digress), thus requiring a final 12cm diameter, the standard used today (and they hold exactly seventy-four minutes of music).
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