The Ninth Symphony: Beethoven's Great Gift to Humanity- Part 5
In part 4, we heard the Ode to Joy theme presented, tested, proven, and celebrated, and then suddenly disrupted by a return to the opening dissonance of the movement. We asked what was lacking. What had we missed? Well, there is a chorus and four soloists waiting to sing! It was a big deal to introduce singing into a symphony. It had never been done before, and the new additions to the orchestra need to be properly introduced.
After the dissonance, a baritone voice sings a recitative, that compresses the entire introduction, with all of its dissonances, quotes from the symphony, and recitative-like sections into one short recitative for voice. This time it does have words, and they are by Beethoven, not Schiller.
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen,
und freudenvollere.
Freude
Oh friends, not these sounds!
Let us instead strike up more pleasing
and more joyful ones!
Joy!
For the first time, we hear the first verse of the Ode to Joy with the words. Beethoven then proceeds to another set of variations, as he intones the first three verses of the poem, which we include, with the words, in the video.
Suddenly, there is another drastic disruption. We will address that in part 6.