Now I know why I was hearing snippets of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on the radio Tuesday. It was the two-hundredth anniversary of its premiere. For two centuries now we humans have had this masterwork at our disposal. 

Yesterday I read an account of its creation on the Marginalian. I’d heard some of this before, but I didn’t know about Beethoven’s devotion to Schiller, whose “Ode to Joy” the symphony’s last movement celebrates, or the piece’s long gestation period. I like to think of the notes rattling around in the composer’s head as he took one of his long walks through Vienna. 

Beethoven insisted on conducting, though he was totally deaf by that point.  He was allowed to do so with the proviso that another conductor be present as a “backup.” This conductor instructed the musicians to look only at him. 

When the last notes sounded the audience at first fell silent, perhaps aware even then that they had witnessed not just a concert but a moment in history. And then, in the words of the Marginalian’s Maria Popova, “the gasping silence broke into a scream of applause. People leapt to their feet, waving their handkerchiefs and chanting his name. Beethoven, still facing the orchestra and still waving his arms to the delayed internal time of music only he could hear, noticed none of it, until Karoline Unger [the contralto soloist] stood up, took his arm, and gently turned him around.”

(Beethoven by Julian Schmid)