Beethoven's Ninth
A Political History
Translated by Richard Miller
352 pages
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12 halftones, 16 musical examples
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6 x 9
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© 2003
Who hasn't been stirred by the strains of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? That's a good question, claims Esteban Buch. German nationalists and French republicans, communists and Catholics have all, in the course of history, embraced the piece. It was performed under the direction of Leonard Bernstein at a concert to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall, yet it also serves as a ghastly and ironic leitmotif in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Hitler celebrated his birthdays with it, and the government of Rhodesia made it their anthem. And played in German concentration camps by the imprisoned, it also figured prominently at Mitterand's 1981 investiture.
In his remarkable history of one of the most popular symphonic works of the modern period, Buch traces such complex and contradictory uses—and abuses—of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony since its premier in 1824. Buch shows that Beethoven consciously drew on the tradition of European political music, with its mix of sacred and profane, military and religious themes, when he composed his symphony. But while Beethoven obviously had his own political aspirations for the piece—he wanted it to make a statement about ideal power—he could not have had any idea of the antithetical political uses, nationalist and universalist, to which the Ninth Symphony has been put since its creation. Buch shows us how the symphony has been "deployed" throughout nearly two centuries, and in the course of this exploration offers what was described by one French reviewer as "a fundamental examination of the moral value of art." Sensitive and fascinating, this account of the tangled political existence of a symphony is a rare book that shows the life of an artwork through time, shifted and realigned with the currents of history.
In his remarkable history of one of the most popular symphonic works of the modern period, Buch traces such complex and contradictory uses—and abuses—of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony since its premier in 1824. Buch shows that Beethoven consciously drew on the tradition of European political music, with its mix of sacred and profane, military and religious themes, when he composed his symphony. But while Beethoven obviously had his own political aspirations for the piece—he wanted it to make a statement about ideal power—he could not have had any idea of the antithetical political uses, nationalist and universalist, to which the Ninth Symphony has been put since its creation. Buch shows us how the symphony has been "deployed" throughout nearly two centuries, and in the course of this exploration offers what was described by one French reviewer as "a fundamental examination of the moral value of art." Sensitive and fascinating, this account of the tangled political existence of a symphony is a rare book that shows the life of an artwork through time, shifted and realigned with the currents of history.
"Buch . . . attempts nothing less than a cultural history of the 'Ode to Joy.' . . . Buch convincingly demonstrates how the growth of Beethoven's posthumous reputation as the musical embodiment of genius and humanism is paralleled by the development of European identity, surviving--as Richard Wagner did not--its association with the Third Reich. . . . Buch offers a new view of the convoluted route by which the composer's music, and the ninth symphony in particular, came to form the soundtrack of the aspirations of the European dream."—Economist
"Contemporary examinations of music's political meanings must also explain how the Ninth inspired so many contradictory allegiances. It was played for Hitler's birthday in 1938, and in 1941 it was the most widely performed symphony in the Third Reich. But it has also been treated as a paean to liberty with its proclamation that 'all men are brothers' defiantly blared from loudspeakers in China's Tianamen Square before the tanks rolled in and portentously intoned to celebrate the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall. In Beethoven's Ninth, Esteban Buch, in his survey of the work's political meanings, also shows how the symphony has been associated with aspirations for a free Europe."
"Profound and haunting . . . There are no conclusions to this story, only a deepened sense of the paradox of art--it must be local in order to seem universal--and of the folly that ensues when ordinary souls struggle to bend extraordinary ones to their own purposes. The Ode to Joy is, says Buch, 'the most convincing depiction of utopia in sound' and it has become 'an aural fetish in the Western world.' His book is a history of how that happened. Read it, as they say, and weep."
"Buch's volume . . . [has] a willingness to explore, through personal reflection and historical research, the uniquely elusive and inspiring nature of music."
"Buch refuses to box the piece into a single, 'correct' interpretation, and instead analyses the conflicting forces at work within it. There are plenty. He finds a nascent 'European' sentiment, German nationalism, Austrian nationalism, Enlightenment 'universalism' and revolutionary fervour. . . . All of this prepares the ground for Buch's main task, which is to trace the ideological appropriations and misreadings of the Ninth Symphony from the first Beethoven jubilees in the 19th century to the more extreme perversions and distortions in the 20th century. By then it seemed the Ninth could mean anything you wanted. . . . This is a thoughtful--and thought-provoking--book, full of fascinating material. Instead of ending on a conventionally upbeat note, Buch raises the heretical notion that the Ninth may, finally, be about to lose its meaning."—Ivan Hewett, New Statesman
"[Buch's] narrative is colorful and interesting as it progresses through the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating with the 'Ode to Joy' . . . as anthem of the European Union. Along the way the tune was hijacked by far less worthy entrepreneurs, including the Nazis (though not without difficulty owing to its theme of universal brotherhood); just as paradoxically as it was adapted by Ian Smith and his racist apartheid regime in Rhodesia in the 1970s."—Lewis Lockwood, New York Review of Books
"In a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, Buch looks at the music and texts of dozens of anthems, relates them to the Beethoven/Schiller work, and discusses them in terms of world politics, philosophy, and psychology."
"If ever a book was brave, elating and depressing at the same time, it is Esteban Buch's superbly provocative Beethoven's Ninth, which is just out in paperback. Whether you are musically trained or not, you should read it. It's brave and elating because it asserts that great art--in this case, a monumental symphony--can play a prominent role in world affairs. And that's an unfashionable view to express at a time when even highbrow art is increasingly treated as just another lick-it-and-throw-away commodity."
Contents
Introduction: The States of Joy
Part I. The Birth of Modern Political Music
1. God Save the King and the Handel Cult
2. La Marseillaise and the "Supreme Being"
3. The Ode to Joy and the Emperor's Anthem
4. Beethoven and the Concert of Europe
5. The Ninth Symphony
Part II. Political Reception of the Ode to Joy
6. The Romantic Cult
7. The 1845 Ceremony at Bonn
8. The Ninth in the Era of Nationalist Movements
9. The 1927 Centenary
10. Beethoven as führer
11. From Year Zero to the European Anthem
12. From Apartheid's Anthem to the Dismantling of the Berlin Wall
Conclusion: Criticism and the Future of a Dream
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Part I. The Birth of Modern Political Music
1. God Save the King and the Handel Cult
2. La Marseillaise and the "Supreme Being"
3. The Ode to Joy and the Emperor's Anthem
4. Beethoven and the Concert of Europe
5. The Ninth Symphony
Part II. Political Reception of the Ode to Joy
6. The Romantic Cult
7. The 1845 Ceremony at Bonn
8. The Ninth in the Era of Nationalist Movements
9. The 1927 Centenary
10. Beethoven as führer
11. From Year Zero to the European Anthem
12. From Apartheid's Anthem to the Dismantling of the Berlin Wall
Conclusion: Criticism and the Future of a Dream
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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History: European History
Music: General Music
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