Anthem - Intellect

Anthem
of fact. Cook hears the lyrics expressing a belief in ‘the existence of a loving Father
above the stars’, set to music in ‘a remote, hieratic style’ that evokes ecclesiastical chant,
sounding like ‘a series of daydreams’, where the repeated notes in bars 647–54 ‘are
surely meant to depict the twinkling of the stars, it is as if time stood still’. 376
E. Bar 655–762. This section opens with a D-major double fugue based on the ‘Joy’
and ‘Seid umschlungen’ themes, thus mixing lyrics from Verse 1 and Chorus 3, ending
with the ‘Ihr stürzt nieder’ episode of Chorus 3 and finally the Chorus 1 lyrics, so that
the symphony ends with repeating the frantic ecstacy of joy. Cook sees this double fugue
as representing ‘a reawakening, a return to reality’, with a concluding, integrating and
recapitulatory function but also serving as a transition to the next series of codas. 377
F. Bar 763–940. D-major ending starts with Verse 1 lyrics sang to coda figure 1
based on the ‘Joy’ theme, followed by a cadenza and then coda figure 2 with Chorus
1 followed by Verse 1 lyrics, and finally coda figure 3 again based on the ‘Joy’ theme
ends the work. These coda sections sound like a rather traditional operatic finale. The
words ‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder’ are strongly emphasised, until in the final bars
920ff. everything is united in ecstatic harmony: choir and soloists, strings and wind
instruments, solemn and military sounds—all joyfully united in diversity! 378
Commentators such as Romain Rolland have described the Ninth Symphony’s
finale as a climactic victory over deep misery: a joy of struggle transformed into
transcendental ecstacy and finally a veritable ‘delirium of love’. 379 Cook describes in
detail how subsequent listeners have interpreted Beethoven’s symphony differently,
according to their own agendas. For instance, Wagner chose to read the baritone’s
words ‘not these tones’ (‘nicht diese Töne’) as referring ‘to the horror fanfare, to the
first three movements, ultimately to instrumental music as a whole’, so that musical
time is transformed into ‘dramatic or ritualistic time’, and ‘what began as a musical
event turns at this point into a social one’. 380
Cook also shows that even quite recent twentieth century critics have generally been
disturbed by the heterogeneity of the work, in particular having great problems with
‘the most outrageously foreign element’ of the ‘Turkish’ music in bar 331ff., finding it
‘almost perverse’ that Beethoven combined this music—with both military and popular
associations—with lyrics speaking of God’s angels in the sky. 381 In this frustration, Cook
recognises a dominant Romantic strategy of ‘creating meaning out of incoherence’ that
tends to domesticate Beethoven’s music, reducing its excess of meaning. 382
Romantic interpretations reduce the contradictory elements of the
Ninth Symphony to a narrative thread or a series of pictures; absolutemusic
interpretations reduce them to an architectural plan. And the
result in each case is the same: the music is deproblematized, sanitized,
shrink-wrapped. 383
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