Anthem - Intellect

Anthem
Introducing the European anthem
The European anthem is supposed to be that of Europe in a wider sense, including
non-EU nations as well, and was first officially adopted by the Council of Europe
in 1972. Its melody is the core theme of the fourth (final) movement of Ludwig van
Beethoven’s Ninth Sym phony, composed in 1823. It was set to Friedrich von Schiller’s
‘Ode to Joy’, expressing an idealistic vision of the human race united in brother hood:
‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder’. The poem was written in 1785 but published in
slightly revised form in 1803, which Beethoven compressed and modified to suit his
purposes (Figure 7.1). However, though the general melodic line and the name ‘Ode
to Joy’ remain, the official hymn differs from its original source by being compressed
to two minutes, selecting and reshuffling Beethoven’s melodic elements, and also
cancels the lyrics. (The reasons and signifying effects of this will be discussed below.)
‘Without words, in the universal language of music, this anthem expresses the ideals
of freedom, peace and solidarity for which Europe stands’, says the EU web site, where
it can also be listened to as an audio file: ‘It is not in tended to replace the national
anthems of the Member States but rather to celebrate the values they all share and
their unity in diver sity’. 341
Aside from the name ‘Europe’ and the myth of Europa, and not counting various
ancient star circles that might have inspired the flag emblem, the anthem has the
oldest pre-history, as its music goes back at least to 1823 (and the lyrics to 1785), and
highly different actors have almost ever since used it to celebrate common European
endeavours. In the post-World War II unification process, many activists called for a
unifying anthem to supplement the common flag. Many other songs were proposed
through the years, or newly composed by various enthusiasts, but Beethoven’s hymn
came to be repeatedly used in this function, and seemed to have a resonance with at
least how the European elites wished to define themselves.
Several pleas and proposals for European songs, often in several languages, were
proposed by various citizens to the Council of Europe in the aftermath of the war. 342
Early examples from the autumn of 1949 were ‘Chant de la Paix’ by Mrs Jehanne-
Louis Gaudet, and ‘Hymne eines geeinten Europas/Hymne à une Europe unifiée’ by
Carl Kahlfuss. In 1955, the Paneuropean Union’s President Richard Coudenhave-
Kalergi, who in 1950 had proposed the Council of Europe to use the movement’s
sun-cross flag and also had recently pledged for a Europe Day, proposed ‘the hymn
from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony’. This music had already from 1929 been used by
that same movement. 343 It continued to be sporadically used at European events, for
instance at the tenth anniversary of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, 20 April
1959. An increasing number of European events created a need for joint ceremonial
singing. In the following years, some favoured the last movement of Georg Friedrich
Händel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749), while the Belgian section of he Council
153