Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)

The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (sometimes known simply as "the Choral"), is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827).

A page from Beethoven's manuscript of the 9th Symphony

Quotes

• 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!
  • Beethoven's Prologue to Schiller's “Ode to Joy”

Quotes about Symphony No. 9

• Of all the works in the mainstream repertory of Western music, the Ninth Symphony seems the most like a construction of mirrors, reflecting and refracting the values, hopes, and fears of those who seek to understand and explain it … From its first performance [in Vienna in 1824] up to the present day, the Ninth Symphony has inspired diametrically opposed interpretations.
  • Nicholas Cook, Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (Cambridge Music Handbooks), Preface

• I forswore my model, Beethoven; his last Symphony I deemed the keystone of a whole great epoch of art, beyond whose limits no man could hope to press, and within which no man could attain to independence.
  • Richard Wagner, Autobiographical Sketch (1843)