Beethoven Ninth? In English??

[Roehre]

Didn't Lenny Bernstein change that when he did that 'celebratory' concert, with combined forces after the Berlin Wall came down?

Yes, he did, and IIRC on the DGG CD released shortly afterwards Beethoven's/Schiller's Ode was called Ode an die Freiheit (Ode to Freedom) as well.

[aeolium]

The thoughts of the Schiller Institute suggest that "Freiheit" (Freedom) was what Schiller originally wrote:

https://www.eduardochibas.com/archivos_escritos/Ode%20to%20Freedom.doc

So there has often been some questioning of the wording and emphasis which probably helped the English translator. It would appear that at the Berlin Wall Bernstein was only going back to the original Schiller Ode to Freedom.

While I don't deny that freedom was an important idea for Schiller, I'd be interested in the evidence that the original ode was about freedom rather than joy. Joy, as a concept encompassing ecstasy, sexual love, the force of creation, 'Sympathie', something that drives all living creatures seems to be a theme running through the poem. If you try to substitute the idea of freedom there, it just makes large parts of the poem incoherent.

For instance:
"Freude heisst die starke Feder
In der ewigen Natur.
Freude, freude treibt die Räder
In der grossen Weltenuhr.
Blumen lockt sie aus den Keimen,
Sonnen aus dem Firmament."

(literally: Joy is called the powerful spring/In eternal nature./Joy, joy drives the wheels/In the global time machine./It calls flowers from their buds, suns from the firmament)

This is surely a more primeval life force than the political idea of freedom - more like Dylan Thomas' 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower'. And it applies to all creatures, good and bad - not the case with freedom.

So though it may be attractive to a later age to emphasise ideas of liberation, I think it fundamentally changes the poem from what is written.

[BBMmk2]

Yes, he did, and IIRC on the DGG CD released shortly afterwards Beethoven's/Schiller's Ode was called Ode an die Freiheit (Ode to Freedom) as well.

Sounds like typical of LB to do that!

[Gordon]

While I don't deny that freedom was an important idea for Schiller, I'd be interested in the evidence that the original ode was about freedom rather than joy........

So though it may be attractive to a later age to emphasise ideas of liberation, I think it fundamentally changes the poem from what is written.

That's a convincing thought and does accord with the times around 1785, perhaps not so obviously in hindsight as freedom with revolutions happening and brewing. Whatever Schiller meant, in the case of Beethoven, what did he see in it 40 years on that led to the finale of the 9th? Certainly the notion of freedom was appealing to him - from before the Eroica and onwards perhaps - but Joy? Probably, given his own life by 1825.

Did he alter anything? It would seem that the original is longer than Beethoven's text so he was selective. So when we come to assess the poem whose version, rather than which of Schiller's, is relevant? Considering we're talking about B9 perhaps we should take Beethoven's view and it's he that has emphasised the joy of freedom as a more personal statement going perhaps beyond what Schiller meant?

[gurnemanz]

Did he alter anything? It would seem that the original is longer than Beethoven's text so he was selective.

This interesting pdf is in German but at the end you can see a schematic representation of what he changed

http://www.hodie-world.com/vohde.pdf

Among points made are that Beethoven had known the text since Bonn days, that many of the ideas are rooted in freemasonry ("Alle Menschen werden Brüder") and that the change to Freiheit is not just due to censorship. Schiller is extending the scope of the poem's central idea. Freude is a state of mind to which we can aspire and of which Freiheit is one key element.

Beethoven wrote his own introduction calling for more joyful tones.

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne !
Sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen,
und freudenvollere !

[aeolium]

Beethoven had been interested in setting the Schiller Ode to Joy from as far back as 1793, where there was evidence in a letter from a Professor Fischenich to Charlotte von Schiller that Beethoven was proposing 'to compose Schiller's "Freude", and indeed strophe by strophe'. A setting of a phrase "Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen" also occurs in a Beethoven sketchbook from 1798. I believe the selection that Beethoven used in the setting for the 9th symphony was ultimately taken from Schiller's 1803 revision, but not extensively different from the original poem and nowhere, as far as I can see, emphasising freedom rather than joy. Roehre I am sure is much more knowledgeable about the genesis of Beethoven's setting and could probably clarify these matters.

But I am not even sure that it can be confidently stated that Beethoven was more interested in freedom as an idea rather than joy in the senses in which Schiller was using it (love, union, a life force, the power of creation). Joy coming through romantic love and union, however unattainable Beethoven found it in his own life, was still very important in many of his songs, in Fidelio ("O namenlose Freude") and arguably in the setting of the Schiller ode in the 9th. I don't know why the Schiller institute should think that joy was trivial compared with freedom - perhaps that is a view from the back end of the horrors of the C20 rather than from the German Romantics of the late C18 and early C19.

[Roehre]

That's a convincing thought and does accord with the times around 1785, perhaps not so obviously in hindsight as freedom with revolutions happening and brewing. Whatever Schiller meant, in the case of Beethoven, what did he see in it 40 years on that led to the finale of the 9th? Certainly the notion of freedom was appealing to him - from before the Eroica and onwards perhaps - but Joy? Probably, given his own life by 1825.

Did he alter anything? It would seem that the original is longer than Beethoven's text so he was selective. So when we come to assess the poem whose version, rather than which of Schiller's, is relevant? Considering we're talking about B9 perhaps we should take Beethoven's view and it's he that has emphasised the joy of freedom as a more personal statement going perhaps beyond what Schiller meant?

Aeolium, for the complete text (German with English translation) see here

And here for Beethoven and Schiller and a timetable

[aeolium]

Thanks, Roehre. I knew the first link, but not the very useful second.