"Ode to Joy" (
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
: , literally "To
heJoy") is an
ode written in the summer of 1785 by German poet, playwright, and historian
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...
and published the following year in ''
Thalia''. A slightly revised version appeared in 1808, changing two lines of the first and omitting the last stanza.
"Ode to Joy" is best known for its use by
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...
in the final (fourth) movement of his
Ninth Symphony, completed in 1824.
Beethoven's text is not based entirely on Schiller's poem, and it introduces a few new sections. His tune (but not Schiller's words) was adopted as the "
Anthem of Europe" by the
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe (CoE; french: Conseil de l'Europe, ) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe. Founded in 1949, it has 46 member states, with a p ...
in 1972 and subsequently by the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...
.
Rhodesia
Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of So ...
's national anthem from 1974 until 1979, "
Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia", used the tune of "Ode to Joy".
The poem
Schiller wrote the first version of the poem in German when he was staying in
Gohlis
Gohlis is an area in the north of the city of Leipzig, Germany. Once a village outside the city, it is known as the place where Friedrich Schiller wrote the first version of his ''Ode to Joy'' in 1785.
It urbanised during the ''Gründerzeit'' per ...
,
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
. In the year 1785, from the beginning of May till mid-September, he stayed with his publisher,
Georg Joachim Göschen, in Leipzig and wrote "An die Freude" along with his play ''
Don Carlos
''Don Carlos'' is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French-language libretto by Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle, based on the dramatic play '' Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien'' (''Don Carlos, Infante of Spain'') by Fried ...
''.
Schiller later made some revisions to the poem, which was then republished posthumously in 1808, and it was this latter version that forms the basis for Beethoven's setting. Despite the lasting popularity of the ode, Schiller himself regarded it as a failure later in his life, going so far as to call it "detached from reality" and "of value maybe for us two, but not for the world, nor for the art of poetry" in an 1800 letter to his longtime friend and patron
Christian Gottfried Körner
Christian Gottfried Körner (2 July 1756 – 13 May 1831) was a German jurist. His home was a literary and musical salon, and he was a friend of Friedrich Schiller.
Biography
Born in Leipzig, he studied law at the University of Göttingen and at ...
(whose friendship had originally inspired him to write the ode).
Lyrics
Revisions
The lines marked with * have been revised as follows:
Ode: To freedom
Academic speculation remains as to whether Schiller originally wrote an ode "To Freedom" (''An die Freiheit'') and changed it to "To Joy".
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* Thayer, Illinois
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* Thayer County, Nebraska
* Thayer Street, Provi ...
wrote in his biography of Beethoven, "the thought lies near that it was the early form of the poem, when it was still an 'Ode to Freedom' (not 'to Joy'), which first aroused enthusiastic admiration for it in Beethoven's mind". The musicologist
Alexander Rehding
Alexander Rehding is Fanny Peabody Professor of Music at Harvard University. Rehding is a music theorist and musicologist with a focus on intellectual history and media theory, known for innovative interdisciplinary work. His publications explore ...
points out that even Bernstein, who used "Freiheit" in two performances in 1989, called it conjecture whether Schiller used "joy" as code for "freedom" and that scholarly consensus holds that there is no factual basis for this myth.
Use of Beethoven's setting
Over the years, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" has remained a protest anthem and a celebration of music.
* Demonstrators in
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...
sang the piece during demonstrations against the
Pinochet regime's dictatorship.
* Chinese students broadcast it at
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square or Tian'anmen Square (; 天安门广场; Pinyin: ''Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng''; Wade–Giles: ''Tʻien1-an1-mên2 Kuang3-chʻang3'') is a city square in the city center of Beijing, China, named after the eponymous Tiananm ...
. It was performed (conducted by
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first America ...
) on Christmas Day after the
fall of the Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall (german: Mauerfall) on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain and one of the series of eve ...
replacing "Freude" (joy) with "Freiheit" (freedom), and at ''Daiku'' (Number Nine) concerts in Japan every December and after the
2011 tsunami
Eleven or 11 may refer to:
*11 (number), the natural number following 10 and preceding 12
* one of the years 11 BC, AD 11, 1911, 2011, or any year ending in 11
Literature
* ''Eleven'' (novel), a 2006 novel by British author David Llewellyn
*''El ...
.
It has recently inspired impromptu performances at public spaces by musicians in many countries worldwide, including Choir Without Borders's 2009 performance at a railway station in Leipzig, to mark the 20th and 25th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall,
Hong Kong Festival Orchestra's 2013 performance at a Hong Kong mall, and performance in Sabadell, Spain.
* A 2013 documentary, ''Following the Ninth'', directed by Kerry Candaele, follows its continuing popularity.
It was played after
Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Macron (; born 21 December 1977) is a French politician who has served as President of France since 2017. ''Ex officio'', he is also one of the two Co-Princes of Andorra. Prior to his presidency, Macron served as Minister of Econ ...
's victory in the
2017 French Presidential elections, when Macron gave his victory speech at the
Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the '' Venus de Milo''. A central ...
. Pianist
Igor Levit played the piece at the
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no govern ...
during the 2017
Proms
The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...
.
* The BBC Proms Youth Choir performed the piece alongside
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti ( , ; born György Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-servin ...
's UNESCO World Orchestra for Peace at the
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no govern ...
during the 2018
Proms
The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...
at Prom 9, titled "War & Peace" as a commemoration to the centenary of the end of
World War One.
* The alleged Christian context of the song was one of the main reasons given by
Nichiren Shoshu
Nichiren (16 February 1222 – 13 October 1282) was a Japanese Buddhist priest and philosopher of the Kamakura period.
Nichiren declared that the Lotus Sutra alone contains the highest truth of Buddhist teachings suited for the Third Age o ...
priests for
excommunicating the
Soka Gakkai International (SGI) on 28 November 1991 due to the song being performed at SGI meetings, which was deemed by some priests as both
syncretism
Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thu ...
and
heresy
Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important relig ...
.
Other musical settings
Other musical settings of the poem include:
*
Christian Gottfried Körner
Christian Gottfried Körner (2 July 1756 – 13 May 1831) was a German jurist. His home was a literary and musical salon, and he was a friend of Friedrich Schiller.
Biography
Born in Leipzig, he studied law at the University of Göttingen and at ...
(1786)
*
Carl Friedrich Zelter
Carl Friedrich Zelter (11 December 1758 15 May 1832)Grove/Fuller-Datei:Carl-Friedrich-Zelter.jpegMaitland, 1910. The Zelter entry takes up parts of pages 593-595 of Volume V. was a German composer, conductor and teacher of music. Working in his ...
(1792), for choir and accompaniment, later rewritten for different instrumentations.
*
Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1796)
*
Ludwig-Wilhelm Tepper de Ferguson
Ludwig-Wilhelm Tepper de Ferguson (Lewis-William Ferguson-Tepper, Tepper von Ferguson, Louis-Guillaume Tepper de Ferguson; 18 December 1768, Warsaw – 12 September 1838, Paris) was a Polish–Russian musician and composer, a music teacher mainly ...
(1796)
*
Johann Friedrich Hugo von Dalberg (1799)
*
Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg (1803)
*
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wo ...
's song "An die Freude", 189, for voice, unison choir and piano. Composed in May 1815, Schubert's setting was first published in 1829 as
Op. post. 111 No. 1. The
19th century Gesamt-Ausgabe included it as a
lied
In Western classical music tradition, (, plural ; , plural , ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French s ...
in
Series XX, Volume 2 (No. 66). The
New Schubert Edition
Franz Schubert (1797–1828): New Edition of the Complete Works (), commonly known as the New Schubert Edition (NSE), or, in german: Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (NSA), is a complete edition of Franz Schubert's works, which started in 1956 and is schedu ...
groups it with the
part songs in Series III (Volume 3).
[ Otto Erich Deutsch et al]
''Schubert Thematic Catalogue'', German edition 1978 (Bärenreiter), pp. 128–129
/ref>
* Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
(1865), for solo singers, choir and orchestra in a Russian translation
* Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni (7 December 1863 – 2 August 1945) was an Italian composer primarily known for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece '' Cavalleria rusticana'' caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the ...
cantata "Alla gioia" (1882), Italian text by Andrea Maffei
Andrea Maffei (1798 – 1885) was an Italian poet, translator and librettist. He was born in Molina di Ledro, Trentino. A follower of Vincenzo Monti, he formed part of the 19th-century Italian classicist literary culture. Gaining laurea in ju ...
* "Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Seid umschlungen, Millionen! (''Be Embraced, You Millions!''), opus 443, is a waltz composed by Johann Strauss II. It was first performed at the Great Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna in March 1892. The title of the waltz was borrowed from Friedri ...
" (1892), waltz by Johann Strauss II
* Z. Randall Stroope (2002), for choir and four-hand piano
* Victoria Poleva
Victoria Vita Polevá (also spelled: Poleváya; uk, Вікторія Польова; russian: Виктория Полевая; born September 11, 1962) is a Ukrainian composer.
Biography
Born on September 11, 1962 in Kiev, Ukraine, daughter of ...
(2009), for soprano, mixed choir and symphony orchestra
References
External links
* (1786)
*
An die Freude
text and translations a
The LiederNet Archive
German and English text
Schiller Institute
{{Authority control
1785 poems
1824 compositions
Compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven
Peace songs
Poetry by Friedrich Schiller