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The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

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Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#21

Post by ternaryoperator »

winrid wrote: post #16

My favorite musical composition story is Beethoven's Fur Elise. He started writing the song for his student, whom he was in love with. She wasn't very good, so the song was easy. Then he found out she got engaged, and he made the rest of the song super difficult so she could never play it. You can listen to the song and hear when his heart breaks: https://youtu.be/CQIDLhBJ2y4

> Then he found out she got engaged, and he made the rest of the song super difficult so she could never play it.

It is very unlikely that this story is anything more than a fanciful tale: The dedicatee of the piece is unknown; the work was found in papers long after Beethoven's death and was unknown before that. So, the prospect of there being someone who was told the story and wrote it down, even though it's recorded nowhere is close to nil. See the Wikipedia article for more details.

Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#23

Post by kieckerjan »

coldcode wrote: post #2

Nothing any of us do today will exist in 500 years, but I suspect Beethoven's Ninth will continue to inspire.

> I suspect Beethoven's Ninth will continue to inspire

I hope and suspect so, but taste is a fickle thing. It may be hard to believe but Bach, nowadays considered by many as the greatest composer ever, almost faded into obscurity.

Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#24

Post by nosianu »

In this context I would like to point to the free edx Harvard course series "First Nights", which introduces some important pieces of classical music and the context around their first public performance. The series is aimed at laypeople. The series also includes one course for the one being discussed here:

https://www.edx.org/course/first-nights-beethovens-9th-symph...

> First Nights - Beethoven's 9th Symphony and the 19th Century Orchestra

> Learn about Beethoven’s monumental 9th Symphony and forms of orchestral music.

I found the entire series very interesting and very well made, and the instructor, Thomas Forrest Kelly (Professor of Music, Harvard University) doing a very good job.

Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#25

Post by codeflo »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #21
winrid wrote: post #16

My favorite musical composition story is Beethoven's Fur Elise. He started writing the song for his student, whom he was in love with. She wasn't very good, so the song was easy. Then he found out she got engaged, and he made the rest of the song super difficult so she could never play it. You can listen to the song and hear when his heart breaks: https://youtu.be/CQIDLhBJ2y4

> Then he found out she got engaged, and he made the rest of the song super difficult so she could never play it. It is very unlikely that this story is anything more than a fanciful tale: The dedicatee of the piece is unknown; the work was found in papers long after Beethoven's death and was unknown before that. So, the prospect of there being someone who was told the story and wrote it down, even though it's record…

Speculation is fun, if you’re aware that you’re not doing science.

Another fun theory I’ve read is that the piece was called “Für X” for different values of X at different times.

According to this theory, Beethoven intentionally didn’t publish it so that he could continue to use the same piece to impress different women, “Look what I wrote for you”.

Efficient.

Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#26

Post by tialaramex »

riffraff wrote: post #15
gumby wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't understand special relativity, much less general (or the photoelectric effect) so it's not at all a given that Einstein will remain a household name. Nowadays "Hitler" is the default bad guy but before him it was "Napoleon" in much of Europe, and before that "Pharaoh". I'm pretty sure the same will happen to $DEFAULT_SMART_GUY

> Most people don't understand special relativity, but most people recognize the formula E=MC^2 even if they don't know what it means, and can tell you the name of the dude sticking out his tongue in a picture. Understanding someone's work is orthogonal to them being well known.

And hey, at least Einstein's equation is something Einstein was both responsible for and proud of - Schrödinger is famous for his thought experiment that's just supposed to show how ridiculous the Copenhagen interpretation is. In popular culture Schrödinger ends up standing for specifically the thing he disagreed with.

Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#27

Post by winrid »

gattilorenz wrote: post #19
winrid wrote: post #16

My favorite musical composition story is Beethoven's Fur Elise. He started writing the song for his student, whom he was in love with. She wasn't very good, so the song was easy. Then he found out she got engaged, and he made the rest of the song super difficult so she could never play it. You can listen to the song and hear when his heart breaks: https://youtu.be/CQIDLhBJ2y4

I'm not sure there's enough evidence for this theory, but it does sound amusing

This may be true. I've heard it enough times that I forget to question it. But it's fun. :)

Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#28

Post by bambax »

I am kind of ashamed to bring this anecdote in a comment to such a high brow article, but it should be noted that "Ode to Joy" was the villain's song in the first "Die Hard" movie. It's played when the bad guys finally open the vault. The chief villain, Hans Gruber, is himself, of course, German and has received "a classical education".

(The director, McTiernan, had noticed the use of Ode to Joy in A Clockwork Orange and was a big fan of all things Kubrick's).

Using that music for the villain also plays beautifully in building some moral ambiguity; it can be argued that Gruber is in fact the protagonist, trying to achieve something (and succeeding, when the vault opens), while John McClane, who doesn't want anything and isn't even happy to be there, is the antagonist.

But then in subsequent movies, the Ode to Joy somehow becomes the good guy's song, which is super weird because McClane is anything but German, or classically educated, or... educated.

Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#29

Post by bowsamic »

kieckerjan wrote: post #23
coldcode wrote: post #2

Nothing any of us do today will exist in 500 years, but I suspect Beethoven's Ninth will continue to inspire.

> I suspect Beethoven's Ninth will continue to inspire I hope and suspect so, but taste is a fickle thing. It may be hard to believe but Bach, nowadays considered by many as the greatest composer ever, almost faded into obscurity.

Not hard to believe, even now Bach is considered an acquired taste

Re: The story behind Beethoven's “Ode to Joy”

#30

Post by ctack »

AlbertCory wrote: post #5

I still await the ideal biopic about Beethoven. Immortal Beloved was not bad at all, but I think there's a better one gestating in someone's mind, somewhere.

100%. While I can’t escape the running away sequence from that film, I could imagine a very different expression, though probably similar intensity. Someone will get round to it sooner or later.
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