"Ode to Joy" (German: "An die Freude" [an di: 'f???d?]), is an ode written in the summer of 1785 by German poet, playwright, and historian Friedrich Schiller 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 in the final (fourth) movement of his Ninth Symphony, completed in 1824. Beethoven's text is not based entirely on Schiller's poem, and introduces a few new sections. His tune (but not Schiller's words) was adopted as the Anthem of Europe by the Council of Europe in 1972 and subsequently by the European Union.
Video Ode to Joy
The poem
Schiller wrote the first version of the poem when he was staying in Gohlis, Leipzig. 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.
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 long-time friend and patron Christian Gottfried Körner (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 (Ode an die Freiheit) and changed it to an Ode to Joy. "... [T]he 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".
Maps Ode to Joy
Use of Beethoven's setting
Over the years, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" has remained a protest anthem and a celebration of music. From demonstrators in Chile singing during demonstration against the Pinochet dictatorship, Chinese student broadcast at Tiananmen Square, the concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Daiku (Number Nine) concerts in Japan every December and one after the 2011 tsunami. 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's victory in the 2017 French Presidential elections, when Macron gave his victory speech at the Louvre. Pianist Igor Levit played the piece at the Royal Albert Hall during the 2017 Proms.
The song's Christian context was one of the main reasons for Nichiren Sh?sh? Buddhism to excommunicate the Soka Gakkai organization for their use of the hymn at their meetings.
Other musical settings
Other musical settings of the poem include:
- Christian Gottfried Körner (1786)
- Carl Friedrich Zelter (1792), for choir and accompaniment, later rewritten for different instrumentations.
- Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1796)
- Ludwig-Wilhelm Tepper de Ferguson (1796)
- Johann Friedrich Hugo von Dalberg (1799)
- Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg (1803)
- Franz Schubert's song "An die Freude", D 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 Series XX, Volume 2 (No. 66). The New Schubert Edition groups it with the part songs in Series III (Volume 3).
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1865), for solo singers, choir and orchestra in a Russian translation
- Pietro Mascagni cantata "Alla gioia" (1882), Italian text by Andrea Maffei
- "Seid umschlungen, Millionen!" (1892), waltz by Johann Strauss II
- Z. Randall Stroope (2002), for choir and four-hand piano
- Joyful, Joyful, we adore thee - English version of this song
- Romani variations (2007)
- Victoria Poleva (2009), for soprano, mixed choir and symphony orchestra
- Florian Müller, trance and hip-hop versions
- Maurice Steinecker, techno version
- Johannes Mössinger, performed by Johannes Mössinger, Peter Streicher and Matthias Daneck
- Rhapsodie sur l'Hymne Européen by Christophe Guyard (jazz violin, big band, electric guitar)
References
External links
- Works related to Ode to Joy at Wikisource
- German Wikisource has original text related to this article: An die Freude (Schiller) (1786)
- German Wikisource has original text related to this article: An die Freude (Beethoven)
- An die Freude text and translations at The LiederNet Archive
- German and English text, Schiller Institute
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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