Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, "Ode to Joy," which he completed in 1824,
was written
A. to ensure that he would be financially stable.
B. within a two-week period right after Beethoven
read Schiller's poem.
C. during a time when America and France had
recently gained their freedom.

B

Explanation:

The Ode of Joy is heard with eyes full of tears with emotion. This ninth symphony was the last great work that this great German composer wrote.

Beethoven was one of those people touched by the hand of God, with a great facility for composition and, at the same time, a very unhappy being in his personal life. He was born in the city of Bonn in 1770 and from a young age he left to study composition in Vienna with the well-known Joseph Haydn who predicted that he would be a great composer in his mature age. He wrote a large number of works, both for piano and orchestra, recitatives, sonatas, quarters, songs, requiems, concerts. He wrote a single opera, Fidelio, and a single concerto for violin and orchestra, considered one of the four greatest ever written. In total he composed 9 symphonies of which the odd numbers are the most famous.

Embrace millions of beings!

A kiss to the whole world!

Brothers, upon the starry vault

a loving Father must dwell.

As a young man he became acquainted with the work of the romantic German literature Schiller and Goethe. From the age of 22 he was tempted to write the music about a Schiller poem, although the project only came to fruition much later and at the end of his life. It is in 1817, and commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, that Beethoven is given the task of creating this work in four movements that ends in the last of them in the form of a great oratorio ... apotheosis, monumental, inordinate. For this, Beethoven used the human voice as an instrument in a concert, something that had never been done, plus other instruments such as the picolo flute, timpani, trombones, percussion in great profusion and a whole panoply of brass winds. The work was dedicated to the King of Prussia Fr ederick William III.

The opening concert was on May 7, 1824 at the Kärtnertortheater, Vienna and the success was resounding from the first moment, despite the critics who considered it "too long". Only the fourth movement is longer than the full 8th.

Among Beethoven's sufferings was that of profound deafness. As a young man he was in Vienna with a terrible flu when the Napoleonic troops came to cannonade this city and the noise of the cannons ended up breaking his eardrums. What a cruel fate for a great composer not to be able to hear what his wonderful brain dictated as composition! That May 7, 1824, a musician present had to turn Beethoven around so that he could see the applause with which he congratulated and cheered the room and that he, poor deaf man, was not listening.

All of Vienna wanted to see Beethoven that day. He had not been seen on stage for 12 years since the presentation of his previous symphony, the 8th. They knew that it was the end of his life and of his work. They wanted to witness the magnificence of the Master. In fact, this Ninth Symphony is numbered opus 125, which classifies it as the 125th work that this great man composed.

In the fourth movement, when four singers enter: baritone, tenor, mezzo-soprano and soprano and chorus, Schiller's poem cries out for joy at the brotherhood of men. This was a much-needed calling in a Europe that had not long ago experienced the horrors of the Napoleonic wars.

But the ninth symphony has served all creeds and all interpretations. Since Engels who understood "All men will be brothers" as a call for the emancipation of the oppressed working class of his time to be considered by the Bolsheviks, who did not know whether to choose the Ode of Joy or the International as their war hymn . Also Chancellor Bismarck, with his warlike spirits of European domination, considered the ninth proper for his interests. It was the work chosen for the inauguration of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, by Adolf Hitler himself. It was the musical piece that began the festivities for the Führer's birthday and was the most performed work by German orchestras during World War II. Even the kamikazes who were sent by the Japanese generals to crash their planes in the hope of stopping the American army were also fired with The Ode to Joy. How different were the intentions of Schiller and Beethoven in the face of these manipulative attempts!

But it has also served noble causes. In the 1956 and 1964 Olympics, athletes from the former GDR and the FRG participated together in the Olympic Games and it was under the chords of this Ode to Joy that the awards were made.

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