Beethoven’s Ninth (Sym­pho­ny No. 9 in D minor) was his last com­plete sym­pho­ny but it also hap­pens to be regard­ed by many musi­col­o­gists as his great­est work and one of the supreme achieve­ments in the his­to­ry of music. Not bad for a last major work, con­sid­er­ing how many artists gen­er­al­ly peak at some point ear­li­er in their careers and tail off some­what towards the end. It was com­posed between 1822 and 1824 and was the first exam­ple of a major com­pos­er using voic­es in a sym­pho­ny. The final move­ment fea­tures four vocal soloists and a cho­rus, with words adapt­ed from the poem by Friedrich Schiller, Ode to Joy (lend­ing the tune its famous com­mon name).

There are a num­ber of anec­dotes about the pre­miere of the Ninth, at the The­ater am Kärnt­ner­tor in Vien­na on the 7^th May 1824, based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of some of the par­tic­i­pants. There are sug­ges­tions that it was under-rehearsed and a bit scrap­py, but regard­less it was an enor­mous suc­cess. In any case, Beethoven was not to blame, since he was by now deaf and although he was osten­si­bly con­duct­ing so as to be present for the audi­ence, it was actu­al­ly co-con­duc­tor Louis Duport whose baton was fol­lowed by the musi­cians. Vio­lin­ist Joseph Böhm recalled:

“[Beethoven] stood in front of a con­duc­tor’s stand and threw him­self back and forth like a mad­man. At one moment he stretched to his full height, at the next he crouched down to the floor, he flailed about with his hands and feet as though he want­ed to play all the instru­ments and sing all the cho­rus parts.”

When the audi­ence applaud­ed Beethoven was sev­er­al bars off and still con­duct­ing, so con­tral­to Car­o­line Unger walked over and turned Beethoven around to accept the audi­ence’s applause. Accord­ing to the crit­ic for the The­ater-Zeitung, “the pub­lic received the musi­cal hero with the utmost respect and sym­pa­thy, lis­tened to his won­der­ful, gigan­tic cre­ations with the most absorbed atten­tion and broke out in jubi­lant applause.” The audi­ence gave him five stand­ing ova­tions; there were hand­ker­chiefs and hats in the air, and raised hands, so that Beethoven, who they knew could not hear the applause, could at least see the ova­tions.

Here’s an excerpt from the Ode to Joy played by the Chica­go Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.