With a kiss for all the world!
Brothers, beyond the stars
Surely dwells a loving Father.
Do you kneel before him, O Millions?
Do you feel the Creator's presence?
Seek him beyond the stars!
He must dwell beyond the stars.
My mom used to sing us the Ode to Joy in german... O Freunde, nicht diese tone!... sondern lasst uns angenehmere... anstimmen, und freudenvollere! She had hanged the speaker in the roof of our house in Cocoyoc. Every morning she used to wake us up with the most incredible music EVER before going to school. My mom likes to listen to music very loud, i was happy that we didn't have neighbors around.
The Ninth symphony in my mom's house was a MOST. It is my mother's hymn.
I remember once I had a big trouble, I back home inconsolable crying. Mi mama turned on the c.d. player with the Ninth.. and she made me sit next to her... she didn't talk a word... I didn't talked a word neither (i was crying :) at the end of the 4th movement i had all resolved and clear in heart and mind.
In New Years Eves we used to watch The video of Ninth with Karajan or Bernstain conducting.
If you wonder what is my mom doing? Well, she may be at her room watching the NINTH while eating chocolates.
I want to share with you some notes about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
But the most important of these notes is that Beethoven was totally deaf when he composed the Ninth. It is a tangible proved that the mind goes beyond senses and it can manifest whatever it wants.
As early as 1973, Beethoven was thinking os setting Friedrich Von Schiller's Ode to Joy to music.
His pupil Carl Czerny claimed that the tune ocurred to him while listening to the twittering of sparrows.
"it is long since I have been able to bring myself to write easily," Beethoven complained in 1822. "I sit and think and think. The ideas are there, but they will not go down in paper. I dread the beginning of large works. Once begun, it's all right." That year he sketched the opening movement of the Ninth and was again toying with the Schiller Ode as a finale.
On August 16, 1823, Beethoven wrote to his nephew; "Today I really began my service to the Muses." He was finally composing the Ninth Symphony in earnest.
By early 1823, the Ninth was finished. The contralto soloist, Karoline Unger, called Beethoven a "tyrant over all the vocal organs" to his face. He refused to change a note. Whereupon she turned to the soprano and remarked, "Well , then we must go on torturing ourselves in the name of God".
The first performance took place on May 7, 1824. Beethoven, completly deaf, sat in the middle of the orchestra, with a score. The conductor, Michael Umlauf, instructed the orchestra and chorus to "pay no attention whatever to Beethoven's beating of the time."
Sir Geroge Grove later talked to Unger and gae the following account:
"The master, though placed in the midst of this confluence of music, heard nothing of it at all and was not even sensible of the applause of the audience at the end of his great work, but continued standing with his back to the audience, and beating the time, till Fraulein Unger turned him, or induced him to turn around and face the people, who were still clapping their hands, and giving way to the greatest demonstrations of pleasure. His turning around, and the sudden conviction thereby forced on everybody that he had not done so before because he could not hear what was going on, acted like an electric shock on all present , and a volcanic explosion of sympathy and admiration followed, which was repeated again and again, and seemed as if it would never end." Anton Schindler told Beethoven later, "the whole audience was impressed, crushed by the greatness of your work."
The Ninth Symphony's first movement give us the tragedy of life.
The second movement gives us the reaction from tragedy to a humor that cannot be purely joyful... The slow movement as beauty of an order too sublime for a world of action; it has no action, and its motion is that of the stars int their courses... But it is a fundamental principle in Beethoven's art that triumph is to be won in the light of common day...
Beethoven's plan is to remind us of the first three movements just as they have been described above: and to reject them one by one as failing to attain the joy in which he believes. After all three have been rejected, a new theme is to appear, and that theme shall be hailed and sung as the Hymn of Joy.
Text for Choral Finale
(Baritone Solo, Quartet and Chorus)
(O friends, no more of these
sad tones! Let us rather
raised our voices together
in more pleasant and joyful tones!)
Joy, thou shining spark of God,
Daughter of Elysium!
With fiery rapture, Goddess,
We approach thy shrine.
Your magic reunites those
whom stern custom has parted,
All men will become brothers
Under your protective wing.
Let the man who has had the fortune
To be a helper to his friend.
And the man who has won a noble woman,
Join in our chorus of Jubilation!
Yes, even if he holds but one soul
As his own in all the world!
But let the man who knows nothing of this
Steal away alone and in sorrow.
All the world's creatures draw
Draughts of joy from Nature's breast
Both the just and the unjust
Follow in her gentle footsteps.
She gave the joy unto death;
She gave the joy of life to the lowliest,
and to the angels who dwell with God.
(Tenor Solo and Chorus)
Joyous, as His suns speed
Through the glorious order of Heaven,
Hasten, Brothers, on your way
Of joyous deeds to victory.
(Chorus)
Be embraced, all ye Millions!
With a kiss for all the world!
Brothers, beyond the stars
Surely dwells a loving Father.
Do you kneel before him, O Millions?
Do you feel the Creato'r presence?
Seek him beyond the stars!
He must dwell beyond the stars.
.......... WOW!
n
:)
