Page 186 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

LiSTeN TO . . . Example 10.10 online.
voices to add an immediate, human appeal, requiring them to sing a poem in honor of universal brotherhood, Friedrich von Schiller’s An die Freude (Ode to Joy). For more than twenty years Beethoven had struggled to craft just the right melody for Schiller’s text. Example 10.10 gives the final result: Beethoven’s complete melody with the poem in English. Observe the direct, four-square phrase structure of the melody: antecedent, consequent, extension, conse- quent, or abcb form. Notice also that nearly every pitch is adjacent to the next; there are almost no leaps. Everyone can sing this melody—and that was exactly Beethoven’s wish.
Example 10.10 > ode to joy
Having fashioned this simple but inspiring melody, Beethoven used it as the centerpiece of the symphony’s finale—indeed, what proved to be Beethoven’s own finale in the realm of orchestral music. Here Ode to Joy becomes the thematic foundation of a magnificent set of variations. Beethoven first sets the melody for instruments alone, beginning with the low strains of the double basses and cellos. The theme is repeated three more times, in successively higher registers, gathering force. In each variation, Beethoven changes the surrounding context, rather than the melody itself. This passage demonstrates how Beethoven, like no composer before him, exploited the power of sound alone, detached from the usual concerns of rhythm or harmony. When the full orchestra with brilliant brasses presents the theme a fourth time, we all feel the power of an overwhelm- ing sonic force.
With this fortissimo statement of the theme, the orchestra has done all that it can do alone. Beethoven now bids the chorus to join in, singing Schiller’s lib- erating text. From here to the end of the movement, chorus and orchestra speak with one exalted voice, pressing the tempo, volume, and the range of the pitches to the limits of the performers’ abilities. Their message is Beethoven’s message: Humanity will be unified and victorious if it strives together, as it does here, to
164 chapter ten beethoven: bridge to romanticism
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