75th Season Finale!

A symphony that broke its own form. For two hundred years before Beethoven, a symphony was understood to be a work for orchestra alone. Then, in the finale of his Ninth, Beethoven did something no major composer had dared: he silenced the orchestra, had the lower strings “reject” the themes of the first three movements in a kind of wordless argument, and then brought in a baritone, four soloists, and a full chorus to sing. It is the moment the symphony as a form cracked open — and music has never quite closed it again. That the Cape Ann Symphony crowns its 75th season with this work is no accident: the Ninth is the piece orchestras reach for when the occasion has to mean something.

Where Beethoven was in his life. When the Ninth premiered in Vienna on May 7, 1824, Beethoven was 53 and almost completely deaf. He had not presented a major new work in years; much of Vienna assumed he was finished. He composed the entire symphony — its hammering D-minor opening, its whirlwind scherzo, its hushed slow movement, its enormous choral finale — hearing none of it except in his imagination. He would be dead within three years. The Ninth is, in a real sense, a deaf man’s vision of universal human joy, written by someone who could no longer hear a single note of it.

The reception. The premiere was a triumph, and it produced one of the most famous stories in all of music. Beethoven sat among the performers, following the score and beating time, though the actual conducting was handled by Michael Umlauf, who had quietly told the musicians to ignore him. At the end, Beethoven was still turned toward his manuscript, unaware that the hall had erupted behind him. The young contralto Caroline Unger gently took his arm and turned him around so he could see the ovation he could not hear — the audience waving hats and handkerchiefs, applauding past the point of decorum.

The themes. Musically and morally, the Ninth is a journey from darkness to light — from the ominous, almost cosmic D minor of the opening to the blazing D major of the finale (the old idea of per aspera ad astra, “through hardship to the stars”). The finale sets Friedrich Schiller’s An die Freude, the “Ode to Joy” — a text Beethoven had wanted to set since his twenties. Its message is radical Enlightenment idealism: Alle Menschen werden Brüder, “all people become brothers.” Joy here isn’t private contentment; it’s the joy of human solidarity that crosses every border — which is why the tune has had a second life as an anthem of unity, adopted by the European Union and sung at moments of reconciliation around the world.

Famous recordings — and why. A few have become legends, each for a different reason. Furtwängler’s Bayreuth 1951 performance, at the festival’s post-war reopening, is slow, searching, and emotionally overwhelming. Toscanini with the NBC Symphony is the opposite — lean, propulsive, rhythmically electric. Karajan’s 1963 Berlin Philharmonic recording is the polished, powerful modern benchmark. Bernstein’s 1989 Berlin performance, given as the Wall fell, famously changed Schiller’s “Freude” (Joy) to “Freiheit” (Freedom). And Gardiner’s period-instrument account restores Beethoven’s own brisk metronome marks, revealing a faster, fiercer, more dance-like Ninth. Use the listening guide below to hear each.