Ode an die Freude: Beethoven, Schiller, and the Enlightenment

Alex Tseng

 

“Live with your century; but do not be its creature” (Schiller)

 

        This famous quote from Schiller’s advice to an artist is a reflection of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the text to which Beethoven set, Schiller’s Ode to Joy. Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was born into the glorious era of the Enlightenment. Before the birth of Schiller, Europe had already seen such great philosophical minds as those of Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, and none other but Immanuel Kant, who greatly inspired Schiller’s view on aesthetics as well as many other subjects (Drinkwater 396).

 

        The English word “Enlightenment” is associated with the meaning “to shed light,” whiles the equivalent word in German, “Aufklärung,” originates from the verb “aufklären,” which has the meaning “to clear up.” These associated meanings enlighten us on our understanding of the Enlightenment. As Kant commented, the Enlightenment was a stage of history in which mankind grew from a state of immaturity into that of maturity (Lin 235). Knowledge “clears up” and “sheds light” on human thinking so that the quest for knowledge shall lead humankind into an enlightened state of maturity, hence the great slogan of the Enlightenment, “dare to know.” Some important characteristics of the Enlightenment included rationalization, moralization, individualization, humanism, and tolerance, a modern idea that led to the postmodern belief of “positive tolerance” (Lin 256-258). In England the idea of tolerance along with the teachings of Menno, the founder of the Mennonite denomination, led to latitudinarianism, a belief in religious tolerance that eventually had a continental and global influence.

 

        In his twenties Schiller saw the dawn of the Romantic Movement (approx. 1780-1830). Reason was the basis of the Enlightenment, and rationalism played a central role in it. The Romantic Movement branched from the Enlightenment to counter the force of pure rationalism. Some important points of the Romantic Movements included the return to simplicity, anti-rationalistic (but not anti-reason) ideals that emphasized the importance of experience, the harmony between mankind and nature, and a trend to return to ideals of ancient societies. One of the consequences of the fundamental Enlightenment and Romantic ideals was the belief in liberty, democracy, equality, and the brotherhood of all humankind. This belief initiated great revolutions around the world beginning from the French Revolution[1].

 

        As in his advice to the artist, Schiller truly lived with his century. His literature was a spontaneous reflection upon his contemporary ideologies. Together with Goethe, they formed the golden “Sturm und Drang” period of German literature (Drinkwater 396). In fact, Schiller and Goethe became such close friends, that when Schiller died, Goethe wrote, “The half of my existence has gone from me.”

 

Physical freedom and liberty of the soul are central ideas of Schiller’s literature. In his very first play The Robbers (1781), Schiller spoke of the ideas of liberty. His famous play William Tell, on which Rossini’s famous opera is based, was also a tribute to freedom (Compton). The Romantic influence is apparent in William Tell: “The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.” Indeed, this play was also a tribute to men living close to nature (Compton)—the Romantic ideal of the harmony between nature and mankind. Don Carlos, another play by Schiller on the issue of liberty, inspired the great Italian Romantic opera composer Giuseppe Verdi to devote one of his greatest operas to this play.

 

Besides his fame as a dramatist, Schiller was also a great poet, almost parallel to the incomparable Goethe. An die Freude, the Ode to Joy, is one of Schiller’s greatest pieces of literature. This poem contains incredible richness in the great ideals of the Enlightenment and the Romantic Movement. In the fifth stanza Schiller wrote, “Freude trinken alle Wesen an den Brüsten der Natur.“ Again, this is inspired by the Romantic ideal of the harmony between nature and mankind.

 

Around the end of the 18th Century after the French Revolution (1789-1799), the Germans began to have an awareness of the philosophical idea of citizenship, which finally led to the formation of the Deutscher Bund in 1815. Today’s national anthem of Germany, written in 1841 by August Heinrich Hoffman von Fallersleben (1789-1874), depicts very well this awareness that has existed before the unification of the nation: “Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit… danach lasst uns alle streben brüderlich mit Herz und Hand… Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit sind des Glückes Unterpfand” (see App.C). Hoffman’s ideals were all professed in Schiller’s ode and extended to all mankind[2]: “Alle Menschen werden Brüder,“ „Freude trinken alle Wesen...; alle Guten, alle Bösen...,“ „Unser Schuldbuch sei vernichtet!“ In these lines Schiller declared his belief in the unity and brotherhood of mankind, the rights of individuals and equality between them, and the freedom from all the debts including “Gram und Armuth” and “Groll und Rache.” These lines are also professions of the great Enlightenment ideals of tolerance and latitudinarianism. It is interesting to note that the logical conclusion of both the ode and the anthem is that these great ideals are the foundation of happiness, “des Glückes Unterpfand.” It is probably why Schiller did not name the ode “an die Freiheit” or “an die Brüderlichkeit,” as “Freude” is the grand conclusion of all of these ideals.

 

Schiller included many biblical references in the ode such as Cherubs and Seraphs worshipping God from the books of Isaiah and Revelation. Thus, many, including Herbert von Karajan, have considered the ode to be a religious, or more specifically, Christian, piece of literature. Schiller did have a pious mother (Compton) and did once intend to study theology (Drinkwater), but he was greatly influenced by the deism of Sir Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant and the atheism of Voltaire. Newton believed that man could get to know God through nature, and this belief is found in Schiller’s ode like a confession of faith: “über’m Sternenzel muß ein Lieber Vater wohnen,” “Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt? Such’ ihn über’m Sternenzelt! Über Sternen muß er wohnen.” Kant attempted to prove the existence of God with his moral philosophy. To Kant, one of the reasons for him to be a moral person was the existence of God and His righteous judgment (Kant, The Fundamental Principles of Moral Metaphysics). In the ode, Schiller expressed his agreement with Kant: “Richtet Gott, wie wir gerichtet.” Voltaire was once described by W.A. Mozart in a letter to his father Leopold Mozart as a “godless bad man” (Kerst & Krehbiel, Mazart: The Man and the Artist). Although Voltaire never declared himself to be an “atheist,” most people, especially serious Christians like Mozart, regarded him as an atheist. The reason is that Voltaire devoted his entire life to attacking Christianity and its orthodox dogmas. Nevertheless, Voltaire considered himself to be a believer in that he equated the belief in God to the deed of loving people. Throughout his life he had taught people to love others, and that constituted his religion. He thus denied the values of traditional religion. We cannot tell whether Schiller was consciously denying traditional Christianity, but it is apparent in the ode that he formed a strong relationship between the belief in God and love between men as brothers in a way similar to Voltaire. There is no doubt that he believed in the deism of the Enlightenment, to which the denial of scriptural revelation is a direct logical consequence. Therefore, the ode certainly is not a religious piece in a traditional sense.

 

Moreover, Schiller has confessed a non-Christian belief of the reconciliation of the whole world: “Ausgesöhnt die ganze Welt!” In Chapter 17 of the gospel of John Jesus prayed to the Father as the Mediator and said that He does not intercede for the whole world but only for those whom the Father has given Him. In Chapters 8 and 9 of Paul’s letter to the Romans and Chapter 1 of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, the Christian concept of predestination is made very clear: not the whole world will be reconciled, but only those whom the Father has chosen. Therefore, Schiller’s idea of the reconciliation of the whole world does not come from the Bible, but rather from Enlightenment philosophies. There are also hints in many religious statements in the ode suggesting that Schiller was influenced by Rousseau’s ideas about religion. Rousseau separated religion from rationalism and revelation, and associated it with aesthetic senses and emotions. Also, it seems that to Schiller, Christian ideals were equal to other mythical thoughts, as he also made references to Greek mythology in the ode including “Elysium” and used of the plural noun “Gottern.” On another occasion Schiller remarked that “the gods never come alone” (The Golden Age of the Piano, PHILIPS DVD). Schiller’s ode therefore seems to reflect a trend in Western religion in his era that would eventually lead to Schleiermacher’s (1768-1834) tradition of Liberal Theology, in which Christianity is no longer considered “the true religion,”[3] but rather just one of the great moral and religious philosophies of the world.

 

Schiller’s remark that “the gods never come alone” was referring to the giants of the Enlightenment. Besides all the philosophers, there were also the litterateurs and artists. Schiller himself came with Goethe and Lessing. Among the musicians of the Classical era were the sons of J.S. Bach, Haydn, and Mozart. They all came together. Then, 1770 saw the birth of the great Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), whose status in musical history can only be compared to the status of Goethe or Shakespeare in literary history. Beethoven single handedly built the “Beethoven cult,” and largely owing to his influence, a cluster of musical supernovas emerged within a span of five years in the early 19th Century: Mendelssohn in 1809, Chopin and Schumann in 1810, Liszt in 1811, and Wagner in 1813. Among all of Beethoven’s works, the Ninth Symphony played the most central role in the “Beethoven cult.” It simply gave the Romantic composers their freedom with symphonic music. One can hardly conceive of the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz, the tone poems by Sibelius, the gigantic Bruckner symphonies, the Organ Symphony by Saint-Saens, or the Choral Symphony by Mahler, had Beethoven not composed the Ninth Symphony. Nevertheless, despite Beethoven’s influence and his overwhelming popularity in Vienna his Ninth Symphony was still greeted with some criticism, chiefly for the use of human voices in the final movement. For example, Friedrich Wieck, the notorious father of Clara Schumann, said that the symphony was of “unpalatable chaos” that was “simply unpleasant and must remain so” (Schott 3). Even Wagner, who regarded Beethoven, Liszt, and himself as the only great composers in history, spoke not entirely positively of the symphony.

 

Much of the criticism against this symphony arose from speculations about how Beethoven adapted the text by Schiller. Wagner claimed that the words and the melody did not fit:

 

What really happeened was that Beethoven was searching for suitable words to illustrate what he as a musician wanted to say following the inner sense of the preceding movements… and to complete the work as a whole, and that he happens to find these words in Schiller, with his tendency to embrace the abstract and the ideal. A more realistic poet would perhaps have given preference to one definite manifestation of joy rather than to the idea of joy. But the latter suited Beethoven’s purpose exactly; he was not going to be nailed down by details of the text nor was he to be restrained in his freedom of musical expression. Thus, he culled a few stanzas only from Schiller’s poem and incorporated them in his music with repetitions ad lib. (Ardoin 1)

 

        Wagner thus concluded that Beethoven’s Ninth was a work of absolute music rather than program music. The great conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler also wrote that Beethoven treated the text “purely as a musician” (Ardoin 1). However, Herbert von Karajan thought otherwise. To Karajan, this symphony was a “great spiritual drama arising out of a musical and theological dialectic” (Klein 38).

 

        How Beethoven adapted Schiller’s text remains a musicological mystery. Nevertheless, it is certain that Schiller’s Ode to Joy had greatly inspired Beethoven since his youth. At the ages of 23, 41, and 47, Beethoven thrice attempted to set Schiller’s text to music (Chao 98). On January 26, 1793, Charlotte Schiller, the daughter of the poet, received a letter telling her that “a young man whose talents are universally praised and whom the Elector has sent to Haydn in Vienna proposes to compose Schiller’s Freude… I expect something perfect, for as far as I know the young man is wholly devoted to the great and to the sublime” (Klein 38). That was when Beethoven first decided to set Schiller’s text to music. It was not until thirty years later in 1823 that Beethoven finally decided to write his Ninth Symphony (Chao 98). Beethoven began writing the symphony movement by movement until he had finished the third movement and began wondering what to do with such a majestic work. At first, Beethoven wanted to use his String Quartet, Op. 132 as the theme of the final movement (Chao 98). He was hesitant to use human voices in the symphony, as he could anticipate the criticism that he would receive from doing so. Yet, for some reason he finally decided to incorporate Schiller’s Ode to Joy into the last movement of his last symphony.

 

The symphony was premiered in 1824 when Beethoven was already deaf. The success of the premier is a well known story. Due to his deafness Beethoven was unable to conduct the symphony, so he sat beside the conductor throughout the concert. As the orchestra began playing, Beethoven’s arms began moving with the music, and slowly Beethoven’s conducting was out of tempo with the conductor. The orchestra spontaneously began to follow Beethoven’s arms. In the middle of the second movement after a thunderous blow of the timpani, the audience was so excited that they began to applaud and the orchestra was even forced to stop playing for a while. After the majestic finale of the Ode to Joy, the audience exploded into applause, greeting the birth of the great symphony with tears in their eyes. Beethoven stood on the stage facing the orchestra, not hearing any applause due to his deafness. The soprano had to hold his hand to turn him around and show him the standing ovation of the audience. Beethoven had to return to the stage five times to bow to his enthusiastic fans.[4] Since then, no criticism has ever altered the sacred status of the symphony in the musical world.

 

Beethoven was a figure who “lived with his century” but was not “its creature,” as he brought the Enlightenment to a higher peak. He was deeply influenced by the Enlightenment ideals of humanism. He once admired Napoleon for his heroic struggles. When Napoleon crowned himself emperor, Beethoven scratched out Napoleon’s name on the manuscript of his Eroica symphony, originally meant to be dedicated to Napoleon. Beethoven later commented, “had I the military might as great as my musical talent, I would conquer him.” Beethoven was known as a believer of liberty, democracy, equality, and brotherhood. His love for nature is also known through works such as the Pastorale symphony and the Spring sonata. In many ways Beethoven shared the same believes with Schiller, and Beethoven was a true admirer of Schiller.

No matter how Beethoven set Schiller’s ode to his symphony, there is no doubt that Beethoven believed in the great ideals of the ode. The Freude is a musical and philosophical dialectic against the Schicksal. In the Freude not only did Beethoven manifest his victory over his own fate, but also he declared the light of hope for all mankind. The Joy Symphony has become a symbol of peace, hope, liberty, democracy, equality, and brotherhood for all mankind. When the Second World War ended, the Allies invited the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini (who opposed Mussolini) to conduct the NBC Orchestra in Beethoven’s Freude symphony to celebrate the future of mankind. The eve before the reunification of East and West Germany, the East-German conductor Kurt Masur conducted the symphony in Leipzig to await the reunited brotherhood between the Germans. To celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, the American conductor Leonard Bernstein was invited to Berlin to conduct Beethoven’s Ninth as a celebration of humanity. In Berlin, Bernstein commented:

       

Well, here we aree in East Berlin, as it used to be called. I hope that’s of charitable past. We won’t call it East Germany. We won’t have to. There’s no more wall. It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in my lifetime. Historic, I must say…We’ve had the most exciting rehearsals and such brotherhood, which is not just a made-up word, since it is the key word of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, that is by Schiller who wrote the text that Beethoven set. Brüder, Brüder, brothers, brothers, all men become brothers when they are children of the same God and where wings of joy fly. (An die Freiheit, Deutsche Grammophon DVD)

 

        Bernstein added that there was a “funny piece of 19th-century musicology” suggesting that Schiller originally set the title of the poem as An die Freiheit. “I’ve always heard it [Freiheit] as the sub-text of the Ninth Symphony, so why not make it the text for once, and if not now, then when?” Thus, in the performance in Berlin, the word “Freude” was changed to “Freiheit.”

 

        Brotherhood and freedom, equality and democracy—these are the products of the Enlightenment. Some call Beethoven’s Ninth the “highest peak of the Enlightenment.” Surely, this symphony is a definitive manifestation of some of the greatest human ideals ever. It is difficult to imagine greater ideals than these when man is to pursue morality by his own efforts. No matter what Beethoven’s intentions were when he set the music to the text, Schiller’s great ideals have given Beethoven’s symphony tremendous richness in its philosophical content. In return, Beethoven’s great music has made Schiller’s great ideals known to the world. Together they profess that all men are created to be equal, that no evil or ill-fate should place men in bondage, that all men should love each other as brothers, and from these all men shall enjoy rightfully the joy of heaven.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Ardoin, John. Furtwängler’s Recorded Legacy. Thames & Hudson, CA. 1990.

 

Chao Chen. Famous Stories of Music. XinChao, Taipei. 1990

 

Chen GuoZiou, Cui GuangZhou. Complete Analysis of Ten Masterpieces. Mercury Publisching House, Taipei. 1994.

 

>Drinkwater, John. The Outline of Literature. Southeast Asia Publishings, Taipei. 1961.

 

>Kerst, Friedrich, ed. Krehbiel, Edward, tran. Mozart: The Man and the Artist. Geoffrey Bles, London. 1926.

 

Klein, Hans-Günster. Beethovens Symphonien im Urteil der Zeitgenossen. Deutsche Grammophon CD 429 036-1/2. 1963

 

Lin HongHsin. Doctrinal History. LiJi, Taipei. 2001.

 

Schott, Richard. Beethoven: Symphony No. 9. SONY CD SBK 46533. 1967.

 

Compton’s Encycclopedia Online. http://www.optonline.com/comptons

 

Friedrich Schiller. http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/schiller/schillerpage.html


[1] It must be made clear, however, that the American ideals of and bloody struggles for liberty, democracy, and equality originated from Calvinism, as demonstrated by the harmony between the American Constitution and Calvinist literatures such as The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Larger and Shorter Westminster Catechisms.

 

[2] The great ideals in the Deutschlandlied seem to apply only German people instead of the whole mankind, as in the first stanza Fallersleben wrote, “Deutschland Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt,” and in the third stanza he explicitly wrote that “Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit” were for “das deutsche Vaterland.”

 

[3] This idea came from the Swiss Reformer John Calvin. Calvin argued that only by knowing God can man truly love and fear Him, and thus worship Him. To know God, there is only one way, which is through God’s “special revelation”—the Bible. Calvin defined true religion as knowing the only True God and worshipping Him. Thus, since the Reformation period, orthodox doctrinal systems (as opposed to hetero-orthodox, not as in Orthodoxy) have always taught that Christianity is the only true religion.

 

 

[4] Of course, there exist slightly different versions of this story. I chose to tell the most dramatic and yet most musicologically accepted of them.