>
>> > Beethoven's 9th has vocals
>>
>> They were added later to the main theme, weren't they? I don't think he
>> wrote the words to "Ode to Joy."
>
>The lyrics were written by Friedrich Schiller, who is as famous as Goethe
>(and a friend of his too). I believe he wrote them BEFORE Beethoven wrote
>his ninth, and he immediately incorporated them into the music.
>
Yes, Beethoven created much of the 9th symphony around the poem
by Schiller. From a web page:
http://ficus-www.cs.ucla.edu/project-members/geoff/prognotes/beethoven/nameday.html
"When Beethoven was a young man, one of the most respected
writers in Germany was Friedrich Schiller, dramatist, poet, and
philosopher. Beethoven revered Schiller's works, and as early
as 1793 he had begun thinking about setting a favorite poem,
An die Freude (better known as the ``Ode to Joy''), to music. It
would take almost twenty years for him to act on the idea, and
another decade for it to come to fruition as the famous last
movement of the Ninth Symphony."
For those of you who enjoy Beethoven, you might like the movie
"Immortal Beloved" which is about him (though much of it is fictional).
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Apr 01 2004 - 19:07:32 EST