Ninth Symphony

The Ninth Symphony, completed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1824, is a symphony for orchestra, four vocal soloists, and chorus, and was the last complete symphony Beethoven wrote. Its final movement sets an adapted text of Friedrich Schiller's 1785 poem An die Freude, Ode to Joy, for vocal soloists and chorus, the first time a major composer had incorporated full choral forces into a symphony, a structural innovation that profoundly shaped the later history of the genre. Beethoven was almost completely deaf by the time of the symphony's premiere in Vienna on 7 May 1824, and a widely repeated account, credible though not verifiable in every detail, describes him having to be turned around by a performer to see the audience's applause, since he could not hear it. The symphony's scale, nearly seventy minutes in length and requiring far larger performing forces than were typical for the genre at the time, expanded what a symphony could attempt, and its final movement's setting of Schiller's text celebrating universal brotherhood has since been adopted for occasions ranging from the reunification of Germany to its arrangement as the anthem of the European Union.