Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: A Search for Order

Abstract

We may begin, as Beethoven did, with hovering open fifths, pianissimo, a missing third, a sense of expectancy, soon to be fulfilled by a quickening into life and the forceful emergence of a theme and a definite tonality. The opening of the Ninth Symphony functions, like similar rhetorical gestures in the Seventh Symphony, the Hammerklavier Sonata, and several of the late quartets, to raise a curtain so that the action may begin, or so that we may witness the unveiling of a distant universe. More than a gesture is involved. There is a sense in which this passage foreshadows in nuce the whole of the future action, inasmuch as it represents an initial ambiguity leading to clarification.' At this stage, however, though we know that we have begun, we cannot imagine where Beethoven intends to take us: we do not know what to expect, we do not know how, or even if, the cluster of harmonic, thematic, and rhythmic riddles offered in these measures will be solved. We do not know why this oversized orchestra and massed choruses and soloists are assembled before us. We may even discover that each step toward clarification opens upon a new ambiguity, in a constant interchange of questions and answers. Thus, although we have come to know that the Ninth Symphony is implicit in its opening measures, we cannot predict the Ninth Symphony from them. As the work unfolds, we soon 19th-Century Music X/1 (Summer 1986). ? by the Regents of the University of California.