At the symphony
My husband and I attended the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Saturday evening, and I, inspired by the music, simply had to write about it.
Sophistication hangs like morning dew off soft pink azaleas inside Heinz Hall, where men and women dressed to the nines arrived early Saturday evening to sip cocktails, gossip or exchange secrets on benches on the mezzanine, freshen up in restrooms dripping in old-time elegance and find their number emblazoned on plush red chairs.
Scattered amongst those who obviously attend symphonies regularly were several Gen Zers, a handful of kids out for a night on the town with their parents, and Millennials who looked about the same age as Josh and me. Classical music has shapeshifted over the centuries and become an elitist genre, but inside Heinz Hall, for one splendid evening, it was impossible to tell the rich from the somebody-gifted-us-a-night-outs, to differentiate the knowledgeable from the novices. On Saturday evening, all in attendance were, in their orbit, beautiful and fancy and part of something bigger than themselves.
On Saturday evening, we were all gathered to see one of music’s most beloved, inspiring and enduring pieces: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
The title might ring a bell; it should. The Ninth is famous for a small section of the fourth and final movement called Ode to Joy.
When Beethoven, who was nearly completely deaf at the time of this composition, and wrote and rewrote the Ninth more than 200 times over 12 years, debuted the piece in Vienna on May 7, 1824, almost 200 years to the date we heard it, the symphony opened to much applause. Nearly all critics lauded the piece, though some found the final movement less than brilliant.
“The alpha and omega is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, marvellous in the first three movements, very badly set in the last,” wrote Giuseppe Verdi, himself a great composer. “No one will ever approach the sublimity of the first movement, but it will be an easy task to write as badly for the voices as in the last movement. And supported by the authority of Beethoven, they will all shout: ‘That’s the way to do it…’”1
Had Beethoven been conducting Saturday evening, my husband and I would not only have shouted, we would have stood and tossed our programs into the air in adulation; as it so happens, we joined the hundreds of other concert-goers in a minutes-long standing ovation for conductor Manfred Honeck, whose silky and enthusiastic style is just as lovely to watch as the musicians onstage as they, together, bring to life one of art’s most treasured creations.
Ah, the art. Earlier in the evening, before intermission and Beethoven’s Ninth, we had the great honor of hearing the world premiere (Friday was the official “first” play) of Samy Moussa’s Adgilis Deda — Hymn for Orchestra. I was suprised but heartened when a tall Millennial from Canada, sporting a man-bun, joined Honeck onstage, his tan suit a contrast to the older conductor’s traditional black attire. I didn’t know my generation composed music the way men like Bach and Mozart composed music, for the sheer joy of it, and for a living (I figured composition was for movie scores), but Moussa does, was actually commissioned by Honeck to write Adgilis Deda for the PSO, and his work is exquisite. For twelve minutes, I was transported from my seat in Heinz Hall into an ethereal space between reality and dreamland, where I witnessed green and blue liquid rising like waves, crashing through the galaxy, where fairy’s lights danced at the edge of dark, magical forests, where Greecian pillars crumbled. There were no words, just feelings, and images conjured from my subconscious, called forth by the notes that danced across the stage, one after another, to create a breathtaking melody, a hymn for orchestra.
By the time the first notes of Beethoven’s Ninth filled the air, my soul ached in that way a soul does, like you’re filled with helium and you might float away, only your legs tether your body to the ground, so instead, this warmth wrapped up in longing spreads from the cavity in your chest into your stomach and into your throat and your eyes lose focus and you simply are, in the moment. I had waltzed into love with Hymn for Orchestra and, only a few bars into the 67-minute symphony, was keenly aware that I was about to be, for the second time in one evening, devastated by beauty.
My husband often says someone smarter than him once said something along the lines of all art aspires to be music. I do not come from a musical family, but I do come from an artistic family, from a family of drawers and painters and writers, so when Joshua argues all other art aspires the heights of musical achievement, I refute the claim. Visual arts — painting, drawing, sketching — are as ancient as music; mankind is compelled century after century to depict the world as seen through our eyes, to interpret and reinterpret and comment on and understand and document history at present through varying styles of visual representation. The written word began as oral tradition; even so, people have played with words for as long as language has existed. Nonmusical art, I believe, is just as important, just as difficult to do well, as music. There is no heirarchy of art.
But hearing Beethoven’s Ninth live almost changed my mind.
The third movement was entrancing: a ballet of bows danced onstage, bodies swaying to the rythm, and the music was soft, romantic. I saw a carousel spinning slowly in a sky full of golden-pink clouds. I spun slowly through the sky on my painted horse while others rose and fell alongside me and the gilded mirrors refracted rays of sunshine. Below, earth; here, Heaven. My body was free. Just when I’d settled deeply into the fantasy, the music shifted; a few beats, and Heinz Hall filled with longing, a tune of aloneness, as if Beethoven is saying to us 200 years from the past, It was foolish to dream this dream.
Tears threatened to spill over, and not because the music was spectacularly wonderful (it was, is), but because, in that moment, I thought, music is feelings incarnate. There is no way to translate the emotion evoked by, the visions inspired by, a moment of music. I cannot explain what the music meant to me in that moment and I can scarecely do justice in words to how it made me feel, but it moved me. I nearly bawled because in that moment, I thought, words can’t do this. Words make concrete abstractions. Words are the anchors that keep thoughts and feelings within reach. Words explain a concept; take you on adventures; teach; words can even describe other works of art, but they cannot truly capture the colors of a sunrise, or the warmth in that first sip of morning coffee, or the essence of a symphony.
The movement ended. I sighed. The audience clapped. Silence. And then the quiet stage again filled with intensity, and I delighted in the way Honeck and his musicians built up to one of music’s most famous melodies, the way they built Ode to Joy softly, layer by layer, until the entire orchestra was in on the piece. A strapping gentleman in a gray suit stood and added rich, deep baritone to the cacophony. “O Freunde, nicht diese tone! Sondern labt uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere,” he belted.
The translation appeared on two black screens situated on either side of the stage: “Oh friends, not these sounds! But let us sing more pleasantly, and more joyful ones.”
It’s like Beethoven, who penned those lines, beats us to the punchline; he feels the sorrow we feel when the lightness of his music gives way to angst, and obliges with more uplifting sound. The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh joined the soloist, and three others, in delivering a rendition of poet Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy set to Beethoven’s music that sounded the way an evening in the Roman baths at Baden-Baden must have felt. The music underscoring Schiller’s words was striking, but the poetry, the poetry! I shifted in my seat, like my bones were the bones of a manor boarded up for winter, and the staff had returned to throw open the windows and dust off the mantels and light the chandeliers for a springtime of revelry. The poem did not explain the music, but it did enhance the music, was a thesis for all the hurt and gaity and introspection and anger and lovely lilting we’d just spent nearly an hour listening to. The way the choir floated above the music, the way the words were not just words on a page but living sound — my heart ached and again I felt near tears at the realization that words can move the way music does.
Words move us differently, but they move us nonetheless. The word “compose” describes both the act of writing music and writing poetry; to “write” is to both craft an essay and create a symphony. There is rhythm to good writing some might call “lyrical,” which is musical. Words and music, music and lyrics exist separately but are forever intertwined; mankind has spent its existence exhaulting the physical and spiritual worlds in words and composing odes to God and Mother Nature and Joy. It sounded almost otherworldly as the Mendelssohn Choir sang, in German, “Do you bow down before Him, you millions? Do you sense your Creator, O world?” I did. Only through the gifts bestowed upon one by God could such a masterpiece as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony come into being, I thought. Only by the hand of God could this world in all its beauty and fury and majesty exist. Only by God’s grace could flawed human beings make sounds like this symphony, pen words like the poem used in this symphony, create anything in any artform that is worthy and lasting. Between the drawing of bows across strings and the voices adding to the ether, this was revealed.
I sat, holding my breath, on the edge of my seat as the orchestra energetically played the last several bars of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a frenetic series of pure emotion spilling from instruments, tumbling offstage and igniting passion in the audience. When the symphony ended, Heinz Hall erupted in another sound, the sound of roaring applause and whistles and one man’s, “Good job!” above the din.
“Be embraced, you millions!” the choir had sung. “This kiss is for the whole world!” Indeed, it felt like this symphony was for the whole world; it’s lasted, been studied and reinterpreted and admired and performed and beloved by people all over the globe for centuries. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is for everyone of all times and places and classes and musical knowledge. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony speaks to us all, meets us where we’re at, reveals truths when we are ready to hear those truths. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is why some believe music is the highest form of art; it’s also a reminder that words are equally as important as music, that the written word is just as rich in tradition and beauty as music, and that words have the capacity to enter into the realm of music when tended with care by someone like Ludwig.
When performed by the likes of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, led by Manfred Honeck, (or, to be fair, other orchestras across time and locale), Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony connects past to present and future, unifies us all, if only for sixty-seven glorious minutes that melt away into the fabric of time and leave those listening with the distinct impression that “above the canopy of stars must dwell a loving father.”
Katherine Mansfield is a full-time mom and when-she-can-sneak-in-a-few-minutes-of-time writer who runs on coffee, the sheer joy of parenthood and a childlike enthusiasm for life. She and her husband, Josh, are raising their son and their dog in the Pittsburgh suburbs.
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Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_(Beethoven)#Reception
This was an incredible read 💖 thank you for taking us along to the symphony!