Beethoven 9th Project

[Peter]

I had a very nice email from Kerry Candaele about her website and project on Beethoven's 9th and we have agreed to share this here to see if any members would like to contribute:

"I want to bring your attention the documentary on Beethoven's Ninth that I
am working on (called Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps of Beethoven's
Final Symphony), and ask for your suggestions. I've shot close to 50 hours
of tape, but the film is really just beginning, thus I am looking for more
stories about the Ninth. You can read about the project at www.followingtheninth.com. What I'm hoping to find are new stories that I
might follow, develop, as the film proceeds. As of today, I will be filming
in Japan, where the Ninth (Daiku) is performed by hundreds of variously
sized orchestras, sometimes with choruses of 5000 people or more. I will
also be going to Chile and other countries in South America, where a version
of the "Ode to Joy" was sung as a song of resistance and hope by those
living under military dictatorships."


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'Man know thyself'

[Joy]

I checked out his website and it looks very exciting indeed. An interesting project to just focus on the 9th and how it came about. I like the idea of asking everyday people their thoughts about it.

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'Truth and beauty joined'

[Ateach Asc]

Originally posted by Peter:
I had a very nice email from Kerry Candaele about her website and project on Beethoven's 9th and we have agreed to share this here to see if any members would like to contribute:

will this documentary delve into the biggest mysteries surrounding the creative processes of that symphony? Apparently, LVB struggled for about 10 years on/off just with the opening grandeur of that symphony. And in fact, some prior posts have noted the intriguing occurrence of a brief passage of the opening movement stuck in the first movement of the very much earlier 2nd symphony.

But an even greater mystery appears in relation to the 9th. And that is the massive Missa Solemnis which most assuredly is the 9th's sister work. The MS also winds up eclipsing the 9th even though its major themes are far more subdued and less hummable than that finale in the 9th.

Here, the mystery is how these two powerful works of genius gestated in the composer's creative processes. Clearly there had to be a linkage because the 9th's first movement had the massiveness of structure and spirit which easily challeged the MS.

I'm hoping that this documentary will in one chapter devote some comment to the MS simply because both the MS and its sister work of the 9th were created very closely to each other.



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Must it be? It must be!