Music1824
Symphony No. 9 — Ode to Joy
Ludwig van Beethoven
The choral finale of Beethoven's final symphony, adopted as the anthem of the European Union and a universal symbol of fraternity.
About this work
Premiered in Vienna in 1824 while Beethoven was completely deaf, the Ninth Symphony's finale — setting Schiller's "Ode to Joy" — became the anthem of the European Union in 1972. It remains the most performed and recorded choral work in the Western canon, its melody traversing political borders with a force that no national anthem could replicate.