Walter Meyer, in response to Satoshi Akima:

>>Robert Peters wrote in reply to me:
>>
>>>It is no message to heal the world or to or to enlighten the ignorant: it
>>>is MUSIC.  When I for one listen to music I do not want to be missionized:
>>>I want to enjoy and maybe be moved, that is all.
>>
>>But this would also be to condemn Beethoven's 9th Symphony:
>>
>>Ihr stuetzt nieder, Millionen?
>>Ahnest du den Schoepfer, Welt?
>>Such ihn ueberm Sternenzelt,
>>Uueber Sternen muss er wohnen!
>>(Schiller: An die Freude)
>
>Without condemning Beethoven's 9th, I like it in spite of, certainly not
>because of, texts in the last movement such as the one above.  ("ueber
>Sternen muss er wohnen" ["He must reside above the stars"] indeed!  Humph.)

Exactly my feelings, Walter, but we should not overlook that Beethoven
himself chose these words and ardently believed in them.  Yes, he took
them from Schiller, but it's very instructive to compare the original text
of the poem to Beethoven's.  He left out all those down-to-earth stanzas
about drinking and singing and being happy together (one wonders what
Schiller had in mind when he wrote those stanzas, a visit to the pub
perhaps?) Beethoven only wrote music to the stanzas HE considered
important.  His choice tells us a lot about him and his view on God
and mankind.

And also Robert Peters expressed my feelings very well:

>I listen to Beethoven's 9th but with a kind of healthy mistrust:  when
>someone tries to hammer down his message so impressively my democratic
>and critical awareness awakens.  I want to decide myself what makes me
>better, want to be free to say yes or no to Beethoven's view and proposals.
>...
>
>(Have you ever thought about why it was so easy for the Nazis to use Wagner
>- and even Beethoven? Can it be because they saw themselves as "gurus" who
>did not like too much criticism?)

Yes, this is the crux.  I'm not a Wagner expert, but I know a lot about
Beethoven and one thing is for sure:  he didn't accept criticism, not abo
ut the slightest trifle.  He quarreled with Schindler about the quality of
the soupe and the next day he wrote the man a letter, telling him that the
soupe WAS bad.  If Beethoven says that the soupe is bad, well, then the
soupe IS bad!  Period.  Beethoven surely did see himself as a guru, as
someone who wanted to turn the world into a better one and thought he was
able to do so.  In a letter he called poets and artists the "teachers of
the world." I'm one of the world's most ardent Beethoven lovers, but just
like you I listen to the 9th with very mixed feelings and some years ago I
had the guts to read Wagner's famous "Das Judentum in der Musik." It made
me shiver.  Oh yes, I know, anti-semitism in his days cannot be compared to
the antisemitism of the Nazis.  And yes, Wagner surely would have abhorred
of the Holocaust and he had Jewish friends.  Yet something with the state
of mind of both these guys was not kosher and that's the background of the
misuse of the Nazis.

Joyce Maier
www.ademu.com/Beethoven