Joyce Maier wrote:

>...we should not overlook that Beethoven himself chose these words and
>ardently believed in them.

I'm no Beethoven scholar, but it had always been my impression that
Beethoven, while not a non-believer, had a concept of God that not only
transcended organized religion, but rejected the idea that He could be
physically located.  (I'm reminded of the Russian cosmonaut who returned
from an orbit flight claiming that he hadn't seen God while out in space.
For me, such appearance would have been the clearest refutation of his
existence.) I find it incredible that Beethoven would have believed one
could find God by probing high enough, like the builders of the Tower of
Babel.

I prefer to think that Beethoven seized upon these words of Schiller's (in
a poem of his that has never been one of my favorites) for the opportunity
it gave him to describe musically, as of course he does exquisitely, a
supreme creator hovering above a star-studded canopy, even it it did not
reflect his own religious beliefs, much as Wagner later described Walhalla
w/ its rainbow bridge, etc., in the conclusion to *Das Rheingold*.

Walter Meyer