William Strother responding to Joyce Maier on Beethoven's 9th:

>>...  Beethoven's sketches show that he wanted to express the high starry
>>sky where God is supposed to live by putting notes as high as possible
>>to that sentence "Ueber Sternen muss er wohnen." Singers often complain
>>about those notes.  I can understand that very well, but here once again
>>Beethoven stretched the possibilities of the human voice because he
>>considered the expression more important than those tortured vocal
>>chords.
>
>For whatever reason that section of the 9th finale has always evoked the
>image of the starry sky to me.  I never examined where the association
>came from.  I really don't care.

Of course.  The search for associations is a matter for researchers and
experts.  For "simple" lovers this is not really important.  However, it's
interesting to learn more about the various explanations, since it's so
close to the everlasting question for the meaning of music in general.
Start a thread with this name and you'll be busy for weeks and weeks!
On Beethoven mailing lists this moment in Beethoven's music is always
something very controversial and often the start of nasty quarrels and
heated discussions.  Often it starts with a discussion about Solomon's
view.  He writes: "But while present [God], he is not yet discovered.
'Seek him beyond the stars!  Beyond the stars he surely dwells' - and
Beethoven's music supplies a heart-rending question mark.  The chorus's
measured rhythmic unison desintegrates on the word "muss", which is sounded
successively by the basses, the tenors and altos, and finally by the
sopranos, as though by repeated emphasis to query what they dare not
acknowledge in reality, that the multitudes have been embracing before an
absent deity, Deus absconditus." Was Beethoven actually a non-believer,
unwilling to say so frankly?

Joyce Maier
www.ademu.com/Beethoven