Joyce Maier wrote: >... The rough opening passage is a recapitulation of the theme of sad and >angry first movement. Beethoven wants to chase them away with addition of >those words and then, after this feeling has hastily left, then it's time >to sing and shout for joy. Gone is the depression and mania is here to >stay (maybe)! There's a resemblance to some bars of finale of the 5th, >roughly half-way. Also those bars are a reminder less pleasant feelings, >in this case expressed in the third movement. I appreciate Pablo's explanation and yours. While I have lived w/ the Ninth Symphony for over 50 years, i.e., I have been listening to it frequently during that time, it never occurred to me that "nicht diese Toene" (note the plural) referred to the very brief passage preceding this exhortation rather than to the recapitulation of parts from each of the earlier three movements. What makes the matter even more confusing for me is that the "O Freunde..." passage comes *after* the "Ode to Joy" theme is played and played with. Your explanation, which I don't necessarily reject, would mean that LvB treats us to reminders of the separate movements that had gone before, each fascinating in its individual way, followed by the new "Ode to Joy" theme, which is itself developed at some length, after which the soloist rejects the rough-hewn opening notes to the movement (which but for their repetition here would have been superseded in our consciousness by the summaries from the symphony's earlier and impending movements) in favor of the "Ode to Joy". Musically, it may work fine. From a narrative standpoint, the recapitulated earlier movements and anticipation of the final movement make no sense along side the presentation of that final movement as more comfortable and joyful ("angenehmere...und freudenvollere") tones than the brief, unrefined introduction to the final movement. In short, if you want to show that the Mona Lisa is a finer picture than a hastily drawn political cartoon, you don't also show us a Rafael Madonna, Rembrandt's Night Watch, and Velazquez's Maids of Honor first. All of which, I guess proves, that music and narrative arts don't always follow the same track. Walter Meyer