Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: The Power to Create Anew

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony:
The Power to Create Anew

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has an electric quality perhaps because of its energy and vitality.

What rises in human consciousness when a symphony of this magnitude is heard?

What energies does it loose on the human soul?

How do we grow in a planetary and cosmic sense as a result of hearing it?

After all, we are receptive to the music because it arouses something within, reminding us that we are, “above all, the carriers of culture, the endless frontier of creative transformation” (1)

Beethoven’s Ninth “stands unchallenged, this Everest of the symphonic medium. “It is quite simply the greatest symphony ever composed.” (2)

Beethoven set a precedent with this symphony, because of its unmistakable spiritual quality.

Beethoven built on the experience he gained from composing the Missa Solemnis by including the final choral movement with the “Ode to Joy” by Schiller in the symphony. It was a departure from earlier symphonic music to include a large chorus and soloist singers in a symphony.

Thematically, the symphony describes the human yearning for justice and reminds us that redemption is a main theme of human life and addresses the presence of the soul as the redeeming quality. (3)

The choral movement particularly underscores the idea that the spiritual life must be lived in tune with inner realities.(4) That comes about easily when a person is mentally focused, the reason that the symphony had an extra dimension of the power of life itself.

The entire symphony, including the choral movement, presents the idea of humanity as an integral part of the cosmos with a divine destiny. It radiates the feeling of the dynamic presence of joy and freedom.

The power of the music sets a direction for us to be conscious of our special role in the destiny of the planet, to take in and absorb the subtle harmonies, and to love like we have never loved before.

It leaves the audience with the sense that each human will triumph and be an essential part of the redemption. That’s where our joy and freedom are—in the redemption of our home planet and the life on it.

That is the promise. Only we can fully embrace our fixed design, our purpose. Once we do, then we shall witness the presence of God on Earth!

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Rebecca Field
© All Rights Reserved Worldwide

With inspirational ideas gathered from:
1. Jantsch, Erich, The Self-Organizing Universe, Pergamon Press, 1983, Wheaton & Co., Great Britain, Exeter, p.228.
2. Tame, David, Beethoven and the Spiritual Path, The Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Ill., 1994, p. 153.
3 Bailey, Alice A., Education in the New Age, Lucis Publishing Company, New York, 1954, p. 67.
4. Ibid.