"Ode to Joy" (German: "An die Freude" [an diː ˈfʁɔʏdə]) is an ode written in the summer of 1785 by German poet, playwright, and historian Friedrich Schiller. It was published the following year in the German magazine Thalia. In 1808, a slightly revised version changed two lines of the first stanza and omitted last stanza.
| To joy | |
|---|---|
| byFriedrich Schiller | |
Autograph manuscript, c. 1785
| |
| Original title | An die Freude |
| Written | 1785 |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Form | Ode |
| Publisher | Thalia |
| Publication date | 1786, 1808 |
"Ode to Joy" is best known for its use by Ludwig van Beethoven in the final (fourth) movement of his Ninth Symphony, completed in 1824. Beethoven's text is not based entirely on Schiller's poem, and it introduces a few new sections. Beethoven's melody,[1] but not Schiller's text, was adopted as the "Anthem of Europe" by the Council of Europe in 1972 and later by the European Union. Rhodesia's national anthem from 1974 until 1979, "Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia", also used Beethoven's melody.
Schiller wrote the first version of the poem when he was staying in Gohlis, Leipzig. In 1785, from the beginning of May till mid-September, he stayed with his publisher, Georg Joachim Göschen, in Leipzig and wrote "An die Freude" along with his play Don Carlos.[2]
Schiller later made some revisions to the poem, which was then republished posthumously in 1808, and it was this latter version that forms the basis for Beethoven's setting. Despite the lasting popularity of the ode, Schiller himself regarded it as a failure later in his life, going so far as to call it "detached from reality" and "of value maybe for us two, but not for the world, nor for the art of poetry" in an 1800 letter to his longtime friend and patron Christian Gottfried Körner (whose friendship had originally inspired him to write the ode).[3]
An die Freude |
Ode to Joy |
The lines marked with * were revised in the posthumous 1808 edition as follows:
| Original | Revised | Translation of original | Translation of revision | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| was der Mode Schwerd geteilt | Was die Mode streng geteilt | what the sword of custom divided | What custom strictly divided | The original meaning of Mode was "custom, contemporary taste".[5] |
| Bettler werden Fürstenbrüder | Alle Menschen werden Brüder | beggars become princes' brothers | All people become brothers |
The original, later eliminated last stanza reads
Rettung von Tirannenketten, |
Rescue from the chains of tyrants, |
Academic speculation remains as to whether Schiller originally wrote an "Ode to Freedom" (An die Freiheit) and changed it to "To Joy".[6][7] Thayer wrote in his biography of Beethoven, "the thought lies near that it was the early form of the poem, when it was still an 'Ode to Freedom' (not 'to Joy'), which first aroused enthusiastic admiration for it in Beethoven's mind".[8] The musicologist Alexander Rehding points out that even Bernstein, who used "Freiheit" in two performances in 1989, called it conjecture whether Schiller used "joy" as code for "freedom" and that scholarly consensus holds that there is no factual basis for this myth.[9]
Over the years, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" has remained a protest anthem and a celebration of music.
Other musical settings of the poem include:
| External audio | |
|---|---|
 Schubert's "An die Freude"onYouTube, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Gerald Moore |
Das 'Alle Menschen werden Brüder', das Schiller in seiner Ode an die Freude (eigentlich Ode an die Freiheit) formuliert, ...
German Wikisource has original text related to this article: An die Freude (Schiller) (1786) German Wikisource has original text related to this article: An die Freude (Beethoven)
