Beethoven Symphony No 9 in D minor Opus 125

With the incorporation of choral and solo voices in the finale of his Ninth Symphony, written between fall 1822 and ca. February 1824, Beethoven shattered the formal world of the classical symphony, which had hitherto been purely instrumental. We know that Beethoven had often considered setting Schiller’s Ode to Joy [An die Freude] ever since he was a young man in Bonn. Less well-known is the historical background: Schiller’s poem enjoyed a wide circulation in the humanistically oriented Masonic lodges of the time, where membership was thriving in the wake of the Enlightenment. Beethoven’s teacher Christian Gottlob Neefe was a “protagonist of Masonry and Princeps of the Bonn Illuminati.” The composer himself continued to maintain contacts with Freemasons in his later years, including relations to the London Philharmonic Society, constituted in 1823, which was not only an artistic institution, but also “a headquarters of British Freemasonry.” The Ninth, which Beethoven originally concei