“As the current leader of the G20, [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel gets to call the tune,” reports Bryony Jones at CNN on Friday (7/7). “On Friday evening, while the musicians at the Elbphilharmonie tune up and tighten strings, some of the world’s most powerful men and women will settle into their seats for a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony…. A German government spokesman told CNN that Merkel herself selected the Ninth Symphony (‘a substantial part of German culture’), whose final movement, better known as the ‘Ode to Joy,’ is ‘a hymn to humanity, peace and international understanding.’ … ‘The piece was written … at a time of repression and counter-revolution,’ says Nicholas Baragwanath, head of the music department at the UK’s University of Nottingham.… The 150-plus years since the Ninth Symphony’s debut have seen it—and in particular the ‘Ode to Joy’—co-opted by … everyone from the Nazis to the Communists, from white supremacists in Rhodesia to … student protesters in Tiananmen Square…. Since the 1970s, ‘Ode to Joy’ has also been the anthem of what is now the European Union.”
Posted July 7, 2017
