On August 27 the Handel and Haydn Society will perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with new text by Tracy K. Smith (right) for the “Ode to Joy,” led by Marin Alsop (left). Alsop photo: Grant Leighton. Smith photo: Erin Clark/Boston Globe
“Thanks to Beethoven joining its words with an unforgettable melody in his Symphony No. 9, this 1785 poem [‘Ode to Joy’] by German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller has become possibly the most iconic text in … classical music,” writes A. Z. Madonna in Thursday’s (8/19) Boston Globe. “But when former United States poet laureate Tracy K. Smith was commissioned by Car-negie Hall to write new English lyrics for the Ninth Symphony’s choral finale, she didn’t flinch…. Smith … was one of several poets Carnegie Hall commissioned for the Global Ode to Joy Project, the brainchild of American conductor Marin Alsop…. Smith’s interpretation was slated to premiere at Carnegie Hall … but amid the ongoing pandemic … Smith’s new text was never performed live. In a serendipitous twist, the Handel and Haydn Society recently tapped Alsop to lead a perfor-mance of Symphony No. 9 at the DCR Hatch Shell on Aug. 27. ‘I said to [Handel and Haydn], ‘Listen, I have this fabulous new text,’… Alsop said … ‘They’ve been so excited and responsive.’… The conductor thought [Smith would] be perfect to bring ‘Ode’ into the 21st century.”
