Rare Finds - A Guide to Rare Book Collecting

“Oh Friends, not these tones! Rather let us sing more cheerful and more joyful ones. Joy! Joy!”

Inspired by its Romantic theme of universal brotherhood, Beethoven had the idea of setting Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” to music in his early twenties. The young composer’s ambitions were not yet equal to that great work, and his earliest efforts were unsuccessful.

He turned his attention elsewhere and established his reputation in the concert halls of Vienna with the masterpieces of his middle period: the bulk of his symphonies, the most accomplished of his piano sonatas, including the Appassionata, and his only opera, Fidelio. As his star ascended, however, he confronted personal affliction. His deafness continued to worsen, and his love for one woman after another went unrequited.

During these complex years, Beethoven repeatedly returned to Schiller’s Ode. By the 1820’s, his health failing, he again took up the pen, determined to set the poem and recast it in his own light. Beethoven returned to the conducter’s lectern himself, after an absence of several years, to lead the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, his only to make the use of the human voice. After the performance, a by-now completely deaf Beethoven had to be turned around by one of his singers to witness the raturous ovations of the audience.

We offer an original subscriber’s copy of the first edition of the full score of the magnificent Choral Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth.