Hegel, Blake, and Beethoven--The Dialectic of The Ninth Symphony

--Ernst Schoen-René
California State University, Chico

I don't know how the Dialectic slipped into Western thinking during the dawn of what
we now call the "Romantic Age"--only that it did. It was as if the Enlightenment sense of
a single rational basis underlying all things turned in upon itself and, in an almost
Hegelian manner, became conscious of itself and started dividing.
One of the frequently-cited turning points came when Kant, frustrated by the myopia
of Hume's absolute skepticism, used rationalism to attack rationalism in The Critique of
Pure Reason (1781) and broke the accessible universe into two realms--the
"phenomenal" and the "noumenal"--one of which we could all see, the other which could
be entered into through the use of the intuition.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel took Kant's divided universe and
divided it again into a multitude of streams which changed and developed over time,
streams which it was the Philosopher's job (and ultimately everyone's job) to gather into
his (or her or their) consciousness. The way to do this involved Hegel's well-known
"dialectical method," which called for observing the universe, selecting a limited portion
of it, selecting its opposite, and pulling to two (the "thesis" and the "antithesis") into a
"synthesis." Then this Synthesis would become a new Thesis, its Antithesis would be
found, and, by further mind-stretching activity, the philosopher's mind would turn this
new set of opposed concepts into a new Synthesis and continue, by such means, to
build toward an almost god-like understanding of the whole universe.
Clearly such a process was impossible to carry through to the end, but the notion of
progress toward an ideal, of an evolving history, and of thinkers, artists and leaders who
could somehow see more largely than the rest of us had a powerful (if often frightening)
effect on the history of the world to come.
But Hegel was not the only one. At the same time he was formulating and
promulgating his theories, William Blake, the English printer and poet, a man who had
never heard of Hegel and came from a very different background than Hegel's, was
formulating his own dialectic.
Like Kant, Blake struggled against the confines of the rationalist, Newtonian world.
Like Hegel, Blake strove to understand and to preach the understanding of the greater
universe through his own dialectic, which began with the positing of one limited view of
the world and moved forward with the positing of that view's opposite.
Fed by Blake's intense religious sensibility, this tendency can be seen from his
earliest poems onward. Its first clear-cut appearance can be found in Blake's Songs of
Innocence and Experience, written between the mid-seventeen-eighties and their
publication--1789, for Songs of Innocence, and 1794, for Songs of Experience. Taken
together, these poems move from pictures of simple innocence to highly ironic pictures
of innocence to bitter attacks on the English Establishment of Blake's time for feeding
sweetsy-sweetsy pabulum to its poor and dispossessed--as a way to maintain power. (I
do not need to point out how this works in our own day.)
Blake's view was clearly that our world will not progress until we can take both the
"Innocent" (the young nurse-maid's optimistic view of her world; the chimney-sweep's
dream of a benevolent God) and the "experienced" (the older nurse-maid's vision of
life's tediousness; the skeptical chimney sweep's sense of abandonment and early
death) and bind them together into one understanding of the world.
Blake's great dialectic work, The Marriage of heaven and Hell (1794) followed soon
after and carried Blake's view of a split universe further, pitting the effete, judgmental,
and repressive "heaven" against the vital, revolutionary, and clear-sighted "hell"--once
again with the suggestion that both must be seen together or "synthesized" for the world
to be seen whole.
In his later works, Blake made his vision increasingly complex, dividing his universe
into four components--Reason (called "Urizen") Love (called "Luvah"), imagination
(called "Los" or "Urthona"), and Physical Sensuousness (called "Tharmas"). The
prevailing vision of Blake's time, he felt, came from Enlightenment thinking and was the
vision of the rationalist Urizen, whose way of seeing was limited to a mere quarter of all
there is to comprehend. Once again, we must see the world dialectically and
synthesize greater vision out of lesser, partial visions in order to heal both our own
internal spirits and the world as a whole.
And, finally, there was the English Poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who did know
German philosophy and who, in the late 1790's, established a kind of Kantian dialectic
between the transcendent vision--as exemplified by the wind that blows through "The
Aolian Harp," the river that flows through "Kubla Khan," and the realm that interacts with
the "Primary Imagination"--and the more earthbound realm, where most of us reside
most of the time. (Out of Coleridge came Poe, who picked up on Hawthorne's Puritan-
inspired sense of good and evil and similarly divided the universe between the world of
imagination and the world of apparent reality--but that's another story.)
Beethoven grew up surrounded by the very dialectical idealism I describe above,
and, as I hope to show, his Ninth Symphony (1822-23) utilizes the same sort of
dialectical thinking, as it strives to carry its listener toward a point of nearly divine vision
Indeed, the Ninth Symphony's "Finale" carries us upward by opposing thesis and
antithesis again and again--in a manner Blake, Coleridge and even Hegel (if he were
not so bent on criticizing Beethoven's "overstepping the finely drawn boundaries of
musical beauty") would likely appreciate.
As Maynard Solomon points out in his book Beethoven (Simon & Schuster
Macmillan, 1977), Beethoven had had the idea of setting Schiller's ode to Joy" to music
from his earliest years, perhaps even from his years in Bonn before he came to Vienna
in 1792 (p. 310), and hints or pieces of the tune appeared in a number of works from
1790 forward (p. 311).
It was only, however, in 1822, ten years after his preceding symphony, that
Beethoven turned again to symphonic writing and, in response to a written request from
many members of the Viennese musical community that he return to the concert stage,
brought his long-held dream to fruition. Driven by a sense of the dialectic (opposites set
against opposites, synthesized and carried to an ever-expanding vision that places the
listener at the very feet of God) the Ninth Symphony's final movement stands as
perhaps the greatest inspiring and elevating experience ever created.
Little remains, then, but to show how Beethoven's dialectic works, and this is
relatively simple--especially if one can listen along to the music itself. I shall try to do
this on paper by suggesting the times at which some of the dialectical building blocks
that go into the movement's structure occur (although they will be different for different
recordings; mine is an older Cleveland Orchestra recording--under the direction of
George Szell).
The Fourth Movement begins with a kind of stormy cacophony, and the way
Beethoven uses the confusing and chaotic universe as the source for the opposites he
pits against one another in order to carry his listener skyward can be seen in the
following outline:

0:00. Great excitement, suggesting the wild diversity of the universe.

0:40. As a possible unifying theme, the first movement is suggested, but
0:54. It is violently interrupted by the basses, which reject it.
1:12. The theme from the second movement is put forward and similarly
rejected.
1:34. Finally, two bars of the third movement are put forward, but they too
are inadequate.
2:02. The oboes then make a tentative beginnig of a new theme, a new way of
building toward the great unity of the whole.
2:36. This is finally accepted by the oboes’ opposite, the basses, who play the
theme straight through without accompaniment.
3:20. This unifying, synthesizing theme begins to permeate the whole orchestra.
First the first violins seize it and harmonize on it, and presently the whole
orchestra is filled with it.
5:50. However, the new height of synthesis reached by this sublimely beautiful
theme is not high enough, not comprehensive enough. The tune falters, is
violently restated, and is countered once more by
6:10 the wild cacophony with which the movement began. Thus nature's
wildness rises up against the tune’s presumption that it can comprehend all
things. The tune is beautiful, but a simple orchestral statement of it is not
enough. A chord which sounds every note of the scale finally suggests the
simple theme's inadequacy, and suddenly a new element is presented—one
never before included in a symphony: the human voice.
6:18. The baritone solo begins: "0 friends, not these sounds!" The words—
Beethoven's—again suggest that simple orchestration is not enough to
comprehend the whole universe. The solo continues: "Let us raise a song of
sympathy and gladness; 0 Joy, let us praise thee." The praise of joy will
thus become the head under which orchestra and soloists will strive for an
ever-greater assimilation of the opposites of which the universe is
made—they and the hearers will partake in an upward, synthesizing
movement which will continue as the Symphony strives toward a vision like
God's.
7:10. In the words that follow, Beethoven takes passages from Schiller's Ode
to Joy. Notice how much of the text speaks of joy as a synthesizing agent,
something which brings together diverse portions of the universe and, in so
doing, elevates and frees all who come under its spell. First, the Baritone
states the general theme: “Praise to Joy, the God—descended/Daughter of
Elysium,/Touched with fire, to the portal/Of thy radiant Shrine we come."
7:38. But, one voice is not sufficient. A chorus now repeats the last four lines
of the baritone solo: "Thy magic binds together/All that custom has rigidly
separated;/All men will become brothers/When your gentle wings shield
them."
8:00. Now, solo and chorus being insufficient, the second stanza is begun by
the three lower voices (contralto, tenor, bass) and later joined by the
 soprano (coming like Joy down from heaven). Then, finally, the whole
chorus repeats the last four lines: "Ye to whom the gift is given/To be
friend to faithful friend/You whom a wife has won and treasured,/To our
strain your voices tend./Yes, if any hold in keeping/But a single heart-his
own,/Let him join us,
or else, weeping,/Steal from out our midst unknown.”
8:40. Then, as if to bring still greater variety, complexity and
comprehensiveness into the picture, the four voices and ultimately the
chorus join in what has been called the most difficult vocal quartet ever
written: "Drinks of joy from cup o'er flowing /Bounteous Nature freely
gives/Grace to the just and unjust showing/Blessing everything that
lives./Wine she gives to us and kisses,/A loyal friend on life's steep
road;/Even the worm can feel life's Blisses,/As can the angel before God."
9:46. Out of the silence that follows, the bassoon and big drum (at the lower
extreme of the scale) begins a march rhythm, against which the flute and
piccolo (at the upper extreme of the scale) play a lilting version of the
choral theme. Thus are blended the orderliness of a march and the lilting
disorder of exuberance, the artistic statement of a symphonic work and
the mundane rhythms of everyday human existence.
10:34. Against this synthesis of opposites yet a new antithesis is set and
forced to blend with them. A tenor solo (perhaps the voice of the Hero)
enters: "Happily—happily as the sun’s speed/Through the glorious plain of
heaven,/Brothers run your course,/Joyful as a hero to victory ."

One need not outline the whole Ninth Symphony to see how the varying,
synthesizing and assimilating continue onward and upward through an increasingly
complex orchestral part and vocal score that runs to as many as twelve different lines.
As the music ascends, moments of great humility and awe at the thought of drawing
near to God are set against the symphony's upward-moving exuberance, moments of
quiet are set against explosions of sound, different instruments are set against one
another until orchestra, soloists and chorus combine in Schiller's final words: "Joy, thou
lovely spark of God/Your magic still binds together/Be embraced, millions. /'This kiss (of
Joy) to the whole world!/Brothers, over the starry heavens/Must a loving father dwell!"

Indeed, the final thrust of the music seems directed at proving (by dialectically
supported intuitive means) God's existence and man’s ability to rise toward it.