Traslitterazione' e simbologia del linguaggio tonale nel Finale della 'Nona Sinfonia': L'Ultimo Beethoven Regista di se stesso

Abstract

Taking its starting point from the so-called “fanfares of terror” which belong to the Ninth Symphony's instrumental finale, this article would like to highlight Beethovens distinctive ways and means of achieving an individual harmonic and tonal approach to composition, making his musical language the powerful mediator between word and music, as the two become indissolubly bonded with the programmatic idea, suggested by Schiller's “Ode to Joy”. 

The composer's intention to search for a personal approach to the text of Schiller's ode is clearly disclosed by repeated attempts in opening the fourth movement. In his musical language, still instrumental at this point, he finds new means capable of extending the possibilities of musical expression beyond the limits of conventional compositional language. 

In his compositional process, Beethoven works successfully out a meaningful network of metaphorical symbols culminating in the finale's three “fanfares of terror”, where the poetic idea of the Ninth reveals its true form as the quintessence of the germinal materials for the Symphony, at least in its earlier three movements, that is, before its harmonic-tonal, formal and conceptual transfiguration in the choral finale. By means of the powerful message of this symbolism the composer crosses an inner-musical horizon and raises “Tonkunst” to an universal instrument for comprehending the truth of human life. Beethoven thus becomes not only a true “poet of sounds”, who penetrates the meaning of Schiller's text, but moreover he succeeds in representing himself as “producer of his very self”, as bound up in his difficult and conflictual dealings with the object, the Symphony's underlying idea, i.e. the “Freude”. By creating a “music grown into word” Beethoven manages to represent extramusical, variously untranslatable events by musical means only. In doing so, he reveals his personal relationship with art, as well as with life, and imbues the Symphony and its musical conception with the towering value of a philosophical manifesto. 

This contribution intends to shed new light, supported by concrete examples, on the whole plan of the Ninth Symphony, by trying to deal with late-Beethoven's musical thought from research's perspectives so far unexplored. The consciousness of the self in the musical language of the late Beethoven has, as its moral and philosophical contents, the hope for the self-transcendence of coercive norms (in his composition as well as in his life). All this is realized in the Ninth Symphony by a cogently reasoned symbolism, in which a profound change of the course of musical language germinates.