Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

It has been called the greatest audio entity one

could ever listen to; a song which can pierce the soul of

even the most dedicated music-hater: Beethoven’s Ninth

Symphony. Not only has it been designated thus; also, as

one of the few truly divinely inspired works, one which most

men can only marvel at, as they wallow in their appropriate

humility. These creations, however, are definitely not the

only aspects of entities beyond the scopes of men; there are

far more examples, which are seen every day, but often

overlooked.

I was walking outside, with this song echoing in the

recesses of my mind, on a dismal, overcast day in the

Autumnal quarter, a day when where the streets blended with

the atmosphere, when one could hardly look up without

feeling the singe of the wind against one’s face. To me,

these days have always conjured up images of some distant,

looming storm, some silent tempest which, if not otherwise

distracted will soon wreak mayhem and disaster on my

environs.

This day had an intense air about it, as do others

of its ilk. This is most likely the fault of the storm

under which it is shadowed, as though it and its inhabitants

are uneasy and harrowed about the imminent predator waiting

overhead to pounce.

As the sky overhead swam with deeper and deeper

shades of gray and hopeless black, the song in my mind was

reaching some vocal crescendo in the fourth movement, a

better foreteller of the gale I could not imagine. While

the winds bullied and tormented the defenseless

neighborhood, I started for my house.

Unexpectedly, as the crescendo was losing speed, a

quiet, pacific violin entered the musical fray in my brain,

and the entire mood of the symphony mellowed, the winds

themselves pacified, seemingly under Ludwig’s fickle

dominion. Thinking the storm had passed, I continued

blissfully onward to the meadows which were my destination.

Again I was assaulted, this time by a different part

of the symphony; not too long after the first chorale. This

was the startling and almost fearful, but still uplifting,

part in which the female and male vocals collided like two

huge tidal waves with the power to splinter a fleet of ships

with the German Alle Menschen repeated several times. Upon

this onslaught of euphony, I turned from whatever I might

have been thinking before, and looked at some violently

twisting and rising leaves and other debris, and gazed at

the playful heavens, again ominous.

Annoyed with Beethoven and the cruel elements, I

stood there, unmoving; indecisive, not knowing whether to

turn around or pursue my present course, I felt the excited

chorale still striking some unknown and inexplicable fear

within me, as though some divine creature were about to

strike me down in some vehemence which lies well beyond the

realms of verbal description. So, as the chorus continued

repeating its faithful mantra, the winds again rose up

stronger than before,