The MagazineFreedom’s SymphonyThe world of Beethoven’s Ninth.Jun 28, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 39
• By LAWRENCE KLEPP
 The Ninth  Photo Credit: Corbis Beethoven and the World of 1824 Toward the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in the mid-1970s, the routine attacks on revisionists and running dogs of imperialism were briefly interrupted by a strident anti-Beethoven campaign. A friend of mine who was a schoolgirl in Shanghai at the time remembers that the reeducation sessions demanded particularly resolute striving against the Fifth Symphony, because the dramatic opening chords had been interpreted as fate knocking on the door, and the bourgeois concept of fate was obsolete. The revolutionary will of the people, reinforced by the collective recital of Chairman Mao’s thoughts, overcame all inevitability and could accomplish anything. It couldn’t accomplish making Beethoven sound bad. Many students, workers, and peasants heard his music for the first time in these propaganda sessions and were secretly transfixed. Tyrannies are, of course, right to get nervous when his music is played. No composer is more clearly identified with themes of individual liberty. His only opera, Fidelio, is about the liberation of a man from a despot’s prison. He struck out the dedication of the Eroica Symphony to Napoleon after hearing he had crowned himself emperor. And the music, like the composer himself, resolutely goes its own way, refusing to bow or conform. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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