‘All Men Will Become Brothers’ (‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder’): Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Olympic Games ideology

Abstract

First performed in an Olympic context as part of the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the Finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has become a popular mainstay of modern Olympic protocol. Part of a ritualized entertainment spectacle that enhances the appeal and popularity of the Games, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony elevates the prestige of the Games and helps to sustain the Olympic Movement's political and commercial dominance within the panoply of institutionalized sport. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the normalization of the Finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games not only transmits and reinforces the traditional Olympic ideology, but also reaffirms the ascendant hegemony of the Olympic Movement within the world of elite international sport. This study is a critical reading of the Olympic musical ceremonial as a site of ideological production, especially as it pertains to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Notes

^1. Strom, ‘The Latest Sport?’, C3.

^2. McClary, Feminine Endings, 29.

^3. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison.

^4. DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 109.

^5. Merriman, Anthropology of Music, 225.

^6. See, for example, Adorno, Prisms; Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music; and Adorno, Sociology of Music.

^7. DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 1.

^8. Foucault, History of Sexuality.

^9. McClary, ‘Foreword’, xiv.

^10. Fletcher, Political Works, 73.

^11. Buch, Beethoven's Ninth, 34.

^12. DeNora, Music in Everyday Life, 22.

^13. Buch, Beethoven's Ninth, 35, 44.

^14. See Jameson, Postmodernism, 8.

^15. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison, 12.

^16. Kotarba and Vannini, Understanding Society through Popular Music, 77.

^17. The full and correct citation for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is Sinfonie Nr. 9 mit Schuβchor über Schiller's Lied “An die Freude” für Orchester vier Solostimmen und Chor, op. 125. For the text of Schiller's Ode to Joy as well as Beethoven's adaptations to Schiller's text, see Levy, Beethoven, 9–12. For a full musical description of the final movement, see Sachs, Ninth, 154–61.

^18. Sachs, Ninth, 3.

^19. Quoted in Wagner, My Life, 384.

^20. Quoted in Gramit, Cultivating Music, 159.

^21. Wagner, My Life, 35.

^22. Sachs, Ninth, 15–19.

^23. Quoted in Taruskin, Text and Act, 243.

^24. Ibid.

^25. Ibid., 244.

^26. Ibid.

^27. Hobsbawn and Ranger, Invention of Tradition.

^28. Berlioz, Beethoven, 61.

^29. Solomon, ‘Beethoven's Ninth Symphony’, 6.

^30. Tseng, ‘Ode an die Freude’, 5.

^31. Segrave, ‘Knighthood of Nothingness’, 14.

^32. Cooke, Language of Music.

^33. McClary, ‘Blasphemy of Talking Politics’, 22.

^34. See for example, Buch, Beethoven's Ninth, 1; and Levy, Beethoven, 5.

^35. Solomon, Beethoven,1998, 404–5.

^36. Solomon, Beethoven Essays, 14.

^37. Rolland, Beethoven, 977.

^38. Levy, Beethoven, 89.

^39. Rolland, Beethoven, 977.

^40. Solomon, Beethoven Essays, 22.

^41. Coubertin, Olympism, 583.

^42. Ibid., 580.

^43. See MacAloon, ‘Religious Themes and Structures’, 168.

^44. Pindar, ‘Olympia I’, 1.

^45. See Estrella, ‘The Olympic Anthem’.

^46. Quoted in Guegold, 100 Years of Olympic Music, xiv.

^47. Levy, Beethoven, 9–12.

^48. Quoted in Buch, Beethoven's Ninth, 203.

^49. Quoted in Brohm, Jeux Olympiques à Berlin, 141.

^50. Coubertin, Olympism, 360.

^51. Quoted in Birchall, ‘11th Olympics Today in Gay and Crowded Berlin’, The New York Times, August 1, 1936.

^52. Samaranch, ‘Setting our Sights’, 12.

^53. Quoted in Toward a Definition .

^54. Stauffer, ‘Foreword’, x.

^55. Coubertin, Olympism, 149.

^56. Ibid., 216.

^57. Ibid., 322.

^58. Ibid., 537.

^59. Lowe, Beauty of Sport, 43.

^60. Buch, Beethoven's Ninth, 4.

^61. Solomon, Beethoven Essays, 205.

^62. Coubertin, Olympism, 549.

^63. Quoted in S. Strom, ‘The Latest Sport? After a Worldwide Effort, Synchronized Swimming Gets In’, The New York Times, February 7, 1998, C3.

^64. Coubertin, Olympism, 629–30.

^65. Coubertin, Olympism, 614.

^66. A. Austin, ‘Games End on Colorful Note’, The New York Times, August 4, 1980, C1.

^67. See Green, Music on Deaf Ears, 33.

^68. DeNora, ‘Musical Patronage and Social Change’, 337.

^69. Ibid., 332.

^70. DiMaggio, ‘Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century’, 311.

^71. Green, Music on Deaf Ears, 101.

^72. Coubertin, Olympism, 583.

^73. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy.

^74. Quoted in Lanza, Elevator Music, 231.

^75. Quoted in Taruskin, Text and Act, 244.

^76. Solomon, Beethoven, 1985, 349.

^77. At the time of the 2010 Vancouver Games, GE was the parent company of NBC, the network with the official rights to televise the Games.

^78. Cooke, Language of Music, ix.