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Beethoven's 9th symphony is something that I listen to at least 4 times a year. It uplifts me and confounds me and worries me and it makes me feel alive.
Beethoven wrote it while totally deaf, "hearing" the music in his head and transcribing it into parchment.
Beethoven was angry, hated the fucking bullshit patronage system or the royal courts and rich fucks and the church. He sought humanist values in music and succeeded.
The 9th symphony, with it's final ODE TO JOY movement, was the first music played at the Berlin wall by leonard bernstein and the berlin philharmonic the day after the wall was announced as to be destroyed, when everyone helped destroy it. It was the only piece of music which could and can convey such a transcendent human experience.
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