History of Ode to Joy 

Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” was composed in 1824, in the final movement of his last, and arguably most famous, symphony, Symphony No. 9. The premiere took place in Vienna on May 7, 1824, and despite its unpracticed and under-rehearsed presentation, the audience was ecstatic. It was the first time Beethoven had appeared on stage in 12 years.

At the end of the performance (though some sources say it could have been after the 2nd movement), it was said that Beethoven continued conducting even though the music had ended. One of the soloists stopped him and turned him around to accept his applause. The audience was well aware of Beethoven’s health and hearing loss, so in addition to clapping, they threw their hats and scarves in the air so that he could see their overwhelming approval.

In 1972, the Council of Europe made Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” its official anthem. Years later, in 1985, the European Union did the same. Although Schiller’s text isn’t sung in the anthem, the music conveys the same ideas of freedom, peace, and unity.

During World War I, German prisoners held captive by Japan introduced their captors to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Years later, Japanese orchestras began performing it. Then, after the devastating events of World War II, many Japanese orchestras began performing it at the end of the year, hoping to bring in enough audience members to help fund reconstruction efforts. Since then, it has become a Japanese tradition to perform Beethoven’s 9th symphony at the end of the year.

In many English churches, the hymn “Joyful, Joyful we adore thee” written in 1907 by the American author Henry van Dyke, is set and sung to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” melody. Perhaps the most popular modern recording of the hymn can be heard in the 1993 movie, Sister Act 2, sung by Lauren Hill and cast.

German “Ode to Joy” Lyrics

The “Ode to Joy” text that Beethoven employed, and slightly modified, was written by the German poet, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, in the summer of 1785. It was a celebratory poem addressing the unity of all mankind.

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Hope Always Persists

Joy Enhances Living

Embrace Joy

Don't Hesitate to Celebrate

Don't Hesitate from What is Right - Guru Gobind Singh

This reminds me of Guru Gobind Singh poem Deh Shiva in which he says, "Let me not hesitate from doing whats right."  Similar message: Fight. Don't fear. Don't hesitate. Remember oneness; be kind. 

O Shiva ... give me this boon,

To never shirk from doing right

To never fear when I go to fight

to ever have the confidence to win

Let my heart learn

through ordeals of life

to have the desire

to remember your name

incessantly

And when the time has come

let me die bravely in the battlefield

Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton

Welcome Morning

- Anne Sexton

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry “hello there, Anne”

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,

dies young.

What a glorious ode to the beauty of the everyday Anne Sexton gives us in this poem. I believe that the fact that it was written not long before her suicide in 1974 only adds to its power and poignancy. Sexton suffered from mental illness all her life and was not afraid to explore it and other intimately personal details in her poetry, which set the standard for the modern movement of confessional poetry that began at that time.

This poem shows how intimate Sexton could feel at times with the daily presentations, as Mary Oliver calls the little details of our life. Everything has a life of its own, even the hairbrush and the kettle and the chair we sit on for breakfast each morning. When we feel the life that pours through everything, then joy is the spontaneous and natural result, and we can sense that all this is God. In that moment of remembrance our life itself becomes a prayer of gratitude.

Brooks begins with a sweeping overview of the non-intersecting worlds of moral logic and economic logic, as he has it, dividing us into an “Adam I,” who seeks success in the world, and an “Adam II,” more deeply committed to character and an inner life. He then gives us 10 or so portraits of enduring “heroes of renunciation,” easing us into the theme with such Greatest Generation stalwarts as George Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower, before alighting on such global Hall of Fame worthies, granitic-seeming but riven with inner terrors and flaws, as St. Augustine, Samuel Johnson and George Eliot. Within each brief life, he inserts an extended encomium to some useful virtue, be it humility or sacrifice or, in one case, passionate love.

“The Road to Character” is an account of Brooks’s effort to find his way out of shallow punditry—or, as he puts it, to “cultivate character.” To make his case, Brooks—who likes to reach for the occasionally effortful neologism—has come up with a pair of clarifying terms: the “résumé virtues” and the “eulogy virtues.” Résumé virtues, he proposes, are those that are valued in the contemporary marketplace: the high test scores achieved by a student, the professional accomplishments pulled off by an adult. They are the skills that are met with bigger paychecks and public approbation. Eulogy virtues, on the other hand, are the aspects of character that others praise when a person isn’t around to hear it: humility, kindness, bravery. Our society exalts the résumé virtues, Brooks argues, but it overlooks the humbler eulogy virtues. Still, he writes, we know at our core that this second category of values is what matters more.