none of my business

It's not often that you get a chance to bask in positivity. For 1 and a half hours last night, I got to do exactly that at the Philadelphia Orchestra's performance of Beethoven's epic 9th Symphony. Part drinking song, part booming tympani, there's just so much to latch on to and hope for in experiencing this piece.

This is one of those pieces that is performed relatively often, but still sells out everywhere, everytime. (Right out of college, I used to dream about travelling across America to find good performances of the heavy-hitters like Beethoven's 9th, and Tchaikovsky's 6th, but I realize that it would be like staring at the Mona Lisa everyday or eating chocolate for dinner all the time...so I bought the CDs)

Everyone recognizes the exuberant "Ode to Joy" theme in this piece (Beethoven took the words from Friedrich von Schiller's poem) but to see the musicians up there actually smiling as they played their instruments last night, and experience the immediate standing ovation in the audience was such a clear example of how diverse individuals can come together to create collective beauty. (Even David only yawned a few times and didn't make any paper airplanes out of the program!)

Beethoven was completely deaf by the time this piece was first performed in 1824, which in itself is an astounding accomplishment, but would you have been able to create such a joyful work under those circumstances? Beethoven had been seriously depressed by his deafness and isolation for about 10 years before composing the 9th, and was able to come out of this darkness to create his most profound music. This says a lot about the power of suffering. And music was never the same afterwards: he used syncopation, a chorus, tympani, everything, in entirely new ways. Nearly 200 years later, it still feels revolutionary, and people still associate with it as THE anthem for peace, tolerance and liberty in the world.

And back in Germany in the early 1800's, people needed hope. Although Beethoven wrote the 9th while he lived in Vienna, all of Europe was affected by the instability from the Napoleonic wars. As I was listening to the performance last night, I remembered an old family story that resonated with me. My paternal great-grandfather, Johann Blumle, grew up in Southern Germany near Stuttgart, in the Swabian Mountains at the edge of the Black Forest. It was a time of little opportunity, and men were conscripted often into fighting wars that were against their religion and took them away from their families at a young age. Around this time, as the story goes, Johann was 14 years old when a Prussian soldier pushed him into the muddy ditch as they passed each other in the street, just because he could. The soldiers ruled the roost at that time, and Johann decided then and there that this was no longer his country. He was 14 years old, and he boarded a boat for Philadelphia alone that day. And here I am, typing a blog 3 miles from where he landed in complete peace. Freedom-- what a concept.

I don't think there's any more positive influence on the world than music, whether it be religious or secular, old or new. Playing in orchestras throughout my life helped me to recognize that it's one of the most productive ways to bring people together and positively impact society. I'm happy to say that sitting in the audience is a close second!