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27 startling to think how much the world would have missed if Beethoven had not written his Ninth Symphony, and especially the first movement of it. The eight others would still have been the greatest works in the world, but we should not have known how far they could be surpassed. It is in the hope of elucidating some of the difficulties of the movement, and thus leaving the hearer more free to realize the total effect, that the foregoing imperfect analysis has been attempted.

It may be well to say that no connection need be looked for between the first three movements of the Choral Symphony and the "Ode to Joy" which inspired its Finale. The very title of the work, Beethoven's own, is conclusive on this point. It is not a "Symphony on Schiller's Ode to Joy," but it is a "Symphony with Final Chorus on Schiller's Ode to Joy,"—"Sinfonie mit Schluss-Chor über Schiller's Ode an die Freude." The first three movements might have had another Finale; and it is not necessary to attempt to reconcile either the opening Allegro, the Scherzo (so called), or the Adagio, with the train of thought and feeling suggested by the Ode, and embodied in the latter half of the work.

The second movement of the Symphony is the Molto vivace; in fact, though not so entitled, the Scherzo—here, for the first time in the nine