Ode to Joy

+Yesterday was apparently the 200th anniversary of the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, so there was no better excuse to dig out the CD and a glass or three of red wine and imbibe once again those rich, virtuous chords. Of course, as exemplified by the BBC’s Sunday programme most attention has been given to the final movement and the Ode to Joy (I’d love to have met Joy, is she still around?) For the Sunday prog the big question was ‘Was Beethoven religious?’ and it seems the answer was yes, Yes and thrice YES! We were told that he prayed twice a day (perhaps on the lines of ‘Dear God, don’t make me deaf’) and was born a Catholic. So religion emphatically played a part in Beethoven’s life and I suspect that some people would love to wrest him out of the spirit of the Enlightenment. I think it’s fair to say that at one point Beethoven even saw Napoleon as an angel of enlightenment (didn’t last long). Now of course, the Ode to Joy is the anthem of the European Union which means that a certain cohort of people in Blighty will choke on their G&T’s anytime they hear it. Actually, whilst I applaud the sentiment, I don’t like this sequestration of a sublime piece of music to encourage dreamy visions of E.U. unity. Does Orban stand to attention when it’s played (in his case it’s called the Ode to E.U. Grants and Subsidies Filtered to My Mates Joy)?
 
I suspect we can get carried away with Beethoven (I certainly can). Even his treatment of our dreary national anthem, which is touched upon in Wellington’s Victory makes it worth standing up for. For me though one of my first sorties with the Ninth Symphony came with hearing a bit of it in Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (before the film was withdrawn from general release) played on a Moog synthesiser. The idea in the film was that the delinquent character Alex would be reformed if he was exposed to beauty (not so in Orban’s case). But in the real world, beauty has to be paid for and will be paid for generally by the better off. I doubt that many penniless peasants were at the first performance of the Ninth, nor sat in the chandeliered chambers of quartet performances. Not Beethoven’s fault of course, he had to earn a crust from the upper crust. So now, thank heavens for technology! Today you can listen to it in your bath! Or even on your smart speaker, if you don’t mind being spied upon! (Yes, I’ve just contradicted myself there, you can access the Ninth on a budget, perhaps even for nowt on Spotify, so what’s to moan about then?)
 
P.S. Beethoven would have stood in solidarity with Palestinians. I’m sure of it.  
 
+Ever on the ball, I’m catching up with the story that the Garrick Club’s members have voted in sufficient numbers to allow women to join as members. I’m not sure how it was not constrained by law not to have done this decades ago, but anyway it’s happened now (largely it seems by the membership list being published, thereby shaming them into action). I heard a woman thespian on the radio saying that if she could have an intelligent conversation there about theatrical issues, she might be tempted to join. Sorry luv (as we say in the West End) but there’s not much chance of that unless the West End includes that other theatre, the Courts of Justice. When I was privileged to have lunch a couple of times at the Garrick the place was populated by dull lawyers. A place where the defence and the prosecution could sort things out perhaps? How did I get to enter this place of faded splendour, you ask? Only after I ceased to be an MP, with my good friend (after he ceased to be a Tory MP), the late Peter Ainsworth. After an excellent lunch he admitted he was inclined to be a Green. You could get carried away after a good two bottle lunch. Peter very indulgently introduced me to a Guardian columnist standing at the bar (perhaps Peter thought we had something in common). The columnist’s look of disdain will linger with me to my dying day. And after all those letters of mine they published!