Most of the Easter mass celebrations of my childhood ended with the triumphant chords of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ ringing throughout St. Mary’s church as I and another altar boy led the priest down from the altar and out of the church. If old-fashioned Monsignor Glavin was giving the mass, we would go back to the area where we got dressed and take one final respectful bow. If it was Father Gulley, he usually lingered out with the congregants, socializing and talking and blessing babies while the altar boys hurried back to get changed without any ritualistic bow. Strange, the things one remembers, the memories that one can occasionally pull from an Easter weekend that went unremembered for so many years.
As for that joyous symphony by Beethoven, it begs for a reinterpretation, and was given a major overhaul when Adrienne Rich wrote her magnificently disturbing poem, “The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven Understood At Last As a Sexual Message” from ‘Diving Into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972’ as seen below.
A man in terror of impotence
or infertility, not knowing the difference
a man trying to tell something
howling from the climacteric
music of the entirely
isolated soul
yelling at Joy from the tunnel of the ego
music without the ghost
of another person in it, music
trying to tell something the man
does not want out, would keep if he could
gagged and bound and flogged with chords of Joy
where everything is silence and the
beating of a bloody fist upon
a splintered table
It gives quite a different view of that old ‘Ode to Joy’, and I challenge you to do some historical research on Ludwig and come back with your take on this particular piece unchanged. (Or just watch ‘Immortal Beloved’ and you’ll get a similar life-altering experience.)
Happy Easter.
Nobody beats the Ris.
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