A bit of that old Ludwig Van
Mazeni AlwiPublished: Jan 20, 2001 7:05 AM | Updated: Jan 29, 2008 6:21 PM
In the closing days of the year just ended, many Malaysians must have been staring at the headlines with much trepidation and foreboding. I could almost hear them muttering under their breaths, "Will my countrymen succumb to these mischievous machinations and swallow the bait?"
As those of the Christian faith were preparing to commemorate the birth of Jesus with his message of peace and goodwill towards men, the Muslims spent the last nights of the holy month of Ramadhan immersed in prayers and supplications whilst the day-time hunger reminded them of their poor brethren and Islam's broad message of universal brotherhood.
Yet, in that atmosphere of heightened spirituality, some retrogressive elements were shamelessly doing their utmost to see that Malaysians should remain divided along communal and religious lines, "all that custom has divided". The oligarches of the old politics, reeling from the shock of a by-election defeat, albeit a very narrow one, began to see the writings on the wall. If the voters in Lunas had spoken with the voice of the people in the larger national community, the end of race-based politics could well be nigh.
No one is under the illusion that we have reached the stage of "all men becoming brothers, under the sway of thy gentle wings". This is an ideal that, in practice, we can only strive towards its approximation. But playing the communal card as they did in the last general elections, by promising Indonesia-style pogroms and raising the spectre of the 1969 race riots, all these will not likely work in the future. This is what worries the purveyors of the old politics - the new politics they are now facing, based on justice and genuine racial harmony, that they might soon " must creep tearfully away from our circle".
We would expect that their narrow defeat at Lunas would in some way jolt the ruling coalition out of their complacency, rattle their confidence and chip away a little of their arrogance, but the way they have been stumbling from one blunder into a bigger one in playing their communal card is quite extraordinary.
Shattered oligarches
Suqiu, GPMS, Umno Youth-Suqiu, Malay unity talks skilful, but not smart enough to fool the people. The thought that there are not many more cards up their sleeve to play against the people must be unnerving. The photograph in the Sun shortly before Christmas of three young Keadilan leaders, a Chinese, an Indian and a Malay, accompanied by the newly-elected Lunas state assembly representative, walking out of the Kulim police station into the sunshine, arms raised in defiance and smiling to a waiting crowd of well-wishers must have shattered the oligarches of the old politics and sent their world crumbling about them.
The younger generation is embracing in earnest the dreams of a brave new Malaysia, "thus, brothers, you should run your race, as a hero going to conquest".
The lines I quoted above come from a poem Ode to Joy written by Friedrich Schiller in 1786 which has been incorporated by Beethoven into his monumental Ninth Symphony. This premiered in 1824 and it is the last of his symphonies.
Beethoven purists may consider it preposterous to associate his greatest work, some called it "the expression of European genius", with the Malaysian political scene. In a way I agree that Beethoven is much too big for us but I guess the great composer, with his vision of universal brotherhood and peace, himself would grudgingly approve had he been around today to witness the threshold that we are at.
Humanist genius
After all, don't they always say that music is a universal language? But here comes the irony. Throughout history, while some political groupings with democratic persuasions have appropriated Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as the musical expression of their ideals, others whose political programmes were inimical to the spirit with which the work was written have laid similar claim.
This is what I have gleaned from the doctoral thesis of Esteban Buch, La Neuvime de Beethoven - une histoire politique (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - a political history), published into a book by Editions Gallimard in 1999.
I am fully aware that Beethoven's music is not exactly everyone's cup of tea, but I am pretty sure many Malaysians hum the melody of Ode to Joy in their shower without realizing that it is his, thanks to Richard Clayderman who has rendered part of the fourth movement melody into an easy-listening piano piece. Its title, Ode to Joy may lead some to think that it is meant as background music for a romantic candle-lit dinner.
For those who know the details of Beethoven's life, they may not want to be his room-mate, but that's the concession we have to give to geniuses. But at heart, Beethoven is humanist who wished to see an end to oppression and hostilities between nations, and dreamt of a universal brotherhood in the worship of the Merciful Creator. At times his name has been mentioned in the same breath as Kant and Goethe.
An enduring anecdote on Beethoven's humanist inclinations was the dedication of his Third Symphony to Napoleon, supposedly the liberator of Europe, but he tore off in anger the first page of the score upon learning that the latter had crowned himself emperor.
Wild applause
Beethoven saw in Schiller's poem Ode to Joy his vision of Utopia, a reign of universal love and brotherhood, and had wanted to set it to music as early as 1792 when he was a young man in Bonn. The incorporation of Schiller's words in itself is a departure from the traditional symphonic form, hence its other name, "the Choral Symphony", though the music could have easily stood on its own.
But the irama dan lagu are inseparable, to borrow from P Ramlee's immortal Getaran Jiwa. The symphony premiered on May 7,1824 at the Krntnerthor theatre in Vienna to enthusiastic response. Beethoven was completely deaf then and, deeply absorbed in the score he was, the alto soloist Karoline Unger took him by the hand to face the audience who were applauding wildly.
Anyone who has read Schiller's poem would have been captivated by its simple message that strikes a chord with the universal ideals residing in the innermost depths of every human soul untainted by corruption. That it is set to great music would tempt political groupings to appropriate it as their own anthem. And that was what had happened.
The French called it "the Marseillaise of humanity" (the Marseillaise is the French national anthem), just the vehicle to propagate the republican discourse of France to the rest of the world. In the muddy trenches of World War I, a French soldier wrote, "The Ode to Joy is the anthem of the Allies, the credo of our just hopes. Criminal Germany must not be allowed to play it".
In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 the Germans saw in Beethoven the highest expression of German art and culture to counter the corrupting influence of French civilisation. But the worst was yet to come. In 1937, Hitler celebrated his birthday with the Ninth Symphony, in which Furtwngler conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and this was repeated in 1942 when Hitler assumed direct command of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.
Killer music
Those who have watched Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange would recall Alex, a teenage punk who eased himself to sleep after a night of violent rampage with Ode to Joy, what he called, "a bit of that old Ludwig Van".
Later imprisoned for murder, he volunteered for an experimental treatment called 'Ludovico' to make him renounce violence. Under the influence of drugs, tightly strapped in a strait-jacket and with devices to force his eyes open, he was made to see increasingly violent films, the last of which were footage of Nazi troops massed up on a square, of German planes dropping bombs and of scenes in a Nazi extermination camp, with his favourite music Ode to Joy (an electronic version) playing in the background.
When he couldn't take it any more, he broke down and screamed, "He didn't do all that, he only wrote the music!".
The Marxists by the end of the 19th century had made the figure of Beethoven integral to their rhetoric and rituals. At a concert in Berlin in 1905 in memory of Schiller and the 1848 Paris revolution, Kurt Eisner remarked, "for the first time in history, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was interpreted by the proletariat".
During the Cold War, the East German Republic claimed that "Beethoven's creation belonged to the socialist culture of the German nation, to the democrats and progressives of the world". State terrorism must have been the furthest thing from Beethoven's and Schiller's minds when they wrote this work.
But the most ludicrous was when Ian Smith appropriated Beethoven's Ode to Joy as the national anthem of white supremacist Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to replace God save the Queen after its unilateral declaration of independence.
The last and probably the most triumphant political grouping to appropriate Beethoven are the Western Europeans. As early as 1950, the Council of Europe, which came into existence to re-build a unified, harmonious Europe and to prevent the re-emergence of pernicious nationalism that could lead to another great war, sought to have a European anthem.
Fall of the Wall
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was an obvious choice from the start as a symbol of rapprochement among nations. After all, they can claim to be the natural heirs to the humanist philosophical tradition of Kant, Hegel and Goethe. But this was slow to materialise as Eurocentrism was not without its critics. Its perceived association with imperialism, colonialism and even racism has not been completely absolved, thought some European intellectuals.
But the Ode to Joy was finally adopted officially as the European anthem in 1970 (to be exact, the prelude of Ode to Joy, the score written by Von Karajan). But the triumphant moment came with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, marking the end of the Cold War.
In that euphoria, they could not imagine that a virulent Serbian nationalism would soon emerge in their backyard with the defeat of communism. At Christmas, Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Bernstein called this concert "a celebration of human freedom". The musicians were not only Germans (from the Bavaria Radio Symphony Orchestra) but also included players from countries allied against Germany in World War II.
That extraordinary event provided Bernstein the perfect excuse to commit academic indiscretion, by changing the word Freude (joy) to Freiheit (freedom) in the score. I guess this was what everyone wished Schiller had written.
A popular anecdote was that Schiller had to substitute "freedom" with "joy" because of the its sinister connotations for government censorship, in view of the spreading influence of republican ideas of French intellectuals.
Today most scholars say that this was probably no more than a hoax perpetrated by 19th century political figure Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. For Bernstein, this was a heaven-sent moment to sing Freiheit whenever the score indicates Freude which he felt Beethoven himself would have approved.
I am waiting for our Berlin Wall to crumble.
As those of the Christian faith were preparing to commemorate the birth of Jesus with his message of peace and goodwill towards men, the Muslims spent the last nights of the holy month of Ramadhan immersed in prayers and supplications whilst the day-time hunger reminded them of their poor brethren and Islam's broad message of universal brotherhood.
Yet, in that atmosphere of heightened spirituality, some retrogressive elements were shamelessly doing their utmost to see that Malaysians should remain divided along communal and religious lines, "all that custom has divided". The oligarches of the old politics, reeling from the shock of a by-election defeat, albeit a very narrow one, began to see the writings on the wall. If the voters in Lunas had spoken with the voice of the people in the larger national community, the end of race-based politics could well be nigh.
No one is under the illusion that we have reached the stage of "all men becoming brothers, under the sway of thy gentle wings". This is an ideal that, in practice, we can only strive towards its approximation. But playing the communal card as they did in the last general elections, by promising Indonesia-style pogroms and raising the spectre of the 1969 race riots, all these will not likely work in the future. This is what worries the purveyors of the old politics - the new politics they are now facing, based on justice and genuine racial harmony, that they might soon " must creep tearfully away from our circle".
We would expect that their narrow defeat at Lunas would in some way jolt the ruling coalition out of their complacency, rattle their confidence and chip away a little of their arrogance, but the way they have been stumbling from one blunder into a bigger one in playing their communal card is quite extraordinary.
Shattered oligarches
Suqiu, GPMS, Umno Youth-Suqiu, Malay unity talks skilful, but not smart enough to fool the people. The thought that there are not many more cards up their sleeve to play against the people must be unnerving. The photograph in the Sun shortly before Christmas of three young Keadilan leaders, a Chinese, an Indian and a Malay, accompanied by the newly-elected Lunas state assembly representative, walking out of the Kulim police station into the sunshine, arms raised in defiance and smiling to a waiting crowd of well-wishers must have shattered the oligarches of the old politics and sent their world crumbling about them.
The younger generation is embracing in earnest the dreams of a brave new Malaysia, "thus, brothers, you should run your race, as a hero going to conquest".
The lines I quoted above come from a poem Ode to Joy written by Friedrich Schiller in 1786 which has been incorporated by Beethoven into his monumental Ninth Symphony. This premiered in 1824 and it is the last of his symphonies.
Beethoven purists may consider it preposterous to associate his greatest work, some called it "the expression of European genius", with the Malaysian political scene. In a way I agree that Beethoven is much too big for us but I guess the great composer, with his vision of universal brotherhood and peace, himself would grudgingly approve had he been around today to witness the threshold that we are at.
Humanist genius
After all, don't they always say that music is a universal language? But here comes the irony. Throughout history, while some political groupings with democratic persuasions have appropriated Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as the musical expression of their ideals, others whose political programmes were inimical to the spirit with which the work was written have laid similar claim.
This is what I have gleaned from the doctoral thesis of Esteban Buch, La Neuvime de Beethoven - une histoire politique (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - a political history), published into a book by Editions Gallimard in 1999.
I am fully aware that Beethoven's music is not exactly everyone's cup of tea, but I am pretty sure many Malaysians hum the melody of Ode to Joy in their shower without realizing that it is his, thanks to Richard Clayderman who has rendered part of the fourth movement melody into an easy-listening piano piece. Its title, Ode to Joy may lead some to think that it is meant as background music for a romantic candle-lit dinner.
For those who know the details of Beethoven's life, they may not want to be his room-mate, but that's the concession we have to give to geniuses. But at heart, Beethoven is humanist who wished to see an end to oppression and hostilities between nations, and dreamt of a universal brotherhood in the worship of the Merciful Creator. At times his name has been mentioned in the same breath as Kant and Goethe.
An enduring anecdote on Beethoven's humanist inclinations was the dedication of his Third Symphony to Napoleon, supposedly the liberator of Europe, but he tore off in anger the first page of the score upon learning that the latter had crowned himself emperor.
Wild applause
Beethoven saw in Schiller's poem Ode to Joy his vision of Utopia, a reign of universal love and brotherhood, and had wanted to set it to music as early as 1792 when he was a young man in Bonn. The incorporation of Schiller's words in itself is a departure from the traditional symphonic form, hence its other name, "the Choral Symphony", though the music could have easily stood on its own.
But the irama dan lagu are inseparable, to borrow from P Ramlee's immortal Getaran Jiwa. The symphony premiered on May 7,1824 at the Krntnerthor theatre in Vienna to enthusiastic response. Beethoven was completely deaf then and, deeply absorbed in the score he was, the alto soloist Karoline Unger took him by the hand to face the audience who were applauding wildly.
Anyone who has read Schiller's poem would have been captivated by its simple message that strikes a chord with the universal ideals residing in the innermost depths of every human soul untainted by corruption. That it is set to great music would tempt political groupings to appropriate it as their own anthem. And that was what had happened.
The French called it "the Marseillaise of humanity" (the Marseillaise is the French national anthem), just the vehicle to propagate the republican discourse of France to the rest of the world. In the muddy trenches of World War I, a French soldier wrote, "The Ode to Joy is the anthem of the Allies, the credo of our just hopes. Criminal Germany must not be allowed to play it".
In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 the Germans saw in Beethoven the highest expression of German art and culture to counter the corrupting influence of French civilisation. But the worst was yet to come. In 1937, Hitler celebrated his birthday with the Ninth Symphony, in which Furtwngler conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and this was repeated in 1942 when Hitler assumed direct command of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.
Killer music
Those who have watched Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange would recall Alex, a teenage punk who eased himself to sleep after a night of violent rampage with Ode to Joy, what he called, "a bit of that old Ludwig Van".
Later imprisoned for murder, he volunteered for an experimental treatment called 'Ludovico' to make him renounce violence. Under the influence of drugs, tightly strapped in a strait-jacket and with devices to force his eyes open, he was made to see increasingly violent films, the last of which were footage of Nazi troops massed up on a square, of German planes dropping bombs and of scenes in a Nazi extermination camp, with his favourite music Ode to Joy (an electronic version) playing in the background.
When he couldn't take it any more, he broke down and screamed, "He didn't do all that, he only wrote the music!".
The Marxists by the end of the 19th century had made the figure of Beethoven integral to their rhetoric and rituals. At a concert in Berlin in 1905 in memory of Schiller and the 1848 Paris revolution, Kurt Eisner remarked, "for the first time in history, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was interpreted by the proletariat".
During the Cold War, the East German Republic claimed that "Beethoven's creation belonged to the socialist culture of the German nation, to the democrats and progressives of the world". State terrorism must have been the furthest thing from Beethoven's and Schiller's minds when they wrote this work.
But the most ludicrous was when Ian Smith appropriated Beethoven's Ode to Joy as the national anthem of white supremacist Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to replace God save the Queen after its unilateral declaration of independence.
The last and probably the most triumphant political grouping to appropriate Beethoven are the Western Europeans. As early as 1950, the Council of Europe, which came into existence to re-build a unified, harmonious Europe and to prevent the re-emergence of pernicious nationalism that could lead to another great war, sought to have a European anthem.
Fall of the Wall
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was an obvious choice from the start as a symbol of rapprochement among nations. After all, they can claim to be the natural heirs to the humanist philosophical tradition of Kant, Hegel and Goethe. But this was slow to materialise as Eurocentrism was not without its critics. Its perceived association with imperialism, colonialism and even racism has not been completely absolved, thought some European intellectuals.
But the Ode to Joy was finally adopted officially as the European anthem in 1970 (to be exact, the prelude of Ode to Joy, the score written by Von Karajan). But the triumphant moment came with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, marking the end of the Cold War.
In that euphoria, they could not imagine that a virulent Serbian nationalism would soon emerge in their backyard with the defeat of communism. At Christmas, Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Bernstein called this concert "a celebration of human freedom". The musicians were not only Germans (from the Bavaria Radio Symphony Orchestra) but also included players from countries allied against Germany in World War II.
That extraordinary event provided Bernstein the perfect excuse to commit academic indiscretion, by changing the word Freude (joy) to Freiheit (freedom) in the score. I guess this was what everyone wished Schiller had written.
A popular anecdote was that Schiller had to substitute "freedom" with "joy" because of the its sinister connotations for government censorship, in view of the spreading influence of republican ideas of French intellectuals.
Today most scholars say that this was probably no more than a hoax perpetrated by 19th century political figure Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. For Bernstein, this was a heaven-sent moment to sing Freiheit whenever the score indicates Freude which he felt Beethoven himself would have approved.
I am waiting for our Berlin Wall to crumble.
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