[5] The final (4th) movement of the symphony, commonly known as the Ode to Joy, features four vocal soloists and a chorus in the parallel key of D major.

[8] Beethoven made preliminary sketches for the work later that year with the key set as D minor and vocal participation also forecast.

Going further back, an earlier version of the Choral Fantasy theme is found in the song "Gegenliebe" ("Returned Love") for piano and high voice, which dates from before 1795.

[10] According to Robert W. Gutman, Mozart's Offertory in D minor, "Misericordias Domini", K. 222, written in 1775, contains a melody that foreshadows "Ode to Joy".

[12] When his friends and financiers learned of this, they pleaded with Beethoven to hold the concert in Vienna, in the form of a petition signed by a number of prominent Viennese music patrons and performers.

[12] Beethoven, flattered by the adoration of the Viennese, premiered the Ninth Symphony on 7 May 1824 in the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna along with the overture The Consecration of the House (Die Weihe des Hauses) and three parts (Kyrie, Credo and Agnus Dei) of the Missa solemnis.

This was Beethoven's first onstage appearance since 1812 and the hall was packed with an eager and curious audience with a number of noted musicians and figures in Vienna including Franz Schubert, Carl Czerny, and the Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich.

[15][16] The soprano and alto parts were sung by two famous young singers of the day, both recruited personally by Beethoven: Henriette Sontag and Caroline Unger.

According to the critic for the Theater-Zeitung, "the public received the musical hero with the utmost respect and sympathy, listened to his wonderful, gigantic creations with the most absorbed attention and broke out in jubilant applause, often during sections, and repeatedly at the end of them.

The opening, with its perfect fifth quietly emerging, resembles the sound of an orchestra tuning up,[35] steadily building up until the first main theme in D minor at bar 17.

After three instrumental variations on this theme, the human voice is presented for the first time in the symphony by the baritone soloist, who sings words written by Beethoven himself: ''O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!'

Its form has been disputed by musicologists, as Nicholas Cook explains: Beethoven had difficulty describing the finale himself; in letters to publishers, he said that it was like his Choral Fantasy, Op.

[47] The text is largely taken from Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy", with a few additional introductory words written specifically by Beethoven (shown in italics).

In the second last section of the text, starting from the line Brüder, über'm Sternenzelt, Beethoven goes back to the medieval sacred music tradition:[50] the composer recalls a liturgical hymn, more specifically a psalmody, using the eighth mode of the Gregorian chant, the Hypomixolydian.

[50] Beethoven's employment of this sacred music style has the effect of attenuating the interrogative nature of the text when is mentioned the prostration to the supreme being.

Notably, Richard Wagner doubled many woodwind passages, a modification greatly extended by Gustav Mahler,[59] who revised the orchestration of the Ninth to make it sound like what he believed Beethoven would have wanted if given a modern orchestra.

[61] The British premiere of the symphony was presented on 21 March 1825 by its commissioners, the Philharmonic Society of London, at its Argyll Rooms conducted by Sir George Smart and with the choral part sung in Italian.

The American premiere was presented on 20 May 1846 by the newly formed New York Philharmonic at Castle Garden (in an attempt to raise funds for a new concert hall), conducted by the English-born George Loder, with the choral part translated into English for the first time.

Soloists were June Anderson, soprano, Sarah Walker, mezzo-soprano, Klaus König, tenor, and Jan-Hendrik Rootering, bass.

[68] Bernstein conducted the Ninth Symphony one last time with soloists Lucia Popp, soprano, Ute Trekel-Burckhardt, contralto, Wiesław Ochman, tenor, and Sergej Kopčák [Wikidata], bass, at the Prague Spring Festival[69] with the Czech Philharmonic and Prague Philharmonic Choir [cs; de] in June 1990; he died four months later in October of the same year.

In 1998, Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa conducted the fourth movement for the 1998 Winter Olympics opening ceremony, with six different choirs simultaneously singing from Japan, Germany, South Africa, China, the United States, and Australia.

Since the late 20th century, the Ninth has been recorded regularly by period performers, including Roger Norrington, Christopher Hogwood, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

[71] At 79 minutes, one of the longest Ninths recorded is Karl Böhm's, conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in 1981 with Jessye Norman and Plácido Domingo among the soloists.

9 (From the New World), Antonín Dvořák pays homage to the scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with his falling fourths and timpani strokes.

[77] In the film The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek comments on the use of the Ode by Nazism, Bolshevism, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the East-West German Olympic team, Southern Rhodesia, Abimael Guzmán (leader of the Shining Path), and the Council of Europe and the European Union.

The 1951 performance of the Ninth Symphony conducted by Furtwängler was brought forward as the perfect excuse for the change,[80][81] and was put forth in a Philips news release celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Compact Disc as the reason for the 74-minute length.

In an effort to capitalize on its popularity, orchestras and choruses undergoing economic hard times during Japan's reconstruction performed the piece at year's end.

In the 1960s, these year-end performances of the symphony became more widespread, and included the participation of local choirs and orchestras, firmly establishing a tradition that continues today.

Numbered choral symphonies as part of a cycle of otherwise instrumental works have subsequently been written by numerous composers, including Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Charles Ives among many others.

A number of other composers' ninth symphonies also employ a chorus, such as those by Kurt Atterberg, Mieczysław Weinberg, Edmund Rubbra, Hans Werner Henze, and Robert Kyr.