Admin I Monday, April 29, 2024
BERLIN – The Berlin State Library is putting the original score of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on display to mark the 200th anniversary of the work’s premiere.
The manuscript will go on show at the Stabi Kulturwerk, the library’s exhibition space, from May 7 to August 25, the library announced on Monday.
The last movement, with the setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” will also be displayed, it said. This part of the symphony has been used as the European anthem since 1985.
The symphony was premiered in Vienna on May 7, 1824. The written sheet music was bound into book form around 1850.
Beethoven’s secretary Anton Schindler sold the first parts of the score to the Royal Library in Berlin as early as 1846, with the missing parts following in 1901.
Different storage locations for individual parts of the manuscript during World War II meant that it was not fully reassembled until after German reunification.
The original score is now stored in the Berlin State Library, where it is kept under tight security. “As a rule, the autograph score never leaves the vault,” said Martina Rebmann, head of the Stabi music department.
It was last displayed to the general public in 2020, when it featured as part of an exhibition to mark the 250 anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.
