Also, the San Francisco Symphony has a web site called Keeping Score, featuring multimedia presentations about several composers and their key works, including Berlioz, Beethoven, Copland, Ives, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky. Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is featured here: A Symphonic Revolution. Even if you can’t read musical scores (and I can’t either), it’s fascinating to follow the score as excerpts from the music play.
The video above features the complete performance in two parts, with Herbert von Karajan conducting. It runs about fifty minutes and would be a fine use of less than an hour of your time to sit back and listen to the whole thing. Enjoy!
In a world that sometimes seems to have gone mad, it’s reminder of what human beings can accomplish when they are free to live, create, work together … and sing.
Part One:
Part Two:
Here’s the English translation of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy (written in 1785), which Beethoven adapted and used in the symphony, the composer’s “musical representation of universal brotherhood.”
Oh friends, not these tones! Rather, let us raise our voices in more pleasing And more joyful sounds! Joy! Joy!
Joy, beautiful spark of gods Daughter of Elysium, We enter drunk with fire, Heavenly one, your sanctuary! Your magic binds again What custom strictly divided. All men become brothers, Where your gentle wing rests.
Whoever has had the great fortune To be a friend’s friend, Whoever has won a devoted wife, Join in our jubilation! Indeed, whoever can call even one soul, His own on this earth! And whoever was never able to, must creep Tearfully away from this band!
Joy all creatures drink At the breasts of nature; All good, all bad Follow her trail of roses. Kisses she gave us, and wine, A friend, proven in death; Pleasure was to the worm given, And the cherub stands before God.
Glad, as His suns fly Through the Heaven’s glorious design, Run, brothers, your race, Joyful, as a hero to victory.
Be embraced, millions! This kiss for the whole world! Brothers, above the starry canopy Must a loving Father dwell. Do you bow down, millions? Do you sense the Creator, world? Seek Him beyond the starry canopy! Beyond the stars must He dwell.
Ron Coryer: Dale, I was sorry to hear of your father’s passing. I would like to express my condolences to you and you family. As I read your post on your website, I couldn’t help thinking back to the time I lost my dad and I had the...
Gary Coryer: Dale, So sorry to hear of the loss of your Dad. He was always nice to us as kids. Next time I am in Cadyville I will drop in to see your mom and express my condolences. Hope she is doing okay. I will send a note to my brother Ron with...
A u d e e: A deepest condolence to you Dale. Losing a parent is never easy. May Your Father rest in peace.
A u d e e: Hi Dale, It’s been a while since my last visit . I’m sorry to hear about plumbing problems at your house. I’m pretty sure that it is a quite distraction when you hope to be able to spend times on other interesting...
Mary Holm: You’re doing exactly what I long to do–go back to school and get a history degree. I’ve always loved history but my degree’s in Radio/TV. I can’t think of anything better than having an excuse like that to...
Daniel J. Pritchett: The Touch is great for surfing from the couch and while walking around indoors. Using mine quickly gave me an appreciation for mobile-optimized web sites. I use and recommend the “MobilePress” plugin for WordPress....
***Dave: The inability / unwillingness to back up external USB drives is what’s kept me from a few other very good products out there (Carbonite, Moby). I am definitely going to try Backblaze.
cooper: I am bad about this and have lost a lot of files, everything on my last computer as it conked out all of a sudden in February and tool most files with it as the only things I backed up were academic files. I’m going to check this out.
Jagad Guru Chris Butler: Hello Dale, thanks a lot for the info. I actually just ordered an external hard drive the other day for back up…but I’ll look into Backblaze as well as Synctoy and see if they’ll work for my needs.
Billy: Cool, Dale! Let us know if you have any more questions.
Dale: Billy, Just letting you know that I tried the restore several times again this evening, and it worked fine — the download had the correct extension. I’ve updated the post to remove references to the error. Thanks! Dale
Dale: Ann, Thank you very much; I’m glad my article was helpful. The new version of WordPress is so much better than 2.0.2 — and once you get beyond that first Yahoo! upgrade, subsequent upgrades go much more smoothly. It would have...
ann wood: Thank you- I needed to upgrade from 2.0.2 on yahoo as well and was terrified of the auto upgrade plugin but your info was great and I did it this morning with little difficulty.
Rod: No problem. That’s the downside of using plugins, I guess – they can interact in unforeseen ways. I don’t really have a take on the security angle at this point – it’s not something I’ve looked into....
Dale: Rod, Thanks for letting me know about this; I didn’t realize it was happening. The first of the two subscribe checkboxes was provided by the Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin, and the second one by the Subscribe to Comments...
Dale: Rod, That’s a good question. The password I was using at the time wasn’t too complex, so I just assumed some password-cracking tool figured it out. However, I spoke with Yahoo! hosting support about it, too, and their take was...
Category: 
. I’m sorry to hear about plumbing problems at your house. I’m pretty sure that it is a quite distraction when you hope to be able to spend times on other interesting...