The South African Civil Society Information Service

How Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Fortified Resistance Movements All Over the World

14 May 2015

Regarded as one of the most important works in Western classical music, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth symphony, which includes lyrics from the poem “Ode to Joy”, has inspired resistance movements all over the world from Chile to China. Al Jazeera’s Witness has produced a fascinating documentary about the meaning that the symphony holds for activists from a diversity of backgrounds - all searching for freedom through fraternity.

According to Al Jazeera:

At Tiananmen Square in 1989, students played the Ninth over loudspeakers as the army came in to crush their protests for freedom. In Chile, women under the Pinochet dictatorship sang the Ninth at torture prisons, and those inside took hope when they heard the music.

Shortly after the Berlin Wall, symbol of division and oppression, came down in November 1989, Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth as an "Ode to Freedom" on both sites of the Berlin Wall to celebrate this historic moment.

Read more about what inspired the filmmaker to make this documentary on the Al Jazeera website.

© Al Jazeera

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