European Anthem

The anthem of the European Union is an arrangement of Herbert von Karajan of the musical topic of the Ode to the joy , last movement of the Ninth symphony written in 1823 by Ludwig van Beethoven.

History

Richard Nikolaus de Coudenhove-Kalergi proposes into 1951 to adopt the Anthem of the 9th symphony like European Hymne. Between 1952 and 1966, whereas the two German States introduce teams common to the Olympic Games, the Ode with the joy holds place of national anthem. The official adoption as European anthem will be done in the euphoria of the bicentenary of the birth of Beethoven in 1970. The Anthem rests on the only melody, without reference to the text of Schiller.

Karajan records with its philharmonic orchestra of Berlin the official version in February - March 1972. Its duration is 2 minutes and 15 seconds. It corresponds to measurements 140-187 of the fourth movement of the symphony. In addition to the melody, Karajan retains two of the three variations of Beethoven (variation to the violins and its transformation in the direction of a solemn walk) and concluded on a rate in a closed form which a ritenuto molto reinforces. The tempo is appreciably slowed down (black to 120 instead of white to 80) and the instrumentation goes towards a uniform reinforcement of sonority to the detriment of the richness of texture and stamp.

In spite of the protests of the Council of Europe, the melody of Beethoven will be chosen by Ian Smith in 1974 like the national anthem of the mode of Apartheid of Rhodesia, until its fall in 1980.

Limits

Anthem without official words, it with the weakness of its force: he dodges the question of the multilingualism of the Union, but at the same time, this absence withdraws the capacity to him to be retained, contrary to the national anthems which, by their words, can be learned by all and become a strong element symbolic system, which a purely musical partition cannot hope for to reach. However, one feels in this music a call to the joy, and the desire which the people have to live in peace.

A limit corrolaire is that of the absence of title (apart from the initial name of the movement in the symphony). There still, one is concerned with multilingualism, but that withdraws substance with something which does not have “not a name”. But this anthem does not need really title since it is a music which challenges us at the bottom of our heart, and which wants, just like Europe, to learn to the men has to live with fraternity.

There is no direct solution with this problem:

“Translation” in all the languages:

free?
starting from common concepts (but “traduttore, tradittore”: “translator, traitor”)?

Version in single language:

which? The Latin is only not easily possible. In addition to with the Union with 27, it does not represent any more cement which it was, the fact that Latin is an almost dead language made that a translation would not have great interest symbolic system. In Austria however, a Latin professor, Peter Roland, wrote a text entitled " Is Europa nunc unita " on the air of the European anthem. This version published on support CD had drawn the attention of the European commission during the drafting of the Traité establishing a constitution for Europe, but it was not finally adopted like official anthem in the text signed with Rome in 2004.
the Greek is sometimes proposed with the title “of ancestor of all the official languages of Europe. ” This argument is not due taking into consideration classification of the Langues by family: the old Greek is the ancestor only of the modern Greek! Even by taking account only of one filiation of vocabulary, it cannot claim for this reason for languages like the Irish (Celtic language), the Finnois (Finno-ugric language) or the Maltais (Semitic language). These two last do not even belong to the group of the Indo-European Langues.
the Esperanto suffers from an ignorance of the public which makes its adoption short-term inenvisageable. Several translations of the poem of Schiller exist, most known being that of Kálmán Kalocsay.

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