-Song for Humanity
a World Premiere work by Ozie Cargile II (Sneak Preview)
-Beethoven Symphony no. 9 (Choral)
Song for Humanity, commissioned from Ozie C. Cargile II by the Boulder Symphony, was written as a companion piece to the second work on our program. It is presented in three movements created to express the path of humanity on its journey toward higher consciousness notwithstanding all of our hardships. The first movement, Prayer, is a poignant oration of our struggle to experience joy in sadness; the second movement, Rebirth, mirrors the Scherzo movement of Beethoven’s 9th as an eager, and at times volatile progression toward change; the third movement, Exultation, marks the triumphant arrival of humanity to its most desirable state of existence: one of unity and freedom.
As a political activist, spiritual guru and composer, Ludwig van Beethoven set out to change the world every time he set his quill to paper. As a child of the Enlightenment, Beethoven grew up during the American and French revolutions. His first large scale work for orchestra was a cantata commemorating the death of Emperor Joseph II, who had done so much to liberalize the Austrian empire in the 1780s. Years later, Beethoven struggled to write his lone opera “Fidelio” which tells the story of the rescue of an unjustly jailed political prisoner.
In his first eight symphonies, Beethoven had already stretched and broken the boundaries of the prevailing classical and symphonic style, whose (much as the contemporaneous social status quo) lifespan was nearing an end and much needed change. For his Ninth Symphony, he returned to a lengthy poem by Friedrich Schiller that Beethoven had long wanted to set to music (“Ode to Joy”). Schiller’s famous words state that in a new age the old ways will no longer divide people and that all humanity shall reclaim their long lost fraternity.
Beethoven’s final symphony is unprecedented not only in its length, instrumentation and most importantly, the addition of voices, but also from a formal and aesthetic standpoint. By the time we get to the final movement, Beethoven actually quotes his own previous three move- ments, systematically rejecting them one by one, until we finally come to the Panglossian words of Schiller with the addition of hundreds of voices that speak to the listener as explicitly as one could.
Beethoven seems to be one of those hallmark figures throughout history who, despite all the turmoil, greed, hate, and war that has con- tinued to plague humanity, serve as a beautifully powerful reminder why we have been put on this earth: It is a profoundly simple message of love, unity and peace that Beethoven, devoutly spiritual and passionately tempestuous has sent to us, and it is really up to each of us to serve as a disciple from what can only come from “the starry tent where a loving Father must dwell.”
