Daily Devotion - Ode to (Advent) Joy

From 'Ode to Joy' a series of woodcuts by Ernst Barlach, 1927

A Daily Devotion written for St Stephen’s Rochester Row, where I have been on a placement this term.

It has been wonderful to spend this term with you and I have greatly enjoyed the fine music at your church. My home church (also dedicated to St Stephen!) is similarly blessed. Before the second lockdown, we had planned a season of concerts to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th Anniversary, which falls on 16th December. Sadly, we have had to cancel the live concerts, but will be broadcasting two free concerts online including a unique performance of Symphony no. 9 (the Choral Symphony) arranged for piano (four hands) by Franz Xaver Scharwenka (1850-1924) performed by my talented friends Ben Schoeman and Tessa Uys and accompanied by our Choral Scholars. There’s a brief behind-the-scenes snippet in this video from ‘Ode to Joy’ – the fourth movement of the symphony.

Ode to Joy was written by the poet Friedrich Schiller and a slightly re-worked text was set to music by Beethoven after Schiller’s death. Some academics suggest the original text was an Ode to ‘Freedom’ and Beethoven’s composition has been sung by people across the world who are seeking freedom from oppression, from Chile to China.

Writing for the Schiller Institute, the musicologist Fred Haight suggests that as artists, both Schiller and Beethoven were motivated by the desire for the emancipation of mankind which found expression in the American Revolution, but were horrified by the barbarity of Revolutionary France. Freedom doesn’t mean doing whatever we want, but freedom from our selfish concerns to do God’s will. He writes:

“For Beethoven, as for Schiller, freedom is the freedom to develop one’s own cognitive powers, in order to carry out that necessary mission, on behalf of humanity as a whole, for which the Creator put us here in the first place.”

As Christians, that is the freedom to which we have been brought, in and through Christ. 

Advent this year brings a glimmer of light that freedom from the lockdown is on the horizon, but the consequences of the pandemic will be long-lasting and our calling, as Christ's church, will be as important as ever. Let us live our lives as an Ode to Joy - and Freedom. 

Phillip Dawson, Ordinand, St Augustine’s College of Theology

Link
'Ode to Joy' by Ernst Barlach - Los Angeles County Museum of Art