Choral Fantasy (Beethoven) the "Choral Fantasy" text – universal fraternity with the meeting of arts – evokes similar feelings as the "Ode to Joy" text. Beethoven himself acknowledged the kinship of the two works. In a letter of 1824, when he was writing the Ninth Symphony, he described his project as "a setting of the words of Schiller's immortal "Lied an die Freude" in the same way as my pianoforte fantasia with chorus, but on a far grander scale." The "Choral Fantasy" theme is itself taken from earlier work by Beethoven: it is a slightly modified version of the composer's "Gegenliebe", a lied
Symphony No. 8 (Beethoven) movement, in sonata rondo form that proceeds at a very fast tempo. (The metronome marking supplied by Beethoven himself is semibreve = 84.) This is the first symphonic movement in which the timpani are tuned in octaves, foreshadowing the similar octave-F tuning in the scherzo of the Ninth Symphony. Antony Hopkins quotes the entire opening theme of the finale “in order to emphasise the outrageous impropriety of the last roaring C sharp”: “All that precedes it is so delicate in texture, so nimble and light-footed.” Donald Tovey cites the abrupt intrusion of the C sharp as an example of Beethoven’s