Ode to Joy Proms. The song's Christian context was one of the main reasons for Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism to excommunicate the Soka Gakkai organization for their use of the hymn at their meetings. Other musical settings of the poem include: Ode to Joy "Ode to Joy" (German: ), is an ode written in the summer of 1785 by German poet, playwright, and historian Friedrich Schiller and published the following year in "Thalia". A slightly revised version appeared in 1808, changing two lines of the first and omitting the last stanza. "Ode to Joy" is best known for its use by Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 4 (Beethoven) the first movement, which Leonard Bernstein described as a "mysterious introduction which hovers around minor modes, tip-toeing its tenuous weight through ambiguous unrelated keys and so reluctant to settle down into its final B major." Hector Berlioz was so enamoured of the symphony's 2nd movement that he claimed it was the work of the Archangel Michael, and not that of a human. Robert Schumann called Beethoven's graceful Fourth Symphony "a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants" (i.e., the more ponderous 3rd and 5th). According to musicologist Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music: Symphony No. 4 (Beethoven)