Anthem of Europe Anthem of Europe "Anthem of Europe" is the anthem of the Council of Europe and the European Union. It is based on "Ode to Joy" from the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony composed in 1823, and is played on official occasions by both organisations. Friedrich Schiller wrote the poem "An die Freude" ("To Joy") in 1785 as a "celebration of the brotherhood of man". In later life, the poet was contemptuous of this popularity and dismissed the poem as typical of "the bad taste of the age" in which it had been written. After Schiller's death, the poem provided
Curse of the ninth had to wait a further 13 years for its first performance). Still another case is that of Louis Spohr, who wrote and completed a tenth symphony and then withdrew it. After Mahler, some composers used as examples of the curse include: Kurt Atterberg, Elie Siegmeister, Alfred Schnittke, Roger Sessions, Egon Wellesz, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Peter Mennin, Malcolm Arnold and David Maslanka. However, many of these examples have elements which tend to work against the superstition: Schnittke wrote his Ninth and last symphony with his left hand while virtually paralysed and unable to speak from a series of strokes; the authenticity