Christ on the Mount of Olives (Beethoven) of the orchestra and chorus at its premiere. He panned Huber's libretto, saying, in an 1824 letter to the Gesellschaft für Musikfreunde, "Let us leave out of consideration "the value" of poems of this sort. We all know that allowances are to be made... so far as I am concerned, I would rather set Homer, Klopstock, Schiller to music. If they offer difficulties to overcome, "these immortal poets" at least are worthy of it." (Beethoven eventually did set Schiller to music in his monumental Ninth Symphony, nearly twenty years later.) The editors at Breitkopf & Härtel agreed with Beethoven's critical
Anthem of Europe the words for the choral movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony. In 1971 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided to propose adopting the prelude to the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th Symphony as the European anthem, taking up a suggestion made by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1955. Beethoven was generally seen as the natural choice for a European anthem. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe officially announced the European Anthem on 19 January 1972 at Strasbourg: the prelude to "Ode to Joy", 4th movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th symphony. In 1974