Choral Fantasy (Beethoven) a rather troubled one; according to the composer's secretary, Anton Schindler, it "simply fell apart," a result most likely attributable to insufficient rehearsal time. Because of a mistake in the execution of the piece, it was stopped half way through and restarted. In Ignaz von Seyfried's words: The work includes a sequence of variations on a theme that is widely felt to be an early version of a far better known variation theme, namely the one to which Beethoven set the words of Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy" in his Ninth Symphony. The two themes are compared below. \new Score
Ode to Ethiopia Ode to Ethiopia "Ode to Ethiopia" is an 1896 poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, a noted African-American poet who achieved a national reputation in the United States before the end of the nineteenth century. Dunbar presents ideas of Ethiopia as a mother, shows a pride in the African-American people, and encourages hope as well as racial pride. His poem emphasizes a belief in a brighter future ahead for the people of Ethiopia which is based on their own honor and hard labour. Part of this poem was used as a prologue to the fourth movement of William Grant Still's Symphony