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
Curse of the ninth of the work finally performed as an interpretation of his manuscript is problematic. In any case a "Symphony No. 0" by Schnittke has been performed and recorded, so his total should be ten. Alexander Glazunov completed the first movement of his Ninth but worked on it no further for the 26 more years he lived. In an interview recorded at the time of its premiere, Malcolm Arnold stated that he intended his Ninth Symphony (his op. 128) to be his last; it proved to be so, but he was to live for another twenty years, reaching opus 142. Jean Sibelius