Ode to Joy himself regarded it as a failure later in his life, going so far as to call it "detached from reality" and "of value maybe for us two, but not for the world, nor for the art of poetry" in an 1800 letter to his long-time friend and patron Christian Gottfried Körner (whose friendship had originally inspired him to write the ode). The lines marked with * have been revised as follows: Academic speculation remains as to whether Schiller originally wrote an Ode to Freedom "(Ode an die Freiheit)" and changed it to an Ode to Joy. "... [T]he thought lies
Beethoven Lives Upstairs implores Christoph to give him a chance. Kurt mentions that Beethoven is working on his Ninth Symphony, which Christoph hopes will be his last. When Christoph's mother enters Beethoven's room, Beethoven is writing music on the shutters, presumably having run out of paper. Seeing her shock, he suggests she could sell the shutters as collectors items. He asks her about her musical background, and she plays "Für Elise" for him, beginning to see his softer side. While working with musicians on the Ninth Symphony in his room, Beethoven needs to write down changes, but all the pens have been destroyed