The arts and politics in music at the University of Edinburgh, in her book "Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich", in "the traditional Russian perception of the arts", an "interrelationship between artistic technique and ideological content is the main aesthetic criterion" (ix; cf. Blois). Ludwig van Beethoven did not use the original title "Ode to Freedom" of Friedrich Schiller's lyric, known in English as "Ode to Joy" (1785), in setting it to music in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony (1824), which "Napoleonic censors had forced the poet to change to 'Ode to Joy'." After the fall of
Symphony No. 8 (Beethoven) tradition in making the last movement the weightiest of the four. The work was begun in the summer of 1812, immediately after the completion of the Seventh Symphony. At the time Beethoven was 41 years old. As Antony Hopkins has noted, the cheerful mood of the work betrays nothing of the grossly unpleasant events that were taking place in Beethoven's life at the time, which involved his interference in his brother Johann's love life. The work took Beethoven only four months to complete, and is, unlike many of his works, without dedication. The premiere took place on 27 February 1814,