No four notes in classical music are more familiar than those that open Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Their powerful psychological resonance has often extended beyond music into overtly political contexts.
For example, on today’s date in 1941, the British Broadcasting Company began using those notes as a theme for radio shows beamed across Europe to boost morale during World War II. In Morse Code, the “dit-dit-dit-DAH” that opens the symphony stood for the letter “V,” which in turn stood for “victory.” At the end of the war, in celebratory radio concerts on V-E Day and V-J Day, Arturo Toscanini conducted performances of Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 5 and No. 3.
Some decades later, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 was performed at the end of the Cold War, when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Bernstein conducted moving performances in East and West Berlin utilizing an orchestra with members drawn from Eastern and Western Europe, Israel and the U.S.
For those performances, which were recorded and broadcast around the world, Bernstein asked the chorus to substitute the word “freiheit” (freedom) for the word “freude” (joy) in the choral setting of Schiller’s poem, Ode to Joy, which closes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 5 & Symphony No. 9; Vienna Philharmonic; Simon Rattle, conductor; EMI 57445