Fiddling around with the ‘Ode of Joy’.

Or the quagmire when not ALLE MENSCHEN BRÜDER WERDEN.

When Friedrich Schiller’s ‘An die Freude’ was published in 1785 and stone deaf Ludwig Von Beethoven, co-directing in 1824 the first performance of his ode to ‘ALLE MENSCHEN WERDEN BRUDER’, both understood that their works would become a source of inspiration, for the better or for the worse. Two master pieces transforming into a ‘Marseillaise to Humanity’. Also popular for the ‘Joy’ theme in the ‘alla turca’ part, a Turkish military music style often used by parading humpah-humpah bands all over the world.

Von Beethoven reflected in ‘Ode to Joy’ his disappointment about Napoleon’s failures in 1812 and 1815 and decades of political intrigues causing chaos, destruction, de-humiliation and wars at the cost of millions of life’s of innocent people.

As was ‘die Gesellschaft’ reflected in a broader biblical context. From Genesis, the murder of Caine, everything what happened thereafter until the last syllable in the Book of Revelations, giving to birth a paradoxical Elysium. For those not being friends, exclusion was their fate.

Meanwhile, Von Beethoven’s ’Ode to Joy’ and Schiller’s ‘An die Freude’ were and are used as universal, outstanding sign-posts, standing for almost everthing, by all sort people, driven by all sort of beliefs and objectives.

Used In commercial advertising to promote anything from Alcohol to sweetened Zwiebacks.

For Nazi propaganda. By Communists during the Cultural Revolution. Becoming the Rhodesian anthem in 1974 under the supra-white racist regime of Ian Smith.

As the anthem for the politically enforced, mixed Olympic teams of  East- and West Germany during the 1950s and ’60s.

Used by the Vidéla regime during the probably rigged 1978 FIFA World Championship in Argentine.

As the anthem for the CIS-soccer teams after the downfall of the CSSR at the 1992 UEFA Championship.

As the anthem, causing a little uproar, for the European golf team after defeating the American team in the Ryder Golf Cup Games in 2010.

Becoming the official European Anthem in 1985 after the first time proposed in 1955, based on a recomposed ‘Ode of Joy’ -an easier way to play on half note 80, whereas Beethoven had written a quarter note 120- as a symbol for peace, freedom and solidarity in Europe (?)United. Played during the signing of the ambitious Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, although not included in this treaty.

All those events occurred under the eyes and to the ears of electoral masses, where the effective pay-off for playing saints is not only determined by apparently selective window-shopping by the MSM and politicians. Shop owners have their own rules. This was the case in China during the Olympic Games and in Bahrein during the Formula-1 Races.

Hopefully not in the Ukraine during the European Soccer Championship, but may it be timely effective in Belarussia during the World Champion Ice-hockey Games in 2013, in Sotschky during the Olympic Winter Games, in Dakar in 2018.

Or selective shopping in the EU were recently a Human Rights issue concerning Israel was effectively blocked by one Minister of Foreign Affairs, with an otherwise unanimous vote of the other EU-member states.

Does this then politicize sports organizations?

The answer is ‘No’, although corruption should be adressed by the international sports organisations. It’s ‘No’, it is the other way around. It opens closed society’s for free politic’s, free pressdom, freedom of speech in countries where this is suppressed.

For those, not being among the friends, hence excluded, whether allowed to read or not, some consolation might to be found imaging Nelson Mandela, riffling through the couplets in Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Goal’, while stealthily wiping away some tears.

Because ultimately, the games must always go on.

‘It is sweet to dance to violins                                  I never saw a man who looked

When Love and Life are fair                                      with such a wistful eye

To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes                       Upon that little tent of blue

Is delicate and rare:                                                     We prisoners call the sky

But it is not sweet with nimble feet                And  at every careless cloud that passed

To dance upon the air!                                               In happy freedom by’

-o-o-o-

Advertentie