[67] In August, 1824, he was haunted with the fear of sudden death "like my grandfather to whom I bear so much resemblance," he wrote on August 16th, 1824, to Dr. Bach.
[68] The Ninth Symphony was given for the first time in Germany at Frankfurt on April 1st, 1825; in London on March 25th, 1825; in Paris at the Conservatoire on March 27th, 1831. Mendelssohn, then aged seventeen, gave a performance of it on the piano at the Jaegerhalle in Berlin on November 14th, 1826. Wagner, a student at Leipzig, re-copied it entirely by hand; and in a letter, dated October 6th, 1830, to the publisher, Schott, offered him a reduction of the Symphony for pianoforte duet. One can say that the Ninth Symphony decided Wagner's career.
[69] "Apollo and his Muses would not wish to deliver me up to death yet, for I still owe them so much. Before I go to the Champs-Elysées I must leave behind me what the spirit inspires and tells me to finish. It seems to me that I have scarcely written anything." (To the brothers Schott, Sept. 17th, 1829.)
[70] Beethoven wrote to Moscheles on March 18th, 1827: "The complete sketch of a Symphony is in my desk with a new overture." This sketch has never been found. One only reads in his notes:
"Adagio cantique." Religious song for a symphony in the old modes (Herr Gott dich loben wir.—Alleluja), may be in an independent style, may be as introduction to a fugue. This Symphony might be characterised by the entrance of voices, perhaps in the finale, perhaps in the adagio. The violins in the orchestra, etc., increased ten times for the last movements. The voices to enter one by one; or to repeat the adagio somehow in the last movements. For words for the adagio, a Greek myth or an ecclesiastical canticle, in the allegro, Bacchus' Feast (1818). As has been seen the choral conclusion was intended to be reserved for a Tenth Symphony and not for the Ninth Symphony.
Later he said that he wished to accomplish in his Tenth Symphony "the reconciliation of the modern world with the ancient, which Goethe had attempted in his Second Faust."
[71] The subject is the legend of a horseman who is loved and captured by a fairy, and who suffers from nostalgia and lack of liberty. There are analogies between this poem and that of Tannhäuser. Beethoven worked at it between 1823 and 1826. (See A. Ehrhard Franz Grillparzer, 1900).
[72] Since 1808 Beethoven had made plans for writing the music to Faust. (The first part of Faust appeared under the title of Tragedy in the autumn of 1807). It was then his dearest plan.
[73] "The South of France! It is there, there!" (from a notebook in the Berlin Library). "To go away from here. Only on this sole condition will you be able to rise again to the high level of your art.... A Symphony, then to go away, away, away. The summer to work during a voyage.... Then to travel in Italy and Sicily with some other artist."
[74] In 1819 he was followed by the police for having said aloud "That, after all, Christ was only a crucified Jew." He was then writing the Mass in D. That work alone is enough to show the freedom of his religious inspirations. (For the religious opinions of Beethoven, see Theodor von Frimmel; Beethoven, 3rd Edition, Verlag Harmonie; and Beethovenia, edited Georg Müller, Vol. II, Blöchinger). No less free in politics, Beethoven boldly attacked the vices of the government. He attacked amongst other things, the administration of justice, hindered by the slowness of its process, the stupid police regulations, the rude and lazy clerks in office, who killed all individual initiative and paralysed all action: the unfair privileges of a degenerate aristocracy, the high taxation, etc. His political sympathies seemed to be with England at that time.