ABSTRACT
Something that used to puzzle fans who listened to the souvenir recordings of the old Hoffnung Music Festivals without having attended them was the extra roar of laughter that would swell up during the applause at the conclusion of each travesty. Throughout the nineteenth century, hostile voices continued to be raised against it. For Louis Spohr, who had known Beethoven in Vienna in his youth, and played under his baton, the Ninth was a monstrosity that could only be explained in terms of its creator's deafness: His constant endeavor to be original and to open new paths, could no longer as formerly, be preserved from error by the guidance of the ear. The only nineteenth-century musicians who embraced the Ninth without reservation were those whose own aesthetic program it could seem to validate. The meanings embodied in the Ninth Symphony, as in the late quartets, are no longer public in the way.
