ABSTRACT
Ruth Solie's 1988 article "Ludwig van Beethoven as Secular Humanist: Ideology and the Ninth Symphony in Nineteenth-Century Criticism" makes a significant contribution to the general concerns of Nicholas Cook and Andreas Eichhorn and should not be overlooked in any consideration of the Ninth's reception. Eichhorn develops the handsome idea of the silent chorus of the first three movements as symbolically representing a churchly congregation. The Beethovenian finale, long heard as a telos, finds as its goal verbal expression, whose union with the authority of music produces a kind of free-floating ideological force. As a result, Beethoven's anthem like tune waves in the winds of our Western world as a blank flag awaiting the colors of a cause. In general, Cook encourages those aspects of the Ninth that run against the grain of convention. Domesticating the Ninth": thus stands one of the deprecating subtitles within Cook's chapter on the twentieth-century reception of the Ninth.
