Ode to Joy

Beethoven composed his “Ode to Joy” after he had become almost completely deaf, which makes it one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of music. The text, by the poet Friedrich Schiller, is a celebration of joy and human brotherhood, and the melody has since become the official anthem of the European Union. There is something deeply moving about the fact that this supremely joyful melody was written by a man who could not hear a single note of it.