Beethoven's Revenge

By Thomas James Martin

Published - Suite101 - April 18, 2003

The haunting beauty of the melody played by the solo violinist from Vilvaldi's The Four Seasons literally pierced my basically liberal, ex-hippy, mostly vegetarian soul as I stopped for the red light at the corner of Broadway and Hall in the City of Trees, Beaverton, Oregon.
My whole body swayed to the music; who cared if the people in the cars behind or ahead of me thought I was crazy. Then, a rusty-looking ancient Pontiac Trans AM pulled up beside me, its juiced-up amplifiers spewing some god-awful heavy metal through the huge speakers that I could see lurking in the back seat.

That this "jump car" was playing music loud enough to drown out the screaming decibels of a landing jet was bad enough, but that it drowned out my violin solo was just too much. Caught between the twin vises of the sanctimoniousness of the lover of harmony and classical music and the cantankerousness of a balding, heavyset man near fifty, something in me snapped!

Deliberately I lowered all the windows that I could reach from the driver's seat. My hand snaked out, found the volume knob and with a sudden, violent twist turned the knob all the way to the right.

For one glorious moment I could not hear the pounding of the bass of Guns and Roses or Ozzy or whoever was putting out that noise. Then, I saw the windows in the jump car lowering and the violence of their music began assaulting my eardrums.

You don't mess with a guy who grew up on assorted Warner Brothers cartoons.

"Of course," I thought to myself a la childhood chum, Bugs Bunny, "You know this means war!"

Opening up the glove compartment I reached for my CD case and with a flourish withdrew Alexander Scrabin's Ninth Piano Sonata, also known as the Black Mass. "Let's try a little Russian justice!" I muttered to myself.

"Let's just see who knows more about darkness—Ozzy or Alexander!" I thought to myself as I ejected the Vivaldi and put in the Scriabin! Quickly, I adjusted the tone until the treble from my small speakers challenged the raw bass emanating from the Pontiac.

The effect of the" Devil's own music" was unnerving to many of the people in the cars around me. Those who had their windows down enjoying the cool spring temperatures quickly rolled them up.

The rather large, hulking fellow sitting in the passenger seat of the Pontiac with a gold earring dangling from his ear, smiled sickeningly and stuck his hand out the window with a single middle digit showing. Somehow, they found some more volume and drowned out the demonic but lucid notes of the Scriabin.

Madly, I dove into the glove compartment again and rummaged again through my CDs. I quickly discarded a Chopin, dropped Mozart's 40th to the floor, brushed aside a Bach 3rd Brandenburg.

Pawing through Tchaikowsy's, Brahms, Bartok—even a little Gershwin—until I finally found what I was searching for. With a mad gleam of triumph in my eye, I looked over at the grinning barbarian in the Pontiac, ejected the Scriabin and threw in Beehoven's Ninth Symphony, and hit the button until I found the final track.

I fired this salvo of Ole Ludwig at them point blank.

I turned up all the tone controls clockwise as far as I could. I made sure the volume was turned up as far as it would go. Slowly the music built, and I could see it was having an effect on the guys in the jump car.

As evil spirits caught in the headlights of God, they were cowering before this masterpiece of western music. "Take that!" I thought, as the baritone began singing the eloquent, opening lines of Schiller's Ode to Joy stirred by Beethoven's masterful music:

Freude, schöne Gotterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuer-trunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

The stoplight turned green, and I watched in amazement as they writhed and screamed in torment. God help me, but I love the sound of heavy metal tearing in the afternoon. . .

I thought sure that horns would start honking, people yelling, and motorcycle cops would arrive and take me away in chains, but, no, as far as my eye could see, people were getting out of their cars and heading toward me.

Oh God, Martin, I thought, you're going to get it now! I closed my eyes, knowing that I would probably next awaken with every limb of my body in heavy traction or be peering down at my body in the local morgue.

When I opened my eyes, I beheld in profound wonderment that dozens of people from the stopped cars had formed a circle around my small Honda. They were cheering and applauding, and holding their thumbs up. They didn't care that the stoplight circled through several more cycles of red, yellow and green.

Flaxen-haired girls and dark-skinned maidens alike were blowing kisses and showering me with rose petals. A smile started from one ear toward the other. . .then the stoplight changed to green, and I shook my head a couple of times and drove off with Vivaldi into the spring afternoon. . .



Editor's Notes: Ode to Joy is the English title given to the poem An die Freude by the German classical poet Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805). The poem is famous because of its setting in the fourth (and final) movement of Symphony Number 9 in D Minor, the "Choral Symphony", by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

The verse that I include translates:

Joy, fair spark of the gods
Daughter of Elysium,
Drunk with fiery rapture, Goddess,
We approach thy shrine!

A full translation of the poem is available at Beethoven.

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) is often said to be the first "modern" composer. You may find out more about this enigmatic Russian figure at Scriabin Society

Copyright 2003-2010, Thomas James Martin, all rights reserved.