First Performance:

On May 7, 1824, in Vienna, Beethoven appeared at a public concert for the last time. The occasion was the premiere of his latest, and last symphony - the Ninth. Michael Umlauf was the conductor. Beethoven was seated on the platform with the orchestra players, beating time with the music. The audience was most enthusiastic, though the symphony was none too well performed. "Never in my life," recored Schindler, Beethoven's friend and biographer, "did I hear such frenetic... applause. Once the second movement ... was completely interrupted by applause - and there was a demand for a repetition."

In the final movement there took place an episode which surely must have brought tears to many an eye. The symphony ended. But Beethoven, stone-deaf, had heard nothing, and, mentally, being several measures off, continued to beat time with his hands. He was completely oblivious of the tumult of the audience acclaiming his symphony. At last, the contralto soloist, Caroline Unger, walked over to the master and gently turned him around to the demonstrative audience. "His turning around," remarked Sir George Grove, "and the sudden conviction hereby forced on everybody that he had not done so before because he could not hear what was going on, acted like an electric shock on all present. A volcanic explosion of sympathy and admiration followed which was repeated again and again, and seemed as if it would never end."

[from: "Milton Cross New Encyclopedia of the Great Composers and Their Music," (1969 edition, Doubleday, V#1, p.74-75)]