Ode to hope
Aug 28th, 2010 | By Ian Poulton | Category: InternationalA serendipitous moment – flicking through the radio channels on the road over Salisbury Plain, an untypical voice appears on BBC Radio 3, radical singer Billy Bragg talking about Beethoven’s musical setting of Frederich Schiller’s 1785 poem ‘Ode to joy’. The tale of the music drew upon the hopes of the French and American Revolutions, upon beliefs in human equality, upon a vision of the world very different from that which prevailed. Beethoven, Bragg explained, wrote from a feeling of disappointment that such hopes would not be fulfilled in his…