The piece
The Ode to Joy is the theme of the finale of the Ninth Symphony, first performed in Vienna in 1824. Beethoven first gives it to the double basses and cellos alone, then to the whole orchestra, before the voices sing Schiller's poem. This intermediate version, arranged for Noctave in D major, Beethoven's key, follows the four-part harmony of a hymn book setting published by the Mutopia Project (public domain), except for the last phrase, harmonized like the second, as Beethoven does.
The first verse, soft, sets the melody alone over the bass: a good warm-up, with the two sharps of D major, F and C. The second, loud, is in four parts: the right hand plays the melody an octave higher with the alto voice below it, the left hand the tenor and the bass. Hold each chord until the next one, without pedal, and bring out the top note. In the third phrase the bass stays on A; it is the melody that moves.
