At the Kärntnertor Theatre in Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven presented his Symphony No. 9 for the first time, featuring the choral 'Ode to Joy' finale — a radical innovation that put human voices into a symphony. Beethoven, almost completely deaf by then, stood on stage helping conduct, and had to be turned around by a singer to see the audience's wild applause he could not hear.
Beethoven had been sketching ideas for setting Schiller's poem 'An die Freude' for over three decades. By 1824 his hearing had deteriorated so badly that he could not lead the orchestra alone; the theater's actual conductor, Michael Umlauf, quietly instructed the musicians to ignore Beethoven's beat and follow him instead, while Beethoven stood beside him, turning pages and gesturing emphatically to tempos only he could feel.
The premiere was a triumph despite drastically underrehearsed forces and a program that also included the overture Consecration of the House and three movements from the Missa Solemnis. When the symphony ended, the Vienna audience erupted, but Beethoven, facing the score with his back to the hall, did not react. Contralto Caroline Unger stepped forward and gently turned him around so he could see, if not hear, the ovation and waving handkerchiefs.
The Ninth's finale, setting Schiller's vision of universal brotherhood to melody, would go on to become one of the most quoted pieces of music in history — later adapted as the European Union's anthem and performed at the fall of the Berlin Wall.