The Rotterdam Symphony Orchestra members are confined to their homes. But music cannot be denied.
Here they are playing the closing section of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the stirring “Ode to Joy,” each of them in his or her own home.
If this stirring rendition doesn’t move you, check your pulse.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
…which is also the anthem of Europe.
How’s about a challenge? See how many of you can post different versions of variations of the theme or other interpretations. I’m sure this has to be one of the most replicated themes. Here’s my contribution:
I love the flash mob in Spain with “Ode to Joy”..which I posted a few years ago.
I remember that. Wasn’t this it:
Love this…thankss
Ode to Covid
Where’s the choir, by the way?
They do realize that they are making the case that a concert hall and conductor are not necessary, right?
Thank you, Diane.
Oh yes yes yes!
Thank you, Diane!!!!
And there’s this:
Here’s another you may like:
Love this, Diane, thanks for posting.
husband & I were checking out Dumbfoundead Jam Session 2.0 yesterday [thanks for posting, Bob] & chatting about technicalities involved. he says as far as he’s aware, video-conferencing methods do not [yet] accommodate rehearsing together – even though it looks to viewers like that’s what they’re doing. First guy up sets the pace; each of the others is recording himself playing along to that video (or perhaps a subsequent version); the audio is eventually put together [or something like that]. My guess is that here in Beethoven’s 9th, first up– or maybe all– are watching something like a silent metronome signal synched to the tempo of a pre-recorded choir. My hubby says it doesn’t work for live rehearsals because there are minute delays of varying lengths affecting each participant’s transmission.
Would love more input on this if anyone knows. Is there some platform that enables singing together live? I’ve been watching some classes for young children conducted video-conference-style. Sometimes all the kids chime in, but it sounds imprecise/ uncoordinated, presumably because of those delays.
A certain amount of delay between when the performer plays or sings a note and when it is recorded at a different internet site) can’t be avoided, can be a significant fraction of a second and in general, will be different for different performers located at different places.
The only way that this delay issue can be mitigated for a (near) real time performance is through some sort of processing to offset all the delays so that the individual performances are brought into synchrony.
There are ways of doing this, but standard videoconferencing does not employ such methods because near perfect synchronization (less than about 30ms) is not really needed. For standard videoconferencing, the acceptable delay is more like a third of a second, which, if used, would make the different instruments out of synch enough to be annoying.😀
The other alternative is to do what you suggest: have individuals laying down tracks to a set beat and then combining all the tracks at the end in a single recording.
Worst of all for synchronization purposes is the fact that the delays from individual performers are not necessarily constant in time.
Thanks, SDP! It’s possible that the off-synch wouldn’t matter so much for little kids singing together. Of course a complete garble wouldn’t do. But– sitting here at home trying to remember just what my tykes sound like– it may well be they chime in as much as 1/3sec off from each other [esp the 2.5-3y.o.’s] 😀
For those of you a bit more low brow, think of Forked Deer, a fiddle tune famous among those of us who fiddle and which Senator Harry Byrd of West Virginia played lest some other politician learn how and beat him. Why Forked Deer, you ask?
To me the emotion of Ode to Joy lies not in the pairing of the lyrics and the music, but in the use of the dominant key in the third phrase of the piece as it resolves back into the Tonic in the last phrase. Forked Deer does that too.
That’s a pretty darn high-brow analysis, RT!!
My husband and I absolutely LOVED THIS!!!! Thanks for sharing it.
Kas and Roger Winters
Beautiful, thank you for sharing!