Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall

I recently heard, on Performance Today, the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, performed near the Berlin Wall, on Christmas Day, 1989, by musicians from East and West Germany, as well as from the US, Russia, and elsewhere in Europe, under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. The Wall had not yet been destroyed, but, for the first time in decades, East and West Germans were allowed to cross between the divided halves of the city, beginning in November, 1989. This performance may be seen on YouTube: part one; part two. The text Beethoven used was from a poem by Schiller. Schiller used "Freude," (Joy), but Bernstein had "Freiheit," (Freedom) substituted for it. "Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee," found in many hymnals, is adapted from the Fourth Movement. See here and here for reports of the concert.

Beethoven was almost totally deaf when he wrote this symphony. According to accounts, he thought he was conducting the orchestra and chorus, but the musicians were instructed not to give him their full attention. The alto soloist turned him around to the audience when the first performance was over, so that Beethoven could see the crowd's reaction. The relaxation of the iron grip of communism in what was the Eastern Bloc was apparently precipitated by Christians in Hungary and elsewhere. It is possible that Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the leader of the Soviet Union, which controlled the Eastern Bloc, at the time of these events, was himself a Christian.

Thanks for reading. Listen, and watch. 

Freedom of the press

I'm grateful for freedom of the press. Always? Definitely not. When, for example, "mainstream" TV news devoted hour upon hour to the events surrounding the death of the late Anna Nicole Smith, that didn't make me love that freedom. Where was the coverage of jobs, the economy, etc.? I'm not grateful when news outlets, "mainstream" or not, ride some hobby horse off into the sunset, or consistently cover only one side of a complex issue, or always back one political party. I'm not grateful when TV news programs spend more time on ads than the news, or the newspaper has more ad space than the news space, but I understand why this happens, and, I guess, I'm grateful for the result -- news. I can always mute or switch channels, or turn the page.

There are other dangers to the kind of press that we enjoy (or not) in North America. One of them is that there is such a variety of opinion, or slant, on what's reported that it is all too easy to hear, see, or read only what you agree with, and, sometimes, what I agree with or already believe about something may be wrong. I should get a variety of opinions. I posted on another danger a couple of years ago: "the most important source of the political inspiration of Christians should be the Bible, not media personalities." I am convinced that, a few years ago, illegal immigration, rather than abortion, became the most important political issue for conservative Christians because of the influence of a few political commentators.

But I am grateful that the press can find out things, such as that the current governor of my state was having an affair with an Argentinian, or how badly BP was prepared for anything going wrong, let alone what it actually did, in the Gulf Oil Spill. And I'm especially grateful for news stories about someone doing some unselfish good for someone else, as rare as such stories are. I'm also grateful for opinions, because what intelligent, experienced, thoughtful people say ought to be part of my thinking on particular issues, even though I must carefully make up my own mind based on my understanding of God's will.

Freedom of the press must not be taken for granted. Not everyone has it. Russia (see their position on the Press Freedom Index) and Venezuela, to name just two of many countries, don't have this freedom. Check out parts of the Wikipedia article on Freedom of the Press to see how well we have it in North America.

Thanks for reading, freely, or not reading. That's your choice. I'm glad you have it.

Freedom in Proper Perspective: Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

However, in early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. From the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "A World Split Apart," speech delivered at Harvard University, June 8, 1978.

Thanks for reading.