Beethoven and Kant

Beethoven's music exhibits freedom in several, frequently overlapping ways. The Eroica (1803), the Egmont Overture (1810), and the Ninth Symphony all feature heroic independence, political liberation from tyranny, and creative creativity. Beethoven's music also still has a strong connection to a genuine humanism that is based on the values of freedom and self-determination.

The music of the composer emerged from the European Enlightenment period, which put human reason and the individual at the center of knowledge. Enlightenment, according to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, is the capacity to apply one's knowledge independently of outside instruction. We reach enlightenment when we are free to make life decisions based only on our intellects. According to Kant, this internal legislative process based on reason is comparable to the concept of free will.

The intellectual environment in which Beethoven created is provided by German thinking of the 18th and 19th centuries, which explores the independence of the human spirit, reason, and volition. This attitude permeated Beethoven, who stated in a letter from 1819 that:

Freedom and progress are our true aim in the world of art, just as in the great creation at large.

We must consider a peculiar process by which Beethoven's music came to be perceived as the movement of the will itself if we are to comprehend how the sounds of his music convey this concept of freedom.

Beethoven's insertion of the "Ode to Joy" in the Ninth Symphony—the first instance of choral music in a symphony—is, of course, the place where his legacy of creative freedom is most apparent or remembered. Some people believe that Beethoven's orchestral adaptation of Friedrich Schiller's text conveys a childlike enthusiasm in human solidarity and fraternity.

The chorus of the symphony also commemorates the world's encounter with its creator, who "certainly dwells amid the stars." This illustration is frequently linked to Beethoven's notebook entry from February 1820:

The moral law within us and above us the starry sky. Kant!!!

Beethoven's music still revolves on the concept of free choice. So, 250 years after Beethoven's birth, his music still gives listeners a sense of freedom that they may feel or hear in the depths of their souls. The fundamental sound of human freedom—the freedom of our minds, spirits, or consciousness—can be heard in Beethoven's music.