What inspired Ludwig van Beethoven to write the "Ode to Joy" in his Ninth Symphony?

NEWYORKER: Immortal Beloved

Ludwig von Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has been co-opted by everyone from dictators to revolutionaries.

CNN: Campaigns rock at their own risk

As Mahler's Ninth Symphony reached its final, hushed note, the conductor held his arms suspended and the musicians froze for a long moment of exquisite silence.

WSJ: New York Philharmonic Halted by iPhone During Mahler's Ninth Symphony

Glass turned seventy-five on January 31st, and Carnegie Hall marked the occasion by presenting the first American performance of his Ninth Symphony, with the American Composers Orchestra, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.

NEWYORKER: Number Nine

There strokes so incapacitated him that he had sometimes to write left-handed and sometimes to grasp his half-paralysed right wrist in his left hand in completing his Ninth Symphony, which opened amidst jubilation in Moscow this summer.

ECONOMIST: Alfred Schnittke