How do you follow Coulton/Paul and Storm? With Barber and Beethoven, of course! Saturday night, I went with my friend Jon to Jordan Hall, where the Longwood Symphony Orchestra was playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Opening for Beethoven was Samuel Barber, with his Night Flight tone poem (the title of which puts me in mind of Hopper's Nighthawks). Okay, Barber wasn't physically there, but you get the idea. I had a great time at this concert. I'd never heard the 9th live, and it's one of my favorite symphonies; I keep my one recording of it, the George Solti/Chicago Symphony Orchestra recording, on my desk at the office so that it's available whenever I need it.

The LSO is basically an amateur ensemble, comprised of some ridiculously talented professionals, who are mostly doctors. I joked with Jon, in the brief break between Night Flight and the 9th, that with any luck, one of the musicians was an Ear, Nose, and Throat doc, because you could hear scattered cough-coughs throughout the hall in the quieter sections of Night Flight (because of the structure of the 9th Symphony, the show that night was to have no intermission, which probably didn't make it easier on the coughers).

I always liked the story of how the maximum capacity of a CD was decided: it had to be big enough to fit Beethoven's 9th Symphony in one disc. The story is probably just an urban legend, but it nevertheless illustrates the importance of the work; it is plausible that such a work would be used as the reference for the final technical product. That story also demonstrates the evolving mythology of the 9th. For the 9th has stories layered on stories layered on stories, each a meta-level above the piece:

There's the story within the composition, the search for a theme throughout the three movements, each recapitulated in the fourth movement (aptly described as a symphony within a symphony), discarded, until the famous tune, the Ode to Joy, enters.

There's the story of the poem, of Beethoven selecting Schiller's An der Freude, the proto-Romantic emerging from the Classical. There's the story of Beethoven "conducting" the piece while completely deaf, the orchestra taking its beat from the Concertmaster, the orchestra finishing the piece before Beethoven, who was absorbed in the score, and had to be turned 'round to face the rapturous applause from his audience.

There's the stories told of other composers reacting to the piece: despair from some, who felt they could never follow such a work. The obvious influence, acknowledged and not, in the work of others. Wagner, Mahler, Berlioz, Bruckner, Brahms, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, some inhibited, some inspired, all touched by it.

And then even more recently, the story of the compact disc. Some of these stories may well be apocryphal, but they build on the legend, the myth of the 9th. This is a piece against which artists measure themselves: singers, players, conductors, composers. Maybe not universally, but damn well near.

Imagine, then, my reaction to the opening susurration as the players ease into the first movement. It's been described as the creation, the creation of music, out of silence. I've always thought of it on a more meta level than that: it has always sounded to me like an orchestra tuning up. So yes, creation. But it's the literal creation of the symphony. And it goes three entire movements before it gets it right: the symphony creating itself, the final movement the result, the light from the heavens showing the way, and the chorale praising it, binding us and it together.

I practically shuddered with pleasure when I heard those familiar opening notes, and I spent the length of the symphony with a huge grin on my face. I can't believe my luck, that I got to hear this live, performed so well. The LSO and the chorale were wonderful. They were not perfect, but they still transported me. Beethoven live, for me, is almost a religious experience.