Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

So I know I'm a little late to this one (almost 200 years really) but I just listened to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its entirety for the first time about a week ago. Since I did that, it is the only music I've listened to at all, with a slight exception today while I put on Dirty Gold (a cool young band from San Diego) while I was packing to come home. Anyway, the Ninth symphony is the first piece of music that has actually physically moved me. I was sitting at my computer listening to it when the string and wind instruments start to soar in the first movement. I had to move. I sat up and my eyes got all big and I couldn't really believe what I was hearing.

Then I came to the second movement and the same thing happened to me; I almost had to stand up. There was something about it that was just blowing my mind. I can't explain it. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. When the fourth movement got going and the sopranos held the note on some German word I was on the bus going to class and I sat up and opened my eyes real wide and almost lost my breath. I'm not sure if that is strange, but nothing like that has ever happened to me before. So I haven't stopped listening to it for the entire week.

I left my house early so that I would have enough time to walk to class and fit the whole fourth movement in; I stood outside my house because I wanted to wait until a movement finished before I went inside and had to take out my headphones. I'm not a musical person at all, in that I have no talent for playing music, but this is just so fantastic. And it's so happy! That's what is so great, and what blows my mind so much. Beethoven wrote basically the entire symphony when he was completely deaf, yet the whole symphony explodes with joy. I am not surprised that a deaf person could feel joy and write something to express that. I'm surprised that a musician or composer, after losing the ability to hear music forever, could express something so joyful.

Anyway, it's my favorite piece of classical music and my favorite piece of music in general right now.