In 2013, the musicologist Nicholas Mathew invited modern listeners to rehear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with ears attuned to the conventions of Italian opera. The operas Mathew had in mind were those by Rossini, a composer whose works were paired with Beethoven’s in both concert programs and critical discourse during the early decades of the nineteenth century (Mathew 2013, Walton 2007). This presentation responds to Mathew’s call. It develops a close reading of one passage from the finale of the Ninth, its concluding prestissimo, by engaging with it as an operatic stretta.

This framing invites hearing sections of the alla turca-inflected prestissimo in dialogue with a musical convention associated with Rossini’s act-ending rhetoric: the cadenza felicità schema (Jacobson 2022, Boyle 2020, Pagannone 1997). In its most typical form, the felicità contains three cadential phrases of increasingly shorter length. The initial, longer stage was characterized by loud orchestration, shrill timbres, and chromatic harmonies. Nineteenth-century listeners recognized these as applause-securing ploys, sometimes mockingly calling the felicità a Bettelcadenz (begging cadence). Beethoven’s finale modifies the felicità by presenting only a series of paired phrases that resemble its first section, with subsequent modules introducing increasingly agitated musical features.

The earliest critical accounts of the Ninth indicate a mixed audience reception. Perhaps Beethoven’s unorthodox modifications bewildered the audiences of its earliest performances by disrupting the interactive script of the felicità. Beethoven’s altered felicità consequently offers a case study for how schemata mediate social, affective, and musical experiences.