Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is one of the most famous pieces of music in history. But “what can be said about the Ninth with reasonable certainty? One is that its position in the world is probably about what Beethoven wanted it to be. Figuratively speaking, everybody knows the Ninth. But has anybody really understood it? The harder you look, the odder it gets. In a singular way, the Ninth enfolds the apparently contradictory qualities of the epic and the slippery.”