Abstract

Can a song fill a legal gap? Or, more specifically, can Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony guide the interpretation to the point of filling the gap in the right to fraternity in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen? It can be seen that Beethoven, when using the poem An die Freude, by Schiller, in the composition of the fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony, conveyed the message contained in Schiller’s verses, that all men are brothers, in direct reference to the object of the present research, namely, the right to fraternity. In this sense, considering the exaltation of fraternity through Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the central objective of this research, therefore, is to analyze the possibility of bridging the gap in the right to fraternity in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen through Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The research reveals that the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Coral, can function not only as a work of art, but also as an instrument to address the right to fraternity as a symbol of unity between peoples.