While the Eighth is Beethoven’s shortest and most ironic symphony, the Ninth is his most ambitious and ethically charged. Yet all of this had been prepared in a laboratory devoted to compressing dramatic tension and expanding festive energy. “Serious” quartets and “songs of grace”, together with trios such as the Ghost and the Archduke, paved the way for the contrapuntal density of the Hammerklavier and for increasingly daring experiments such as his final Sonata, op. 111, not to mention the Missa solemnis. In other words, the sonatas, quartets and the rest of his output became sketches for summoning up the monument to peace and friendship that would be the Ninth Symphony.