The Ninth Symphony was something revolutionary, something that had never happened before in the history of music, the history of symphony.

The author introduced vocal parts into the last, fourth part - a quite large choir and four soloists.

A fragment of the symphony, the final cantata became the anthem of the European Union (in 1972, the final cantata of the Ninth Symphony, known as "Ode to Joy", in an instrumental version created by Herbert von Karajan, was adopted as the EU anthem by the Council of Europe and the European Community).