The Ninth Symphony was composed in 1824, and since then it has been the most politically successful musical work in the West, to the point that its Ode to Joy was designated the official anthem of Europe. Since the birth of national anthems in modernity and since the construction, throughout the last century, of the myth of Beethoven, political families of various kinds and even antagonistic — from the French Republicans to the German National Socialists — have used the end of the ninth; and today, in an increasingly complex political plot, it seems to stand as an integral European symbol of a shared project that, in the wake of Schiller's text— "all men will be brothers" - points towards an ancient utopia of brotherhood. Esteban Buch analyzes, from an interdisciplinary and rigorous perspective, the causes of such brilliant and unprecedented success, and also reveals the paradoxical core on which it is based.