Beethoven's Ninth Symphony may not be his greatest. It's not even a favorite of the musicians who play it, and yet we treat it as the pinnacle of Beethoven's musical genius.

It tops every popularity contest and plays a prominent cultural role in the world. It consoled mourners after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, rallied Germans when the Berlin Wall crumbled and drew Americans together after 9/11. A live performance is never an ordinary event.

That's one reason the Oregon Symphony chose to open its 113th season with it in Schnitzer Hall, Saturday.

But with its mysterious opening, pounding Scherzo and magnificent hymn known as "Ode to Joy," Beethoven's Ninth was not a runaway best seller when it was first performed in 1824 and even throughout the 19th Century. "Monstrous," thundered a respected critic of Beethoven's day.

"...very much like Yankee Doodle," sniffed a Providence, R.I. newspaper in 1868.

"Unspeakable cheapness," declared Boston's Musical Record in 1899.

Today, sentiment has changed, reaching even the younger set: "BEETHOVEN KICKS ASS," one fan writes on YouTube. She's right, of course.

The Ninth holds a special place because it redefined symphonic ambition, bursting into public as a symphony of firsts: the first to exceed an hour and the first to include singers as well as instrumentalists. And while it offers no overt religious message, it has long claimed a spiritual place in our lives.

Consider: In 1865 Theodore Eisfeld conducted the New York Orchestra's memorial concert for the recently assassinated Lincoln, though the orchestra didn't perform the last movement because "Ode to Joy" was considered too upbeat for the occasion.

In 1989, Chinese students faced tanks at Tiananmen Square, protected only by the Ninth blaring over loudspeakers. On Christmas Day that same year, Leonard Bernstein conducted the Ninth to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When he conducted the premiere, Beethoven couldn't hear a note of it. Few in the audience knew he was deaf until the music ended, and he continued to wave his arms. He had to be turned toward the audience to see the tumultuous applause.

At first, many people -- even knowledgeable musicians -- found the piece confusing, overlong, too loud, but they came around. Plenty of other composers have written a ninth symphony, but Beethoven's stands alone. It always has.

Here's a sampling of reactions and how they've changed over 184 years:

"The fourth movement is, in my opinion, so monstrous and tasteless and, in its grasp of Schiller's 'Ode,' so trivial that I cannot understand how a genius like Beethoven could have written it. I find in it another proof of what I had already noted in Vienna, that Beethoven was wanting in aesthetic feeling and in a sense of the beautiful." -- composer Louis Spohr, a contemporary of Beethoven

"...the effect was indescribably great and magnificent, jubilant applause from full hearts was enthusiastically given the master, whose inexhaustible genius revealed a new world to us and unveiled never-before-heard, never-imagined magical secrets of the holy art!..." -- a Leipzig critic at the premiere in 1824

"We find Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to be precisely one hour and five minutes long; a fearful period indeed, which puts the muscles and lungs of the band and the patience of the audience to a severe trial..." -- The Harmonicon, London, 1825

"His great qualities are frequently alloyed by a morbid desire for novelty; by extravagance and by a disdain of rule...The effect which the writings of Beethoven have had on the art must, I fear, be considered injurious." -- Letter to the Editor, Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, London, 1827

"On several occasions in this work we will be drawing attention to clusters of notes which cannot possibly be described as chords, and we will be forced to admit that the reason for these anomalies escapes us completely." composer Hector Berlioz, 1803-1869

"It opened with eight bars of a commonplace theme, very much like Yankee Doodle...The general impression it left on me is that of a concert made up of Indian war whoops and angry wildcats." -- a Providence, R.I. newspaper, 1868

"The alpha and omega is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, marvelous in the first three movements, very badly set in the last. No one will ever approach the sublimity of the first movement, but it will be an easy task to write as badly for voices as in the last movement. And supported by the authority of Beethoven, they will all shout: "That's the way to do it..." -- Giuseppe Verdi, 1878

"But is not worship paid this Symphony mere fetishism? Is not the famous Scherzo insufferably long-winded? The unspeakable cheapness of the chief tune, 'Freude, Freude!'" -- Musical Record, Boston, 1899

"A little notebook with over 200 different renderings of the dominant theme in the finale of this symphony shows how persistently Beethoven pursued his search...It is the most triumphant example of the molding of an idea to the preconceived form; at each leap forward there is a new delight..." -- Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

"There is nothing in the Bible greater in inspiration than Beethoven's Ninth Symphony..." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Here is Beethoven at his most revolutionary, transforming the symphony, for the first time in its history, into an acto of moral philosophy and personal confession." -- Ted Libby, "The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music"

" im a gurl who loves heavy metal but this song is great lol he's a pure deaf genius." -- MizFroggy888 on YouTube

"BEETHOVEN KICKS ASS" -- silversachel, YouTube

"back then this was equivalent to Death core Metal" -- SuperSchoolBus -- YouTube

"I love how the chois has to sit there untill the end....It's like Beethovens joke lol." -- Mag3dufool, YouTube