Friedrich Schiller wrote his poem An die Freude, Ode to Joy, in the summer of 1785. Ludwig van Beethoven wanted to set it to music while he still lived in Bonn. A letter from 1793 says he planned to. It took him a good 30 years to complete it, in the last movement of his Ninth Symphony. The symphony was first performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824. By then it held more than six years of work and many changes. Since 1985 the instrumental version of Beethoven’s ode has been the official anthem of the European Union.