I’ve never attended a live performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. Is the choir on the stage during the first 3 movements? How about the soloists? If they are, how can they sing without warming up? They would have been sitting there for over 40 minutes.
My best guess is that they would enter immediately after the 4th movement.
Typically the choir will sit throughout, and the soloists enter between movements 3 and 4.
It’s certainly not the only piece where this situation arises. For instance, Mahler’s 3rd and 4th symphonies have solo voices in the last movement (movements in the case of the 3rd), and a similar procedure is followed.
As a chorister I’ve done at least 20 performances of the Beethoven 9. We’ve generally* always sat on stage from the beginning. As **GorillaMan ** noted, the soloists usually enter later. And yes, it does make it a bit hard because by the time you sing the effects of the warm-up have worn off. But it’s not as bad as Mahler 2, where the choir seems to sit for ever and then has an entry that conductors always want pppp.
What a fascinating idea…how well did it work?
Very well. The audience was quite staggered. People clearly had no idea what was coming, although I thought it must have been pretty obvious. The singers had to be somewhere. The woman sitting next to the bass soloist nearly had a heart attack when he stood up and started singing O Freu…
Brilliant 
I suppose it is a way of reinvigorating that entrance with some of the shock it would have caused to its first audiences.
Yes, that was the idea. The performances were part of a series of concerts called “Shock of the New”. The idea was to re-create the surprise that the original audiences would have felt on hearing great classics for the first time. No programs were provided and so people had no foreknowledge of the works that were going to be played. It was actually quite effective. And we had great fun too. We were in mufti, of course, sitting with the audience. As the bass soloist started to sing in the Beethoven 9 we tenors and basses leapt to our feet and sang the *Freude * entry. It caused great consternation. The applause at the end was the best we’ve ever got for Beethoven 9.
I just LOVE the image of that! How big was the hall? And how numerous were you? I can see where this kind of thing would be a bit tricky. The choral singers have to be able to hear each other.
And how did the conductor deal with this?!??
Sorry, dalej42. We’ve totally hijacked your thread. I will add that my experience singing in the chorus for the 9th is zackly like GorillaMan’s – chorus sits there the whole time (and it is a really cool experience to hear the 9th that way!) and soloists enter between 3rd and 4th movements.
We were in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, so reasonably big. It seats about 2,500 I believe. And it was full to the brim. The choir was in its normal formation: about 90 or so. Normally we sing from the choir stalls behind the orchestra, but on this occasion we sang from the public boxes on either side of the stage. The sopranos and tenors were on one side and the altos and basses were on the other, sitting intermingled with the paying public. We stood sort of side-on to the conductor, facing the main audience in the body of the hall. We could still catch a glimpse of the conductor out of the corner of our eyes, which was enough. We did it from memory, so at least we weren’t holding any scores. The scariest bit was the entries. Because you didn’t have choristers beside you it felt as though every entry was a solo. But we all just gave it a shot and the whole thing came off extremely well.
BRAVO! You can’t pull that off with a bunch of church choir weenies. (Apologies to everyone who sings in a really kick-ass church choir.)
If I ever get the opportunity to visit Australia, I’m going to time it so I get to hear **Cunctator **sing.
Now you have me thinking about how our chorus can do something like that. The biggest problem for us is that we’d be displacing paying audience members, at least if the performance is SRO.
And regarding the OP, I’ve seen The Ninth many times, and the chorus always sits through the first 3 movements, with the soloists entering after the 3rd.
I have seen the soloists come in at the beginning, i have seen them come in between 2nd and third movement as well as the 3rd and 4th.
And I’m sure everyone gets moist from that gigantic bronx cheer.
As others have said, the soloists stay in their dressing rooms to warm up through the first two or three movements, but the chorus sits onstage through the whole piece until the beginning of the fourth movement, or until a few bars before their first cue.
A symphonic work such as Beethoven’s 9th is intended to be performed with minimal interruptions between the movements. Most conductors, I feel, would frown heavily on the idea of having to wait for the four or five minutes it would likely take for 100 or more choristers to file onstage and shuffle into position.
After all, the soloists are guests. The choristers are chattel at the very lowest end of the orchestral pecking order.
Sigh! It’s true, some of us even pay for the privelage to sing. For the record, my choir also sat through the first three movements. We we’re definitely not capable of pulling off that stunt that Cunctator was a part of.
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
So, so true… 
Cunctator, a Bronx cheer is an Americanism for the sound known in some circles as a raspberry, or more generically, as the farting sound. When evoked textually, it is sometimes rendered “thptphttphththhpth” – or in any number of variations thereof.
Derleth’s wisecrack was based upon the similarity between this and the *pppp *dynamic marking you mentioned.
Ah, I see. Thanks for clarifying that Kizarvexius.