Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is a powerful symbol of love, humanitarianism and European unity. The Brexit party’s rejection of the EU anthem shuns our shared history

Yesterday, Brexit party MEPs led by Nigel Farage turned their backs while the anthem of the European Union played at a ceremony to mark the opening of the European Parliament. Their behaviour has been met with disdain by many, with #notinmyname trending on Twitter. This was an emotionally provocative act at a time of political sensitivity, and there is something about the shunning of the anthem itself, an instrumental arrangement of the Ode to Joy from the final movement of Beethoven’s iconic Ninth Symphony, that makes the demonstration particularly inflammatory.

The symphony has a long and chequered history: it has been a symbol of both dark and light. A favourite work of Hitler’s (he liked to hear it on birthdays), the Ninth was also used in Nazi propaganda films, and the closing choral section was performed at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was also chosen as the national anthem of the Republic of Rhodesia under the racist administration of Ian Smith. This darkness has been appropriated in film soundtracks: the symphony is associated with extreme violence in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and is a recurring motif representing Alan Rickman’s cultured villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard.