Oliver Sacks’ Last Tweet Shows Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Movingly Flashmobbed in Spain

“A beau­ti­ful way to per­form one of the world’s great musi­cal trea­sures.” The video above, and the accom­pa­ny­ing 58-char­ac­ter sen­tence, make up the last tweet from Oliv­er Sacks, the influ­en­tial neu­rol­o­gist who passed away ear­li­er today. The clip (orig­i­nal­ly high­light­ed on our site back in 2012) fea­tures 100 musi­cians and singers from the Orches­tra Sim­fon­i­ca del Valles, Amics de l’Opera de Sabadell, Coral Belles Arts, and Cor Lieder Cam­era per­form­ing what’s now the anthem of the Euro­pean Union — Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. It’s a pret­ty stir­ring per­for­mance, and cer­tain­ly a worth­while way to punc­tu­ate a Twit­ter stream. (Side note: Dr. Sacks start­ed fol­low­ing our Twit­ter stream sev­er­al years ago, and we still con­sid­er it a great hon­or, a high point in OC his­to­ry.)

You can read Mr. Sacks’ obit­u­ary here, and an appraisal of his intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions here.

h/t @miafarrow

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Oliv­er Sacks Con­tem­plates Mor­tal­i­ty (and His Ter­mi­nal Can­cer Diag­no­sis) in a Thought­ful, Poignant Let­ter

30 Renowned Writ­ers Speak­ing About God: From Isaac Asi­mov to Oliv­er Sac­sks & Mar­garet Atwood