Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven

MUSIC OF JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809)

Born in 1732, Joseph Haydn grew up in a small village that was located about a six-hour coach ride east of Vienna (today the two are about an hour apart by car). His family loved to sing together, and perceiving that their son had musical talent, apprenticed six-year-old Joseph Haydn to a relative who was a schoolmaster and choirmaster. As an apprentice, Haydn learned harpsichord and violin and sang in the church. So distinct was Haydn’s voice that he was recommended to Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral’s music director. In 1740 Haydn became a student of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. He sang with the St. Stephen’s Cathedral boys’ choir for almost ten years, until his voice broke (changed). After searching, he found a job as valet to the Italian opera composer Nicola Porpora and most likely started studying music theory and music composition in a systematic way at that time. He composed a comic musical and eventually became a chapel master for a Czech nobleman. When this noble family fell into hard times, they released Haydn. In 1761, he became a Vice-Chapel Master for an even wealthier nobleman, the Hungarian Prince Esterházy. Haydn spent almost thirty years working for their family. He was considered a skilled servant, who soon became their head Chapel Master and was highly prized, especially by the second and most musical of the Esterházy princes for whom Haydn worked.

The Esterházys kept Haydn very busy: he wrote music, which he played both for and with his patrons, ran the orchestra, and staged operas. In 1779, Haydn’s contract was renegotiated, allowing him to write and sell music outside of the Esterházy family. Within a decade, he was the most famous composer in Europe. In 1790, the musical Prince Nikolaus Esterházy died and his son Anton downsized the family’s musical activities. This shift allowed Haydn to accept an offer to give a concert in London, England, where his music was very popular. Haydn left Vienna for London in December. For the concerts there, he composed an opera, symphonies, and chamber music, all of which were extremely popular. Haydn revisited London twice in the following years, 1791 to 1795, earning—after expenses—as much as he had in twenty years of employment with the Esterházys. Nonetheless, a new Esterházy prince decided to reestablish the family’s musical foothold, so Haydn returned to their service in 1796. In the last years of his life, he wrote two important oratorios (he had been much impressed by performances of Handel’s oratorios while in London) as well as more chamber music.

Overview of Haydn’s Music

Like his younger contemporaries Mozart and Beethoven, Joseph Haydn composed in all the genres of his day. From a historical perspective, his contributions to the string quartet and the symphony are particularly significant: in fact, he is often called the Father of the Symphony. His music is also known for its motivic construction, use of folk tunes, and musical wit. Central to Haydn’s compositional process was his ability to take small numbers of short musical motives and vary them in enough ways to provide interesting music for movements that were several minutes long. Folk-like as well as popular tunes of the day can be heard in many of his compositions for piano, string quartet, and orchestra. Contemporary audiences and critics seemed to appreciate this mixing of musical complexity and the familiar. Ernst Ludwig Gerber (1790-92), an important eighteenth-century musical connoisseur, wrote that Haydn “possessed the great art of appearing familiar in his themes” (Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkünstler of 1790-1792). Additionally, many of his contemporaries remarked on Haydn’s musical wit or humor. Several of his music compositions play on the listeners’ expectations, especially through the use of surprise rests, held-out notes, and sudden dynamic changes.

Focus Composition:

Haydn, String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, no. 4 (1772)

The string quartet was one of the important performing forces and genres of the Classical period, and Haydn was one of its most important composers. Over the course of his life, Haydn wrote sixty-eight quartets, many of which were played both by Haydn’s aristocratic patrons and published and available for the amateur musician to purchase and play. In fact, many late eighteenth-century writers (including the famous German poet Goethe) referred to the string quartet as “a conversation between four intelligent people,” in this case, the four people being the first and second violinist, violist, and cellist.

The string quartet by Haydn which we will study is one of six quartets that he wrote in 1772 and published as opus twenty quartets in 1774 (roughly speaking, the “twenty” meant that this was Haydn’s twentieth publication to date). In many ways, this follows the norms of other string quartets of the day. It is in four movements, with a fast first movement in sonata form, a slow second movement that uses a theme and variations form, a moderate-tempo third movement that is like a minuet, and a fourth fast movement, here in sonata form. As we will see, the third movement is subtitled “alla Zingarese,” or “in the style of the Hungarians” (a good example of Haydn being “folky”). The entire quartet comprises a little over twenty minutes of music.

First, we will listen to the first movement, which is marked “allegro di molto,” or very fast, and is in D major, as expected given the string quartet’s title. It uses sonata form, and as stated earlier, in the exposition, the home key and musical themes of the movement are introduced, or “exposed.” In the development, those themes are broken apart and combined in new and different ways, or “developed.” In the recapitulation, the home key and original musical themes return; in other words, they are “recapitulated” or “recapped.”

The exposition, development, and recapitulation are further broken into subsections to correspond to modulations in keys and the presentation of new and different themes. For the time being, simply listen for the main sections of sonata form in the first movement of Haydn’s string quartet. You might also listen for Haydn’s motivic style. In the first musical theme, you’ll hear three motives. The first motive, for example, repeats the same pitch three times. The second motive consists of an arched musical phrase that ascends and descends and outlines the pitches of an important chord of the movement. The final motive that Haydn packs into his opening musical theme is a musical turn, or a decorative series of notes that move by step, revolving around a primary note. Each of these motives is heard repeatedly through the rest of the movement.

The third movement of Haydn’s String Quartet in D major, Op. 20, no. 4 uses a moderate tempo (it is marked “allegretto,” in this case, a slow allegro) and the form of a minuet. Keeping with the popular culture of the day, a great number of Haydn’s compositions included minuet movements.

Here, however, we see Haydn playing on our expectations for the minuet and writing a movement that is alla zingarese. The minuet was not a Hungarian dance, so the listener’s experience and expectations are altered when the third movement sounds more like a lively Hungarian folk dance than the stately western-European minuet. (For comparison’s sake, you can listen to the second movement of Haydn’s String Quartet in E flat, Op. 20, no. 1, which is a much more traditional-sounding minuet.) Haydn retains the form of the stylized minuet, which consisted of a minuet and a trio. The trio consists of musical phrases that contrast with what was heard in the minuet: the trio got its name from an earlier practice of assigning this music to a group of three wind players. Here the entire string quartet plays throughout. After the trio, the group returns to the minuet, resulting in a minuet (A)—trio (B)— minuet (A). As was the custom, Haydn did not write out the minuet music at its return—remember paper was much more expensive 200 years ago than it is today. Instead, Haydn wrote two Italian words: “da capo”. As these words were used by all composers of the day, the players knew immediately to flip to the beginning of the movement and repeat the minuet, generally without repeats.

Focus Composition:

Haydn, Symphony No. 94 in G Major, “Surprise”

Haydn is also often called the Father of the Symphony because he wrote over 100 symphonies, which, like his string quartets, span most of his compositional career. As already noted, the Classical orchestra featured primarily strings, with flutes and oboes (and, with Haydn’s last symphonies, clarinets) for woodwinds, trumpets and horns for brass, and timpani (and occasionally other drums or the cymbals or triangle) for percussion. The symphony gradually took on the four-movement form that was a norm for over a century, although as we will see, composers sometimes relished departing from the norm.

Haydn wrote some of his most successful symphonies during his time in London. His Symphony No. 94 in G Major, which premiered in London in 1792, is a good example of Haydn’s thwarting musical expectations for witty ends. Like most symphonies of its day, the first movement is in sonata form. (Haydn does open the symphony with a brief, slow introduction before launching into the first movement proper.)

Haydn’s sense of humor is most evident in the moderately slow andante second movement which starts like a typical theme and variations movement consisting of a musical theme that the composer then varies several times. Each variation retains enough of the original theme to be recognizable but adds other elements to provide interest. The themes used for theme and variations movements tended to be simple, tuneful melody lines. In this case, the theme consists of an eight-measure musical phrase that is repeated. This movement, like many movements of Classical symphonies and string quartets, ends with a coda.

Why did Haydn write such a loud chord at the end of the second statement of the a phrase of the theme? Commentators have long speculated that Haydn may have noticed that audience members tended to drift off to sleep in slow and often quietly lyrical middle movements of symphonies and decided to give them an abrupt wakeup. Haydn himself said nothing of the sort, although his letters, as well as his music, do suggest that he was attentive to his audience’s opinions and attempted at every juncture to give them music that was new and interesting: for Haydn, that clearly meant playing upon his listener’s expectations in ways that might even be considered humorous.

The third movement of Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony is a rather traditional minuet and trio movement. The fourth movement is equally traditional; it uses a light-hearted form called the rondo. As stated before, in a rondo, a musical refrain, labeled as “A,” alternates with other sections, alternately called B, C, D, etc. See if you can hear the recurrence of the refrain as you listen to this joyful conclusion to the symphony.

Haydn’s symphonies greatly influenced the musical style of both Mozart and Beethoven; indeed, these two composers learned how to develop motives from Haydn’s earlier symphonies. Works such as the Surprise Symphony were especially shaping for the young Beethoven, who, as we will later discuss, was taking music composition lessons from Haydn at about the same time that Haydn was composing his Symphony No. 94 before his trip to London.

MUSIC OF WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria. His father, Leopold Mozart, was an accomplished violinist of the Archbishop of Salzburg’s court. Additionally, Leopold had written a respected book on the playing of the violin. At a very young age, Wolfgang began his career as a composer and performer. A prodigy, his talent far exceeded any in music, past his contemporaries. He began writing music prior to the age of five. At the age of six, Wolfgang performed in the court of Empress Maria Theresa.

Mozart’s father was quite proud of his children, both being child prodigies. At age seven, Wolfgang, his father, and his sister Maria Anna (nicknamed “Nannerl”) embarked on a tour featuring Wolfgang in London, Munich, and Paris. As was customary at the time, Wolfgang, the son, was promoted and pushed ahead with his musical career by his father. While his sister, the female, grew up traditionally, married, and eventually took care of her father Leopold in his later years. However, while the two siblings were still performing, these tours occurred when Wolfgang was between the ages of six and seventeen. The tours, though, were quite demeaning for the young musical genius in that he was often looked upon as just a superficial genre of entertainment rather than being respected as a musical prodigy. He would often be asked to identify the tonality of a piece while listening to it or asked to sight read and perform with a cloth over his hands while at the piano. Still, the tours allowed young Mozart to accumulate knowledge about musical styles across Europe. As a composer prior to his teens, the young Mozart had already composed religious works, symphonies, solo sonatas, an opera buffa, and Bastien and Bastienne, an operetta; in short, he had quickly mastered all the forms of music.

Back in Salzburg, Mozart was very unhappy due to being musically restrained by the restrictions of his patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus von Colloredo. At approximately the age of twenty-five, he moved to Vienna, became a free artist (agent), and pursued other opportunities. Another likely reason for Wolfgang’s ultimate departure to Vienna was to become independent of his father. Though Leopold was well-meaning and had sacrificed a great deal to ensure the future and happiness of his son, he was an overbearing father. Thus at the age of twenty-five, Mozart married Constance Weber. Mozart’s father did not view the marriage favorably and this marriage served as a wedge severing Wolfgang’s close ties to his father.

Wolfgang’s new life in Vienna however was not easy. For almost ten years, he struggled financially, unable to find the secure financial environment in which he had grown up. The music patronage system was still the main way for musicians to prosper and thrive: several times, Mozart was considered for patron employment but was not hired. Having hired several other musicians ahead of Mozart, Emperor Joseph II hired Mozart to basically compose dances for the court’s balls. As the tasks were far beneath his musical genius, Mozart was quite bitter about this assignment.

While in Vienna, Mozart relied on his teaching to sustain him and his family. He also relied on the entertainment genre of the concert. He would write piano concertos for annual concerts. Their programs would also include some arias, solo improvisation, and possibly an overture by another composer.

The peak of Mozart’s career success occurred in 1786 with the writing of The Marriage of Figaro (libretto by Lorenza da Ponte). The opera was a hit in Prague and Vienna. The city of Prague, so impressed with the opera, commissioned another piece by Mozart. Mozart, with da Ponte again as librettist, then composed Don Giovanni. The second opera left the audience somewhat confused. Mozart’s luster and appeal seemed to have passed. As a composer, Mozart was trying to expand the spectrum, or horizons, of the musical world. Therefore, his music sometimes had to be viewed more than once by the audience in order for them to understand and appreciate it. Mozart was pushing the musical envelope beyond the standard entertainment expected by his aristocratic audience, and patrons, in general, did not appreciate it. In a letter to Mozart, Emperor Joseph II wrote of Don Giovanni that the opera was perhaps better than The Marriage of Figaro but that it did not set well on the palette of the Viennese. Mozart quickly fired back, responding that the Viennese perhaps needed more time to understand it.

In the final year of his life, Mozart with librettist (actor/poet) Emanuel Schikaneder, wrote a very successful opera for the Viennese English Theatre, The Magic Flute. The newly acclaimed famous composer was quickly hired to write a piece (as well as attend) the coronation of the new Emperor, Leopold II, as King of Bohemia. The festive opera that Mozart composed for this event was called The Clemency of Titus. Its audience, overly indulged and exhausted from the coronation, was not impressed with Mozart’s work. Mozart returned home depressed and broken and began working on a Requiem, which, coincidentally, would be his last composition.

The Requiem was commissioned by a count who intended to pass the work off as his own. Mozart’s health failed shortly after receiving this commission and the composer died, just before his thirty-sixth birthday, before completing the piece. Mozart’s favorite student, Franz Xaver Sűssmayr, completed the mass from Mozart’s sketch scores, with some insertions of his own, while rumors spread that Mozart was possibly poisoned by another contemporary composer. In debt at the time of his death, Mozart was given a common burial. As one commentator wrote:

Thus, “without a note of music, forsaken by all he held dear, the remains of this Prince of Harmony were committed to the earth, not even in a grave of their own, but in the common fosse affected to the indiscriminate sepulture of homeless mendicants and nameless waifs.” (Crowest, “An Estimate of Mozart,” The Eclectic Magazine: Foreign Literature Vol. 55; Vol 118 P. 464)

Overview of Mozart’s Music

From Mozart’s youth, his musical intellect and capability were unmatched. His contemporaries often noted that Mozart seemed to have already heard, edited, listened to, and visualized entire musical works in his mind before raising a pen to compose them on paper. When he took pen in hand, he would basically transcribe the work in his head onto the manuscript paper. Observers also said that Mozart could listen and carry on conversations with others while transcribing his music to paper.

Mozart was musically very prolific in his short life. He composed operas, church music, a Requiem, string quartets, string quintets, mixed quintets and quartets, concertos, piano sonatas, and many lighter chamber pieces (such as divertimentos), including his superb A Little Night Music (Eine kleine Nachtmusik). His violin and piano sonatas are among the best ever written both in form and emotional content. Six of his quartets were dedicated to Haydn, whose influence Mozart celebrated in their preface.

Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik

Mozart additionally wrote exceptional keyboard music, particularly since he was respected as one of the finest pianists of the Classical period. He loved the instrument dearly and wrote many solo works, as well as more than twenty piano concertos for piano and orchestra, thus contributing greatly to the concerto’s popularity as an acceptable medium. Many of these concerti were premiered at Mozart’s annual public fundraising concerts. Of his many piano solo pieces, the Fantasia in C minor K 475 and the Sonata (in C minor) K 457 are representative of his most famous.

Mozart composed more than forty symphonies, the writing of which extended across his entire career. He was known for the full and rich instrumentation and voicing of his symphonies. His conveying of emotion and mood are especially portrayed in these works. His final six symphonies, written in the last decade of his life, are the most artistically self-motivated independent of art patronage and supervision that might stifle creativity. Mozart’s late and great symphonies include the Haffner in D (1782), the Linz in C (1783), the Prague in D (1786), and his last three symphonies composed in 1788. Mozart’s final symphony probably was not performed prior to his death. In addition to the symphonies and piano concertos, Mozart composed other major instrumental works for clarinet, violin, and horn in concertos.

Focus Composition:

Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor, K. 466 [1785]

Classical composers like Mozart took the Baroque concerto for soloist and orchestra and expanded it into a much larger form. Like Vivaldi’s concertos, Mozart’s concertos were generally in three movements, with fast, slow, and fast tempos, respectively. The first movements of Mozart’s concertos also featured the alternation of ritornello sections and solo sections. Mozart, however, also applied the dynamics of sonata form to the first movements of his concertos, resulting in a form that we now call double exposition form. In double exposition form, the first statement of the exposition was assigned to the orchestra, and the second statement of the exposition was assigned to the soloist with orchestral accompaniment in the background. The alternation between orchestra and soloist sections continues in the development and recapitulation. Near the end of the recapitulation and during the final orchestra exposition, the orchestra holds a suspenseful chord, at which point the soloist enters and the orchestra drops out. For a minute or longer, the soloist plays a cadenza. A cadenza is a solo section that sounds improvised, though sometimes composers or performers wrote these ahead of time, as is the case with this concerto (the recording cited by the text features a cadenza that was written by Beethoven). A cadenza normally ends with the pianist sustaining a chord (often with a trill) signaling the orchestra’s final entrance in the piece, playing the last phrase of the ritornello to bring the movement to a conclusion. You can see an example of how ritornello form and sonata form were merged in a double exposition form:

The first movement of Mozart’s Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 is a good example of double exposition form.

Focus Composition:

Mozart, Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 (1788)

Like Haydn, Mozart also wrote symphonies. Mozart’s final symphony, the Symphony No. 41 in major, K. 551 is one of his greatest compositions. It very quickly acquired the nickname “Jupiter,” a reference to the Greek god, perhaps because of its grand scale and use of complex musical techniques. For example, Mozart introduced more modulations and key changes in this piece than was typical. The symphony opens with a first movement in sonata form with an exposition, development, and recapitulation.

It is impossible to know how many more operas and symphonies Mozart would have written had he lived into his forties, fifties, or even sixties. Haydn’s music written after the death of Mozart shows the influence of his younger contemporary, and Beethoven’s early music was also shaped by Mozart’s. In fact, in 1792, a twenty-something Beethoven was sent to Vienna with the expressed purpose of receiving “the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn.”

MUSIC OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Beethoven was born in Bonn in December of 1770. Bonn sat at the Western edge of the Germanic lands, on the Rhine River. Those in Bonn were well-acquainted with the traditions of the Netherlands and of the French; they would be some of the first to hear of the revolutionary ideas coming out of France in the 1780s. The area was ruled by the Elector of Cologne. As the Kapellmeister for the Elector, Beethoven’s grandfather held the most important musical position in Bonn; he died when Beethoven was three years old. Beethoven’s father, Johann Beethoven, sang in the Electoral Chapel his entire life. While he may have provided his son with music lessons at an early stage of Ludwig’s life, it appears that Johann had given into alcoholism and depression, especially after the death of Maria Magdalena Keverich (Johann’s wife and Ludwig’s mother) in 1787.

Although hundreds of miles east of Vienna, the Electorate of Cologne was under the jurisdiction of the Austrian Habsburg empire that was ruled by this Eastern European city. The close ties between these lands made it convenient for the Elector, with the support of the music-loving Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein (1762-1823), to send Beethoven to Vienna to further his music training. Ferdinand was the youngest of an aristocratic family in Bonn. He greatly supported the arts and became a patron of Beethoven. Beethoven’s first stay in Vienna in 1787 was interrupted by the death of his mother. In 1792, he returned to Vienna for good.

Perhaps the most universally known fact of Beethoven’s life is that he went deaf. You can read entire books on the topic; for our present purposes, the timing of his hearing loss is most important. It was at the end of the 1790s that Beethoven first recognized that he was losing his hearing. By 1801, he was writing about it to his most trusted friends. It is clear that the loss of his hearing was an existential crisis for Beethoven. During the fall of 1802, he composed a letter to his brothers that included his last will and testament, a document that we’ve come to know as the “Heiligenstadt Testament” named after the small town of Heiligenstadt, north of the Viennese city center, where he was staying. The “Heiligenstadt Testament” provides us insight to Beethoven’s heart and mind. Most striking is his statement that his experiences of social alienation, connected to his hearing loss, “drove me almost to despair, a little more of that and I have ended my life—it was only my art that held me back.” The idea that Beethoven found in art a reason to live suggests both his valuing of art and a certain self-awareness of what he had to offer music. Beethoven and his physicians tried various means to counter the hearing loss and improve his ability to function in society. By 1818, however, Beethoven was completely deaf.

Beethoven had a complex personality. Although he read the most profound philosophers of his day and was compelled by lofty philosophical ideals, his own writing was broken and his personal accounts show errors in basic math. He craved close human relationships yet had difficulty sustaining them. By 1810, he had secured a lifetime annuity from local noblemen, meaning that Beethoven never lacked for money. Still, his letters—as well as the accounts of contemporaries—suggest a man suspicious of others and preoccupied with the compensation he was receiving.

Overview of Beethoven’s Music

Upon arriving in Vienna in the early 1790s, Beethoven supported himself by playing piano at salons and by giving music lessons. Salons were gatherings of literary types, visual artists, musicians, and thinkers, often hosted by noblewomen for their friends. Here Beethoven both played music of his own composition and improvised upon musical themes given to him by those in attendance.

In April of 1800, Beethoven gave his first concert for his own benefit, held at the important Burgtheater. As typical for the time, the concert included a variety of types of music, vocal, orchestral, and even, in this case, chamber music. Many of the selections were by Haydn and Mozart, for Beethoven’s music from this period was profoundly influenced by these two composers.

Scholars have traditionally divided Beethoven’s composing into three chronological periods: early, middle, and late. Like all efforts to categorize, this one proposes boundaries that are open to debate. Probably most controversial is the dating of the end of the middle period and the beginning of the late period. Beethoven did not compose much music between 1814 and 1818, meaning that any division of those years would fall more on Beethoven’s life than on his music.

In general, the music of Beethoven’s first period (roughly until 1803) reflects the influence of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven’s second period (1803-1814) is sometimes called his “heroic” period, based on his recovery from depression documented in the “Heiligenstadt Testament” mentioned earlier. This period includes such music compositions as his Third Symphony, which Beethoven subtitled “Eroica” (that is, heroic), the Fifth Symphony, and Beethoven’s one opera, Fidelio, which took the French Revolution as its inspiration. Other works composed during this time include Symphonies No. 3 through No. 8 and famous piano works, such as the sonatas “Waldstein,” “Appassionata,” and “Lebewohl” and Concertos No. 4 and No. 5. He continued to write instrumental chamber music, choral music, and songs into his heroic middle period. In these works of his middle period, Beethoven is often regarded as having come into his own because they display a new and original musical style. In comparison to the works of Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven’s earlier music, these longer compositions feature larger performing forces, thicker polyphonic textures, more complex motivic relationships, more dissonance and delayed resolution of dissonance, more syncopation and hemiola (hemiola is the momentary simultaneous sense of being in two meters at the same time), and more elaborate forms.

When Beethoven started composing again in 1818, his music was much more experimental. Some of his contemporaries believed that he had lost his ability to compose as he lost his hearing. The late piano sonatas, last five string quartets, monumental Missa Solemnis, and Symphony No. 9 in D minor (The Choral Symphony) are now perceived to be some of Beethoven’s most revolutionary compositions, although they were not uniformly applauded during his lifetime. Beethoven’s late style was one of contrasts: extremely slow music next to extremely fast music and extremely complex and dissonant music next to extremely simple and consonant music.

Although this section will not discuss the music of Beethoven’s early period or late period in any depth, you might want to explore this music on your own. Beethoven’s first published piano sonata, the Sonata in F minor, Op. 2, No. 1 (1795), shows the influence of its dedicatee, Joseph Haydn. One of Beethoven’s last works, his famous Ninth Symphony, departs from the norms of the day by incorporating vocal soloists and a choir into a symphony, which was almost always written only for orchestral instruments. The Ninth Symphony is Beethoven’s longest; its first three movements, although innovative in many ways, use the expected forms: a fast sonata form, a scherzo (which by the early nineteenth century—as we will see in our discussion of the Fifth Symphony—had replaced the minuet and trio), and a slow theme and variations form. The finale, in which the vocalists participate, is truly revolutionary in terms of its length, the sheer extremes of the musical styles it uses, and the combination of large orchestra and choir. The text or words that Beethoven chose for the vocalists speak of joy and the hope that all humankind might live together in brotherly love. The “Ode to Joy” melody to which Beethoven set these words was later used for the hymn “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.”

Focus Composition:

Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1808)

In this section, we will focus on possibly Beethoven’s most famous composition, his Fifth Symphony (1808). The premiere of the Fifth Symphony took place at perhaps the most infamous of all of Beethoven’s concerts, an event that lasted for some four hours in an unheated theater on a bitterly cold Viennese evening. At this time, Beethoven was not on good terms with the performers, several of whom refused to rehearse with the composer in the room. In addition, the final number of the performance was finished too late to be sufficiently practiced, and in the concert, it had to be stopped and restarted. Belying its less than auspicious first performance, once published the Fifth Symphony quickly gained the critical acclaim it has held ever since.

The most famous part of the Fifth Symphony is its commanding opening. This opening features the entire orchestra playing in unison a musical motive that we will call the short-short-short-long (SSSL) motive, because of the rhythm of its four notes. We will also refer to it as the Fate motive, because at least since the 1830s, music critics have likened it to fate knocking on the door. The short notes repeat the same pitch and then the long, held-out note leaps down a third. After the orchestra releases the held note, it plays the motive again, now sequenced a step lower, then again at the original pitches, then at higher pitches. This sequenced phrase, which has become the first theme of the movement, then repeats, and the fast sonata-form movement starts to pick up steam. This is the exposition of the movement.

After a transition, the second theme is heard. It also starts with the SSSL motive, although the pitches heard are quite different. The horn presents the question phrase of the second theme; then, the strings respond with the answer phrase of the second theme. You should note that the key has changed—the music is now in E flat major, which has a much more peaceful feel than C minor—and the answer phrase of the second theme is much more legato than anything yet heard in the symphony. This tuneful legato music does not last for long and the closing section returns to the rapid sequencing of the SSSL motive. Then the orchestra returns to the beginning of the movement for a repeat of the exposition.

The development section of this first movement does everything we might expect of a development: the SSSL motive appears in sequence and is altered as the keys change rapidly. Also, we hear more polyphonic imitative in the development than elsewhere in the movement. Near the end of the development, the dynamics alternate between piano and forte, and, before the listener knows it, the music has returned to the home key of C minor as well as the opening version of the SSSL motive: this starts the recapitulation. The music transitions to the second theme—now still in the home key of C minor—and the closing section. Then, just when the listener expects the recapitulation to end, Beethoven extends the movement in a coda. This coda is much longer than any coda we have yet listened to in the music of Haydn or Mozart, although it is not as long as the coda to the final movement of this symphony. These long codas are also another element that Beethoven is known for. He often restates the conclusive cadence many times and in many rhythmic durations.

The second movement is a lyrical theme and variations movement in a major key, which provides a few minutes of respite from the menacing C minor; if you listen carefully, though, you might hear some reference to the SSSL fate motive. The third movement returns to C minor and is a scherzo. Scherzos retain the form of the minuet, having a contrasting trio section that divides the two presentations of the scherzo. Like the minuet, scherzos also have a triple feel, although they tend to be somewhat faster in tempo than the minuet.

This scherzo third movement opens with a mysterious, even spooky, opening theme played by the lower strings. The second theme returns to the SSSL motive, although now with different pitches. The mood changes with a very imitative and very polyphonic trio in C major, but the spooky theme reappears, alongside the fate motive, with the repeat of the scherzo. Instead of making the scherzo a discrete movement, Beethoven chose to write a musical transition between the scherzo and the final movement, so that the music runs continuously from one movement to another. After suddenly getting very soft, the music gradually grows in dynamic as the motive sequences higher and higher until the fourth movement bursts onto the scene with a triumphant and loud C major theme. It seems that perhaps our hero, whether we think of the hero as the music of the symphony or perhaps as Beethoven himself, has finally triumphed over Fate.

The fourth movement is a rather typical fast sonata form finale with one exception. The second theme of the scherzo (b), which contains the SSSL fate motive, appears one final time at the end of the movement’s development section, as if to try one more time to derail the hero’s conquest. But, the movement ultimately ends with a lot of loud cadences in C major, providing ample support for an interpretation of the composition as the overcoming of Fate. This is the interpretation that most commentators for almost two hundred years have given the symphony. It is pretty amazing to think that a musical composition might express so aptly the human theme of struggle and triumph. Listen to the piece and see if you hear it the same way.

Before you listen to the entire piece, watch this video which gives an overview.