Symphony No. 5

How wonderful that such familiar pieces as Beethoven’s Fifth — the most famous of all symphonies — still “work” in performance, 200 years after its premiere in an unheated concert hall one cold night in Vienna in December 1808. Audiences of all kinds, occasional and frequent attenders alike, still enjoy its wonders — and even those few who arrive with trepidation at hearing an old warhorse one more time are inevitably drawn to the music’s opening drama, rousing ending, and innumerable discoveries in between. 

Beethoven began this symphony in 1804, soon after completing his Third, which had been nicknamed “Eroica” (Heroic). That work, which contemporary audiences felt was much too long for a symphony (clocking in at more than 45 minutes), had been created just after one of the composer’s most anguishing life experiences, as he brought himself to terms with the increasing deafness that would eventually rob him of all hearing. 

After sketching the first two movements, Beethoven set it aside for more than two years while he wrote his opera Fidelio and also the lively and untroubled Fourth Symphony. He then worked diligently on the Fifth throughout 1807, while simultaneously writing another new symphony, the Sixth, given the nickname “Pastoral.” This kind of multitasking, working on several compositions at once, was a normal practice for Beethoven throughout his life, with the ideas originally intended for one work slipping across into a different work entirely. 

Throughout this middle period of Beethoven’s life, the composer was routinely strapped for funds and, in 1808, he developed plans for a special evening “Akademie” concert to raise money for himself. For December 22, he was able to secure performers and Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. Rehearsals were squeezed in on the previous days. Beethoven, perhaps sensing the difficulty of finding any future workable dates for upcoming concerts, kept revising the evening’s program to include more and more music. 

The concert lasted more than four hours and featured the world premieres of the Sixth and Fifth symphonies, in that order; the Fourth Piano Concerto, with Beethoven as soloist; and the Choral Fantasy, as a grand finale, assembling all of the evening’s performing forces at once. Unfortunately, the weather that night was colder than usual and the building was unheated, so while no one attending could possibly have complained about not getting their money’s worth of music, the conditions for comfortable listening and performing deteriorated as the hours passed. 

From that chilly start, the Fifth Symphony’s reputation only increased, and by the end of the 19th century, it had attained its current status as a classical superstar. The association of the opening four-note motive, matching Morse code’s dot–dot–dot–dash for the letter “V,” came to be a shorthand to signify victory during World War II, pushing it further into public consciousness. 

The idea that those four notes represent the composer’s mighty but victorious struggle with destiny was put into circulation by Beethoven himself, or at least by his fantasy-spinning amanuensis Anton Schindler, who reported the composer’s explanation of the opening motive as, “So pocht das Schicksal an die Pforte” (roughly translated as: Thus Fate knocks at the door).

Fate struck Beethoven most cruelly in about 1802 when, still in his early 30s, he acknowledged his deafness and began the long process of coming to terms with a handicap that was less of a musical disability (it did not interfere with his ability to compose) than a social one. His standing as a virtuoso pianist with excellent connections at court was seriously threatened, and his relations with friends, and especially with women, were now forever circumscribed.

We might think that, as a composer, his reactions were far more violent than the situation warranted. The “Eroica” Symphony, the immediate product of that profound crisis, transformed the world of classical music forever. But he did not stop there. His superhuman creative energy produced great heroic works of the decade that had never been heard in music before. One colossal pathbreaking work followed another, combining unearthly beauty of invention, technical virtuosity, vastness of conception, and a radical freedom of expression and form.

Beethoven may have — privately — felt inordinately sorry for himself, but there is no self-pity in his music. Defiance, certainly, although the sense of triumph expressed in the conclusion of the Fifth Symphony is surely more than a tongue-sticking-out, I-told-you-so addressed to Fate.

Whether you choose to listen to this work with the idea of “Fate knocking at the door” (something Beethoven probably never said); as a path from darkness to light, mystery to certainty, ignorance to enlightenment; or merely a well-crafted symphony, this piece in performance is sure to take you on a worthwhile, at times familiar — yet often exhilarating — journey.

The four movements are concise and focused. The first movement is built almost entirely around the four-note opening motive — stated again and again, as foreground, then background, upside down and forward again, in unison and harmonized.

The second movement takes a graceful line and works it through various guises, almost always with a sense of expectancy underneath and bursting forth toward a stronger and stronger presence.

The third movement continues in this confident vein, only to alternate between quiet uncertainty and forthright declamations. Near the end, a section of quietly forbidding darkness leads directly into the bright sunshine and C major of the last movement. Here, at last, Beethoven revels in the major key, then develops a strong musical idea through to an unstoppable finish, repeated and extended, emphatic and ... triumphant.

—  Eric Sellen

Eric Sellen is The Cleveland Orchestra’s editor emeritus. He previously was program book editor for 28 seasons.