55 Fun Facts About Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is written in which key?

C minor, the key Beethoven reserved for his most turbulent music, from the Pathétique Sonata to the Third Piano Concerto; the finale turns to C major.

What is the opus number of the Fifth Symphony?

Op. 67: the parts were published in the spring after the premiere, numbered immediately before the companion symphony heard at the same concert.

The famous opening motif of the Fifth follows what rhythmic pattern?

Short-short-short-long: three quick repeated notes followed by a held lower note, remembered as da-da-da-DUM, a rhythm Beethoven reuses throughout the symphony.

In which year did the Fifth Symphony receive its premiere in Vienna?

1808: the premiere took place on 22 December 1808, in a benefit concert that Beethoven organised for his own profit and conducted himself.

At which Vienna venue was the Fifth first performed?

The Theater an der Wien, opened in 1801 by Mozart's librettist Emanuel Schikaneder, hosted the marathon all-Beethoven benefit concert at which the Fifth was premiered, conducted by the composer himself.

Roughly how long did the concert at which the Fifth premiered last?

More than four hours: the programme ran from half past six until after ten o'clock, packing in two symphonies, a concerto, an aria, movements from a Mass and more.

Which other Beethoven symphony was premiered at the very same concert as the Fifth?

The Sixth (Pastoral) opened the evening and the Fifth began the second half; on the printed programme their numbers were the reverse of today's.

How many rehearsals did the orchestra get before the premiere of the Fifth?

One rehearsal was all the under-prepared orchestra had, partly because the players had fallen out with Beethoven; the performance was described as ragged.

At the premiere concert, which work broke down and had to be restarted after a performer's mistake?

The Choral Fantasy, written hastily that December as a grand finale for piano, chorus and orchestra, fell apart when a player miscounted a repeat, and Beethoven stopped to restart it.

Besides the two symphonies, which concerto received its public premiere at the same December concert, with Beethoven as soloist?

Piano No. 4 in G major: Beethoven played the solo part himself, his last public appearance as a concerto soloist, the work having first been heard privately in March 1807.

To which two patrons did Beethoven dedicate the Fifth Symphony?

Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky, who also shared the dedication of its companion symphony; Razumovsky, Russia's ambassador in Vienna, had received the three Op. 59 quartets in 1806.

Whose 1810 review hailed the Fifth as among the most important works of the time?

E. T. A. Hoffmann's review ran in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in July 1810, pairing close analysis of the score with the claim that the music opened up the realm of the infinite.

The Fifth was played at the inaugural concerts of which orchestra on 7 December 1842?

New York Philharmonic: its very first concert, at the Apollo Rooms on 7 December 1842, opened with the Fifth under Ureli Corelli Hill.

The Fifth was first recorded in 1910 by the Odeon Orchestra under which conductor?

Friedrich Kark led the Odeon Orchestra in the 1910 acoustic recording, three years before Arthur Nikisch's celebrated Berlin Philharmonic recording of 1913.

How did the BBC present the Fifth's opening motif before its wartime broadcasts to occupied Europe?

Played on drums: from mid-1941 the BBC opened its European-service broadcasts with the motif beaten out on kettledrums, a call sign kept through the rest of the war.

Which conductor performed only the first movement of the Fifth after Mussolini's fall in 1943, vowing to finish it once Germany was defeated?

Arturo Toscanini led the NBC Symphony in the first movement alone in a 1943 'Victory' broadcast after Italy's surrender, then gave the whole symphony in May 1945 once Germany had capitulated.

Which Belgian politician in exile launched the "V for Victory" campaign on the BBC in January 1941, giving the Fifth its wartime role?

Victor de Laveleye, a former justice minister broadcasting for the BBC's Belgian service, proposed V for victoire in French and vrijheid in Dutch on 14 January 1941; Douglas Ritchie's 'Colonel Britton' programmes then spread it.

How many movements does the Fifth Symphony have?

Four movements: an Allegro con brio, an Andante con moto, a scherzo marked Allegro, and a finale that follows the scherzo without a break.

Roughly how long does a typical performance of the Fifth last?

30-40 minutes: most performances take just over half an hour, the taut first movement alone lasting only seven or eight minutes with its repeat.

Which instruments, silent for the first three movements, enter for the first time at the start of the finale?

Trombones, contrabassoon and piccolo: five extra players sit silent through three movements, then join at the start of the finale as the music turns to C major.

What is the time signature of the Fifth's first movement?

2/4: the first movement, marked Allegro con brio, is written in 2/4, with each statement of the opening motif beginning after an eighth-note rest.

The symphony ends with how many bars of fortissimo C major chords?

29 bars of fortissimo C major chords close the work; Charles Rosen argued that so long a cadence was needed to ground the tension built up across the whole symphony.

The second movement of the Fifth is in which key?

A-flat major, the submediant of the home key, sets the Andante con moto, whose lyrical opening is later answered by a more martial theme in C major.

The slow movement of the Fifth is structured as what?

Double variations: two themes, the first lyrical and the second more martial, are presented and then varied in alternation, a form Haydn had favoured in his slow movements.

Which instruments introduce the opening theme of the Fifth's second movement?

Violas and cellos state the opening theme together in their warm middle register, with the double basses accompanying beneath, before the woodwind take it up.

Beethoven began using a scherzo rather than a minuet as the third movement of his symphonies starting with which symphony?

He kept the practice in every later symphony except the Eighth.

When the scherzo of the Fifth returns for the last time, how are the strings directed to play?

Pizzicato: the scherzo's final reprise is plucked in a ghostly pianissimo, after which a long crescendo carries the music without a break into the finale.

The transition from the third movement into the finale begins pianissimo with a long sequence of repeated notes on which instrument?

Timpani: over softly held strings the drum taps out the motif's rhythm on C, pianissimo, while a long crescendo builds until the finale bursts in attacca.

The finale's quiet recall of the scherzo theme follows a trick Haydn pioneered in which symphony?

No. 46 in B: Haydn's 1772 symphony brings back its minuet inside the finale, the same trick Beethoven uses for the scherzo reprise; whether he knew the Haydn is unknown.

The theme of the Fifth's third movement shares its sequence of intervals with the finale of which famous Mozart symphony?

No. 40 in G minor: the scherzo's opening theme traces the same intervals as the start of Mozart's finale, and Gustav Nottebohm found a passage of that finale copied into Beethoven's sketchbook.

The story that Beethoven said of the opening "Thus Fate knocks at the door!" comes from which unreliable secretary and biographer?

Anton Schindler, Beethoven's sometime secretary and early biographer, reported the remark; he is known to have forged entries in the conversation books, so scholars treat the tale with suspicion.

According to Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny, the four-note motif came from the song of which bird, heard in Vienna's Prater park?

A yellowhammer: Czerny said Beethoven took the figure from the bird's call heard on walks in the Prater, a story Antony Hopkins thought too odd to have been invented.

Which conductor discussed the Fifth's motif in his 1954 Omnibus television lectures, likening it to the four-note coda common to symphonies?

Leonard Bernstein devoted the first of his televised Omnibus lectures, in November 1954, to the Fifth, using Beethoven's discarded sketches to show why the final version of the opening works.

Beethoven wrote the Fifth at his lodgings in which Vienna building, now home to a Beethoven museum?

The Pasqualati House on the Mölker Bastei, where Baron Pasqualati let Beethoven lodge for some eight years in two spells between 1804 and 1814; it is now a Beethoven museum.

The first sketches for the Fifth date from 1804, immediately after Beethoven completed which symphony?

The Third (Eroica), finished in early 1804; Beethoven then began sketching the Fifth but repeatedly set it aside for his opera, the Appassionata Sonata, the Violin Concerto and other works.

The Fifth belongs to which phase of Beethoven's career, marked by heroic works of unprecedented scope?

His personal life at the time was troubled by increasing deafness, and foreign troops occupied Vienna in 1805.

Whose troops occupied Vienna in 1805, while Beethoven was working on the Fifth?

Napoleon's: French troops entered Vienna on 13 November 1805, and Beethoven's opera had its premiere a week later before an audience largely of French officers.

Which instruments take over the horns' second-theme call in the first movement's recapitulation?

Bassoons play the fanfare in the recapitulation because the valveless horns of Beethoven's day could not manage it in the new key; many modern conductors hand it back to the horns.

Which harmonic pattern, a Renaissance dance form, appears midway through the Fifth's slow movement (bars 166-177)?

Reed J. Hoyt drew attention to Folia elements in Beethoven as early as 1982.

Which 1978 edition restored the scherzo repeat that produces an ABABA' scheme?

Peters (Gülke): Peter Gülke's 1978 edition for Peters restored the repeat found in the autograph; period conductors such as Gardiner and Hogwood adopt it, while Del Mar's 1999 Bärenreiter edition kept ABA'.

Which composer-pianist arranged all of Beethoven's symphonies, including the Fifth, for solo piano?

Franz Liszt transcribed all nine symphonies for solo piano, completing the set in 1865; it is catalogued as Symphonies de Beethoven, S. 464.

Which composer's Fourth Symphony, with its opening "fate" fanfare, was particularly inspired by Beethoven's Fifth?

Tchaikovsky wrote to Sergei Taneyev in 1878 that his Fourth imitated Beethoven's Fifth in its central idea, the brass 'fate' fanfare returning to cut across the finale.

Who recorded 'A Fifth of Beethoven', the disco hit that topped the Hot 100 in 1976?

Walter Murphy, a New York arranger, built the disco track on the first movement; its title puns on a fifth of liquor, and it later appeared on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Which group renamed itself because 'A Fifth of Beethoven' was credited to the Big Apple Band?

Chic: Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards had been calling their group the Big Apple Band until the disco hit's credit forced a change in 1977, shortly before 'Dance, Dance, Dance' broke through.

Whose recording of the Fifth's first movement went into space on the 1977 Voyager Golden Record?

Philharmonia / Klemperer: Otto Klemperer's Philharmonia Orchestra recording of the first movement, running about seven minutes, was chosen for the disc assembled by Carl Sagan's team and launched in 1977.

The Fifth was the work chosen for the first commercial long-playing record, issued in which year?

1931: RCA Victor launched its 33⅓ rpm long-playing disc with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra's recording of the Fifth, though the format flopped until Columbia revived it in 1948.

The first French performance of the Fifth, around 1828, was led by which conductor with the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire?

François-Antoine Habeneck founded the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1828 and drilled its orchestra in the Beethoven symphonies; Berlioz heard them there and was transformed.

Which stage work repeatedly interrupted Beethoven's progress on the Fifth?

Fidelio, his only opera, was staged in 1805 and revised in 1806 while the symphony sat in the sketchbooks; the Appassionata, the Violin Concerto and the Mass in C also intervened.

Besides an under-rehearsed orchestra and an exhausting programme, what else made the 1808 premiere miserable?

The hall was extremely cold: the theatre was unheated on 22 December, and the audience shivered through the long programme; the composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt, who attended, recalled the bitter cold.

Beethoven's heroic phase, which produced the Fifth, is usually dated from which year?

1803: that year he started the symphony that would open his decade of large-scale heroic works, and the first sketches for the Fifth followed in 1804.

According to Charles Rosen, Beethoven in the Fifth's home key always reveals himself as what?

Hero: in The Classical Style Rosen wrote that the key 'reveals Beethoven as Hero', showing him in his most extroverted form, 'most impatient of any compromise'.

In which year did the first printed edition of the Fifth, carrying its dedication, appear?

1809: the parts came out in Leipzig that April, a few months after the premiere, carrying the joint dedication to two of Beethoven's noble patrons.

The exposition of the Fifth's first movement establishes which secondary key?

E-flat major, the relative major, is the key of the second subject, announced by a horn call built on the same rhythm; the movement is textbook sonata form with nearly everything grown from the motif.

Which Beethoven pupil is now credited as the real author of the 'Fate knocking at the gate' explanation?

Beethoven reportedly received the poetic gloss sarcastically; one scholar noted he 'had been known to say nearly anything to relieve himself of questioning pests'.

The Fifth's opening rhythm already appears in which nicknamed Haydn symphony, No. 96?

The Miracle, Haydn's Symphony No. 96 of 1791, uses the same rhythmic figure, as does Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25, K. 503; the rhythm was common currency before Beethoven.