54 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.

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

Short-short-short-long: Beethoven put a fermata on the long note, a hold with no fixed length, so each conductor decides how long it lasts, and they still disagree.

Which composer, Beethoven complained, threatened to expel musicians who played at the Fifth's 1808 premiere?

Salieri ran a charity concert for musicians' widows on the same night and wanted its players there, so Beethoven had to launch the Fifth with a pickup orchestra.

At which venue did Beethoven's Fifth Symphony have its premiere?

The Theater an der Wien was a house Beethoven knew from the inside: in 1803 he had lodged in the building as its engaged composer under the director Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart's librettist.

The concert that premiered the Fifth closed with a tune foreshadowing which later Beethoven melody?

The Ode to Joy: Beethoven drew the link himself, later telling a publisher that his Ninth Symphony was in the style of that earlier concert closer, only on a far grander scale.

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 pickup orchestra got for four hours of new and difficult music, so the premiere was close to an exercise in sight-reading.

At the Fifth's premiere concert, which other work broke down and had to be restarted?

The Choral Fantasy, finished barely in time, fell apart over a muddled repeat; by one account the culprit was Beethoven himself, who forgot he had told the players to skip it.

Which concerto had its public premiere alongside the Fifth, with Beethoven as soloist?

Piano No. 4 in G major: Beethoven played the solo part himself, and as his hearing failed he never appeared as a concerto soloist again; the Emperor was premiered by other hands.

To which two patrons did Beethoven dedicate the Fifth Symphony?

Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky also shared the dedication of the symphony premiered beside it; in 1809 Lobkowitz joined two other nobles in paying Beethoven a salary to keep him in Vienna.

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 opened the very first concert of which orchestra, on 7 December 1842?

New York Philharmonic: founder Ureli Corelli Hill conducted the Fifth to open its first concert at the Apollo Rooms, then handed the baton to two other conductors for the rest of the evening.

Which band's 1973 cover of Chuck Berry's 'Roll Over Beethoven' opens with a blast of the Fifth's first movement?

Electric Light Orchestra spliced the symphony's opening into Chuck Berry's rock and roll standard on the album ELO 2, and the eight-minute track gave the band its first US chart single.

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

Played on drums: the BBC made the rhythm its wartime call sign, so a German composer's most famous bars became a rallying signal against Nazi Germany.

Which conductor broadcast only the Fifth's first movement in 1943, vowing to play the rest 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.

The Fifth's famous opening rhythm matches the Morse code for which letter?

V: after the exiled Belgian broadcaster Victor de Laveleye urged his occupied country to chalk up the letter in January 1941, the BBC made the matching rhythm the sound of its 'V for Victory' campaign.

How many movements does the Fifth Symphony have?

Four movements, though listeners hear only two breaks: the scherzo runs straight into the finale without a pause.

Roughly how long does a typical performance of Beethoven's Fifth last?

About 35 minutes: the tempo a conductor picks matters, with brisk readings taking barely half an hour and the most spacious stretching to 40.

Which instruments stay silent in the Fifth until the start of the finale?

Trombones, contrabassoon and piccolo: five players wait through three movements, so when they join at the finale the orchestra suddenly sounds far bigger and brighter.

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

2/4: the motif begins after a silent eighth-note rest, so it starts off the beat, an upbeat that lands its weight on the first beat of the next bar.

Near the end of the Fifth's finale, the tempo quickens to which marking?

Presto: the dash for home ends in a famously long run of C major chords, which Charles Rosen argued was needed to ground the tension the whole symphony had built up.

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, one lyrical and one martial, are varied in turn, a design Beethoven came back to years later for the slow movement of the Ninth.

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.

Which Beethoven symphony was the first whose third movement he headed 'Scherzo' instead of 'Menuetto'?

No. 2: its third movement is the first Beethoven headed 'Scherzo'; the First Symphony's is still marked 'Menuetto', though it already goes far too fast to dance to.

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 Fifth's bridge from scherzo to finale begins with soft repeated notes on which instrument?

Timpani: over softly held strings it taps out a quiet pulse on C while a slow crescendo builds, until the finale bursts in without a break.

Which instrument interrupts the Fifth's first movement with a brief, mournful solo marked adagio?

Oboe: just as the opening returns, everyone else falls silent and a single oboe sings a slow, unbarred phrase, a moment of stillness before the storm resumes.

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 his pupil Carl Czerny, Beethoven took the Fifth's opening motif from the song of which bird?

A yellowhammer: Czerny said the figure came from the bird's call, heard on walks in the Prater, a humbler origin than the rival tale of Fate knocking at the door.

Which conductor gave his first television lecture in 1954, explaining the Fifth's opening on the programme Omnibus?

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: Beethoven moved out and back so often that the Baron is said to have kept the rooms free, saying 'The lodging will not be rented; Beethoven will come back.'

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

The Third (Eroica) came first: the Fifth's sketches followed in 1804, but Beethoven set them aside so often that the symphony took four more years to finish.

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

Middle period: from about 1803 Beethoven launched works on a far larger scale, the Fifth among them, even as his hearing steadily failed.

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

Napoleon's: the French took Vienna in 1805 and came back in 1809, when Beethoven sheltered in his brother's cellar with pillows over his head against the guns.

Which instruments take over the horns' fanfare when it returns in the Fifth's first-movement 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 great German writer, hearing Mendelssohn play the Fifth on the piano in 1830, feared the house might fall down?

Goethe at first shrugged that the music was merely astonishing, then kept muttering how huge and wild it was, and was still talking about it at dinner.

Which E. M. Forster novel devotes a famous chapter to its characters hearing the Fifth at a London concert?

Howards End: chapter five calls the symphony 'the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man', and Helen Schlegel hears a goblin walking quietly over the universe.

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

Franz Liszt transcribed all nine symphonies for solo piano, packing the whole orchestra under two hands; Glenn Gould later recorded his version of the Fifth.

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.

A recording of the Fifth's first movement left Earth in 1977 aboard which pair of NASA spacecraft?

The Voyager probes each carry a golden record of Earth's sounds and music, and the team that filled it chose Otto Klemperer's Philharmonia recording to stand for the Fifth.

RCA Victor launched its 33⅓ rpm long-playing records in 1931 with the Fifth conducted by whom?

Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra filled the first 12-inch disc, but few could afford the new players in the Depression and the format failed until Columbia relaunched it in 1948.

Which French composer, overwhelmed by the Fifth at Habeneck's Paris concerts of 1828, became Beethoven's great champion in France?

Hector Berlioz dragged his sceptical teacher Le Sueur to hear it; the old man came out so shaken that, trying to put on his hat, he said he could hardly find his head.

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 Violin Concerto and the Mass in C also intervened.

What hardship did the audience endure at the Fifth's 1808 premiere?

The hall was extremely cold: Johann Friedrich Reichardt, a guest in a nobleman's box, wrote that they sat in the bitterest cold for four hours and learned one can have too much of a good thing.

Which 1802 document records the despair over deafness that preceded Beethoven's Fifth?

Heiligenstadt Testament: written to his brothers but never sent, it lay among his papers until his death; within a year he had begun the run of large-scale works that led to the Fifth.

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

Hero: Rosen wrote that this key always shows Beethoven as hero, not at his most subtle but at his most extrovert and least willing to compromise.

Which Leipzig firm published the Fifth's first edition in April 1809?

Breitkopf & Härtel bought the Fifth and its companion symphony in 1808 and issued only the orchestral parts the next spring; no full score was printed until 1826.

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.

Count Oppersdorff paid an advance for the Fifth, but which other Beethoven symphony carries a dedication to him instead?

The Fourth: Beethoven took the Count's money for the Fifth, then sold the symphony to a publisher and dedicated it to two other patrons.

Which Beethoven piano sonata, written while the Fifth was in sketch, hammers out the same four-note rhythm in its first movement?

Appassionata: the pattern recurs through its first movement, which is why Donald Tovey scoffed at claims that the rhythm uniquely unifies the Fifth.