Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Trivia
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54 free Beethoven's Fifth Symphony trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Beethoven's Fifth Symphony trivia quiz is devoted to a single piece of music: the C minor symphony whose first four notes are the most recognisable in the Western canon. The easy questions are the ones any concert-goer knows: the key, the opus number, the nickname, the rhythm of the motif, and the phrase about fate knocking at the door. From there it moves into the disastrous four-hour premiere in a freezing theatre, the critic who called it rubbish and later apologised, and the trick Beethoven pulled by holding back three trombones, a piccolo and a contrabassoon until the finale. The hard end is for people who own more than one recording: the yellowhammer story, the 29 bars of Mozart Beethoven copied into his sketchbook, the horn passage he had to give to bassoons, the scherzo repeat that only period-instrument conductors play, and the symphony's afterlife as a BBC wartime call-sign, a disco number one and a track on the Voyager Golden Record. If you want the composer's whole life, our general Beethoven quiz and Ninth Symphony quiz cover the rest. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the symphony, its premiere concert and the works that borrowed from it, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 54 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is written in which key?
C minor
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.
Q 02The famous opening motif of the Fifth follows what rhythmic pattern?
Short-short-short-long
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.
Q 03Which composer, Beethoven complained, threatened to expel musicians who played at the Fifth's 1808 premiere?
Salieri
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.
Q 04At which venue did Beethoven's Fifth Symphony have its premiere?
The Theater an der Wien
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.
Q 05The concert that premiered the Fifth closed with a tune foreshadowing which later Beethoven melody?
The Ode to Joy
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.
Q 06Which other Beethoven symphony was premiered at the very same concert as the Fifth?
The Sixth (Pastoral)
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.
Q 07How many rehearsals did the orchestra get before the premiere of the Fifth?
One
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.
Q 08At the Fifth's premiere concert, which other work broke down and had to be restarted?
The Choral Fantasy
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.
Q 09Which concerto had its public premiere alongside the Fifth, with Beethoven as soloist?
Piano No. 4 in G major
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.
Q 10To which two patrons did Beethoven dedicate the Fifth Symphony?
Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky
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.
Q 11Whose 1810 review hailed the Fifth as among the most important works of the time?
E. T. A. Hoffmann
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.
Q 12The Fifth opened the very first concert of which orchestra, on 7 December 1842?
New York Philharmonic
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.
Q 13Which band's 1973 cover of Chuck Berry's 'Roll Over Beethoven' opens with a blast of the Fifth's first movement?
Q 21Near the end of the Fifth's finale, the tempo quickens to which marking?
Presto
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.
Q 22The second movement of the Fifth is in which key?
A-flat major
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.
Q 23The slow movement of the Fifth is structured as what?
Double variations
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.
Electric Light Orchestra
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.
Q 14How did the BBC present the Fifth's opening motif before its wartime broadcasts to occupied Europe?
Played on drums
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.
Q 15Which conductor broadcast only the Fifth's first movement in 1943, vowing to play the rest once Germany was defeated?
Arturo Toscanini
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.
Q 16The Fifth's famous opening rhythm matches the Morse code for which letter?
V
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.
Q 17How many movements does the Fifth Symphony have?
Four
Four movements, though listeners hear only two breaks: the scherzo runs straight into the finale without a pause.
Q 18Roughly how long does a typical performance of Beethoven's Fifth last?
About 35 minutes
About 35 minutes: the tempo a conductor picks matters, with brisk readings taking barely half an hour and the most spacious stretching to 40.
Q 19Which instruments stay silent in the Fifth until the start of the finale?
Trombones, contrabassoon and piccolo
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.
Q 20What is the time signature of the Fifth's first movement?
2/4
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.
Q 24Which instruments introduce the opening theme of the Fifth's second movement?
Violas and cellos
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.
Q 25Which Beethoven symphony was the first whose third movement he headed 'Scherzo' instead of 'Menuetto'?
No. 2
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.
Q 26When the scherzo of the Fifth returns for the last time, how are the strings directed to play?
Pizzicato
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.
Q 27The Fifth's bridge from scherzo to finale begins with soft repeated notes on which instrument?
Timpani
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.
Q 28Which instrument interrupts the Fifth's first movement with a brief, mournful solo marked adagio?
Oboe
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.
Q 29The 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
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.
Q 30The story that Beethoven said of the opening "Thus Fate knocks at the door!" comes from which unreliable secretary and biographer?
Anton Schindler
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.