Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor

It would be a rare event to find a single soul who did not recognize the distinctive four-note motif of the best-known composition in all of classical music. Although its first presentation in Vienna in 1808 was less than auspicious, the colossal strength and passion of Beethoven’s mighty Fifth Symphony still stands today as one of the most-often played and readily-recognized orchestral works in all of music.  

Original sketches for the symphony appeared between 1800 and 1804 at a time when Beethoven’s personal life was in a state of unrest. Barely into his thirties, he was already struggling with impending deafness. Added to this was the political upheaval in Austria and the Napoleonic occupation of Vienna, both of which weighed heavily on his patriotic sensibilities. His notebooks reflect a creative effort fraught with turmoil and dissatisfaction: scratched-out phrases, crossed-out notes, superimposed notations—all an angry mass of ugly ink blots and unintelligible smudges. According to the composer’s friend Friedrich Schindler—commenting on Beethoven’s state of mind—the work’s repeated four-note theme meant, “thus fate knocks at the door”.

But there is little historical evidence to support this notion. There is, however, ample musical evidence to show that the motif found in the fifth symphony was not the first time the composer had used it. It appears quite plainly in the Appassionata Sonata for piano, again in his Piano Concerto No. 4, and in the String Quartet in E flat major. This concise pattern must have been a popular creative decision for him.

The entire first movement is structured around the four-note phrase, passing back and forth among the sections of the orchestra, amassing power is it goes.

In contrast, the second movement is melancholic and sedate, wherein two evident themes with variations emerge—as in the character of a song.

As the third movement begins, a shadowy theme presents itself, promising mystery and foreboding. Significant to note is the return of the same four-note motif found in the first movement. Also of significance, more recently, is that in Morse Code, three short dots and one long—the first movement’s pattern—stand for the letter ‘V’ which became the victory symbol used by nations coming out from under the thumb of Nazis.


Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Excerpts from Symphony No. 4 in E Minor

In 1872, the young Johannes Brahms expressed: “I shall never write a symphony! You can’t have any idea what it’s like to hear such a giant marching behind you!” The “marching giant” of course was Beethoven, whose music set such an unreachable standard that it was beyond Brahms’ compositional imagination to ever equal it. But…reach it he did. Four years later the first of his four symphonies was completed and his doubts as a symphonic composer were set aside. In October, 1885, the last of the four great Brahms symphonies, the No. 4 in E minor, was performed with Brahms himself conducting. A notable critic at the time and close friend of the composer, Eduard Hanslick, was actually one of the page turners at the work’s premier. As one of Brahms’s closest friends, Hanslick likely had some influence on Brahms's composing; he often heard the composer’s music before it was published. He would later write, “For the musician, there is not another modern piece so productive as a subject for study. [This symphony] is like a dark well; the longer we look into it the more brightly the stars shine back.”

During performance the work gains an almost spiritual existence full of introspection and joy, and in turn, severity and exhilaration. Brahms’ closest musical confidant was Clara Schumann, herself a gifted pianist and composer, who remarked, “It is as though one lay in Springtime among the blossoming flowers, and joy and sorrow filled one’s soul in turn.”