James Roe reflects on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Reflections on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
by James Roe
Music is feeling, then, not sound.
— Wallace Stevens, “Peter Quince at the Clavier”
The first sound in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor is silence. This monumental work begins with an eighth-note rest. Contained in that diminutive unit of silence is the last moment of calm before fate intervenes, the last second before learning life-changing news. It is the end of innocence before Beethoven’s infamous four-note motif launches the fateful first movement.
Beethoven was acutely aware of fate’s agency in his life. By 1801—three years prior to the earliest sketches of the Fifth Symphony—he began informing his friends he was losing his hearing. In the Heiligenstadt Testament, his will in the form of a letter to his brothers, Beethoven wrote, “But what a humiliation when someone stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair; but little more and I would have put an end to my life; only my art held me back.” Music renewed his resolve. “I will seize Fate by the throat.” he wrote, “It will not crush me entirely!” Facing deafness, Beethoven began his Fifth Symphony with silence.
In performance, that silence is marked by a stroke of the conductor’s baton, unleashing what is among music’s most recognizable statements. The turbulent drama of the opening movement seems at once personal and universal. Its obsessive anxieties can easily become our own.
Offering some relief, the cellos and violas open the Andante con moto with a quiet, graceful melody. The lyrical voice of the woodwinds comes to the fore and takes a prominent role throughout the movement. In a particularly arresting passage, Beethoven weaves a Baroque dance into the musical fabric. The melody, known as “La Folia” (literally “Folly”), can be traced back to the 16th century and would have been familiar to Viennese audiences of the time. Whether Beethoven intended to comment on the relationship between fate and folly remains a matter for conjecture.
In an allusion to the preceding movement, the Scherzo opens quietly in the low strings. This time the melody bristles. Hector Berlioz found the passage “as fascinating as the gaze of the mesmerizer.” When the horns powerfully intone a variant of the four-note motif from the first movement, it is clear that fate’s machinations are not yet complete.
Eventually, the Scherzo descends into a mysterious pianissimo. Static harmony and melodic fragmentation create an aural haze with faint echoes of the opening four-note motif sounding in the timpani. The music seems unsure of where to go or how to proceed. This, the lowest point of the symphony, is the dramatic turning point Beethoven has prepared from the beginning. A breathtaking crescendo culminates in the unbridled joy of the Finale. From pianissimo to fortissimo, from the depths of C minor to C major at its most noble, the musical and emotional upsurge is transcendent. Piccolo, trombones and contrabassoon expand the ensemble to create a brilliant burst of orchestral color.
When the musical momentum is interrupted by a surprise return of the Scherzo, fate once again casts its shadow. Darkness hovers, but does not prevail. The triumphal music returns and the symphony concludes with 55 bars of resounding C major played by the full orchestra. “Many assert that every piece in minor must end in the minor,” Beethoven wrote to his student Archduke Rudolf, “On the contrary, I find that the major has a glorious effect. Joy follows sorrow, sunshine—rain. It affects me as if I were looking up to the silvery glistening of the evening star.”
The American harpsichordist Albert Fuller used to say to his Juilliard classes, “Music is not the notes on the page or even the sounds in the air. It is the feelings you experience when you get the composer’s message.” A few seasons ago, when I was performing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as a member of the NJSO, I noticed a young woman in the front row who was particularly engaged in the music. As we began the Finale, she flushed. Precisely in the third bar, her head lifted, she smiled, and tears began streaming down her face. In moments like this, music breaches the limitations of both sound and silence.
By James Roe, NJSO President & CEO