60 Fun Facts About Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is written in which key?

The key came to symbolise Beethoven's stormy, heroic side; the finale switches to the major.

What is the opus number of the Fifth Symphony?

Op. 68 is the Pastoral Symphony, completed at the same time and premiered at the same concert.

The Fifth is occasionally known by which nickname, Schicksalssinfonie in German?

The name comes from the tale that Beethoven described the opening motif as fate knocking at the door.

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

It is often remembered as da-da-da-DUM, and its rhythm happens to match the Morse code for the letter V.

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

The first sketches date from 1804, just after the Third Symphony was finished, and the work was repeatedly set aside for other pieces.

At which Vienna venue was the Fifth first performed?

Beethoven himself directed the concert, which consisted entirely of his own premieres.

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

The hall was freezing and the audience exhausted, which helps explain the muted critical response.

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

The two were completed side by side in 1807-08 and, confusingly, their numbers were swapped on the night's programme.

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

Beethoven had to stop and restart one work after a performer's mistake later in the same concert.

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

Beethoven had written it in the second half of December to give the marathon evening a brilliant finale uniting piano, chorus and orchestra.

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

It was Beethoven's last appearance as a soloist with orchestra.

To which two patrons did Beethoven dedicate the Fifth Symphony?

Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, also received the three Op. 59 string quartets.

Which critic and writer of fantastic tales called the Fifth "one of the most important works of the time" in an influential 1810 review?

His review appeared in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung and offered detailed analysis alongside extravagant praise.

Which violinist, famous for bringing Haydn to England, first called the Fifth "rubbish" in rehearsal and later publicly retracted it?

He told his orchestra he now considered it one of the great compositions he knew.

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

The US National Symphony Orchestra also opened its first season with it, nearly ninety years later.

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

Nikisch's 1913 Berlin Philharmonic version is often cited as the first complete recording of a symphony by a major orchestra.

Since World War II the Fifth has sometimes been called the "Victory Symphony" because its opening rhythm resembles the Morse code for which letter?

Three dots and a dash spell V, and V is also the Roman numeral for five.

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

The idea came from intelligence agent Courtenay Edward Stevens; the BBC used it as its call-sign for 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?

He completed the performance in May 1945.

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

He proposed V for victoire in French and vrijheid in Dutch; Douglas Ritchie, posing as "Colonel Britton", then suggested the audible Morse V.

How many movements does the Fifth Symphony have?

A typical performance runs 30 to 40 minutes.

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

The first movement is the shortest of all Beethoven's symphonic first movements.

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

Five extra players join, and the sound becomes suddenly much louder as the music turns to C major.

The finale of the Fifth marks the first time which two instruments had ever been used in a symphony?

Trombones were new to Beethoven's symphonies too, though the Swedish composer Joachim Nicolas Eggert had scored them in 1807.

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

Charles Rosen argued the "unbelievably long" cadence is needed to ground the extreme tension of the whole work.

The second movement of the Fifth is in which key?

Two lyrical themes alternate and are varied in turn.

The slow movement of the Fifth is structured as what?

Two themes are presented and then varied in alternation.

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

The double basses accompany them.

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?

The movement then runs straight into the finale over a long crescendo.

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

There is no pause: the finale follows attacca after a tremendous crescendo.

Late in the finale, Beethoven quietly reprises the horn theme of the dance movement, a trick Haydn had pioneered in 1772 in which of his symphonies?

It is unknown whether Beethoven actually knew the Haydn work.

In the first movement's recapitulation, all but one player fall silent while a solo instrument plays a brief mournful adagio recitative. Which instrument?

The music then resumes at tempo with renewed intensity.

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

Gustav Nottebohm found 29 bars of the Mozart finale copied out in Beethoven's sketchbook for the Fifth.

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

He is believed to have forged entries in Beethoven's conversation books, so experts 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?

Antony Hopkins noted the public prefers the fate legend, though the bird story is too unlikely 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?

He argued that what usually ends a symphony becomes, for Beethoven, a motif that drives the whole work.

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

Baron Pasqualati let the composer live there for a total of eight years; Fidelio and Für Elise were also written there.

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

He kept interrupting work on it for Fidelio, the Appassionata, the Razumovsky quartets, the Violin Concerto and more.

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?

The period was marked by the Napoleonic Wars and political turmoil in Austria.

A passage in the first movement is given to horns in E-flat but repeated in C major by which instruments, because valveless horns could not play it there?

Most modern performances give the phrase back to the horns; some period-instrument conductors keep Beethoven's original scoring.

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.

Beethoven's autograph score of the third movement contains a repeat mark producing an ABABA' scheme. Which 1978 edition restored it?

Period-instrument conductors such as Gardiner, Hogwood and Harnoncourt favour the repeat; Jonathan Del Mar's 1999 edition argued for the traditional ABA'.

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

The set 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?

He told Sergei Taneyev the work was a reflection of Beethoven's Fifth in the central idea of its programme.

"A Fifth of Beethoven", a disco version of the first movement, topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976. Who recorded it?

The title puns on a fifth of a gallon, the classic liquor-bottle size; it was later included on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

"A Fifth of Beethoven" was originally credited to "the Big Apple Band". Which famous group had to change its name because it was already using that one?

The record was re-released under the bandleader's own name; it was his only Top 40 hit.

The first movement of the Fifth was launched into space in 1977 on the Voyager Golden Record. Whose recording was chosen?

The record was a sample of Earth's sights and sounds assembled by a team led by Carl Sagan.

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

The duration of the first CDs, in turn, was fixed at 75 minutes so that the Ninth Symphony would fit uninterrupted.

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

Berlioz was among the composers the symphony went on to influence.

Where was the Fifth's companion piece, the Fourth Symphony, first performed in March 1807, before the big public concert?

George Grove suggested money troubles forced Beethoven to dedicate the Fifth and Pastoral jointly to Lobkowitz and Razumovsky.

Beethoven kept breaking off work on the Fifth for other pieces, including the original version of which opera?

He also paused for the Appassionata sonata, the three Razumovsky quartets, the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Fourth Symphony and the Mass in C.

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

Little wonder the first critic withheld judgment; E. T. A. Hoffmann's rapturous 1810 review did far more to establish the work's reputation.

Beethoven's 'Middle Period', the heroic phase that produced the Fifth, is usually said to begin around which year?

From then on he launched works of unprecedented scope and ambition, such as the Third Symphony and Fidelio; the first sketches for the Fifth date from 1804.

According to pianist and writer Charles Rosen, Beethoven in the key of C minor always reveals him as what?

Rosen called it Beethoven's most extroverted form, 'most impatient of any compromise'; C minor is widely seen as his 'stormy, heroic tonality'.

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

That April edition named Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky as dedicatees, a few months after the December 1808 premiere.

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

It is textbook sonata form inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but with almost every theme grown from the single four-note motif, a device Haydn favoured.

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 short-short-short-long rhythm predates Beethoven; it appears in which nicknamed Haydn symphony, No. 96?

It also turns up in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25, K. 503, showing the figure was common musical language of the day rather than a Beethoven invention.