Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Trivia
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55 free Beethoven's Fifth Symphony trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 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.
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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 02What is the opus number of the Fifth Symphony?
Op. 67
Op. 67: the parts were published in the spring after the premiere, numbered immediately before the companion symphony heard at the same concert.
Q 03The famous opening motif of the Fifth follows what rhythmic pattern?
Short-short-short-long
Short-short-short-long: three quick repeated notes followed by a held lower note, remembered as da-da-da-DUM, a rhythm Beethoven reuses throughout the symphony.
Q 04In which year did the Fifth Symphony receive its premiere in Vienna?
1808
1808: the premiere took place on 22 December 1808, in a benefit concert that Beethoven organised for his own profit and conducted himself.
Q 05At which Vienna venue was the Fifth first performed?
The Theater an der Wien
The Theater an der Wien, opened in 1801 by Mozart's librettist Emanuel Schikaneder, hosted the marathon all-Beethoven benefit concert at which the Fifth was premiered, conducted by the composer himself.
Q 06Roughly how long did the concert at which the Fifth premiered last?
More than four hours
More than four hours: the programme ran from half past six until after ten o'clock, packing in two symphonies, a concerto, an aria, movements from a Mass and more.
Q 07Which 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 08How many rehearsals did the orchestra get before the premiere of the Fifth?
One
One rehearsal was all the under-prepared orchestra had, partly because the players had fallen out with Beethoven; the performance was described as ragged.
Q 09At the premiere concert, which work broke down and had to be restarted after a performer's mistake?
The Choral Fantasy
The Choral Fantasy, written hastily that December as a grand finale for piano, chorus and orchestra, fell apart when a player miscounted a repeat, and Beethoven stopped to restart it.
Q 10Besides the two symphonies, which concerto received its public premiere at the same December concert, with Beethoven as soloist?
Piano No. 4 in G major
Piano No. 4 in G major: Beethoven played the solo part himself, his last public appearance as a concerto soloist, the work having first been heard privately in March 1807.
Q 11To which two patrons did Beethoven dedicate the Fifth Symphony?
Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky
Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky, who also shared the dedication of its companion symphony; Razumovsky, Russia's ambassador in Vienna, had received the three Op. 59 quartets in 1806.
Q 12Whose 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 13The Fifth was played at the inaugural concerts of which orchestra on 7 December 1842?
Q 21What is the time signature of the Fifth's first movement?
2/4
2/4: the first movement, marked Allegro con brio, is written in 2/4, with each statement of the opening motif beginning after an eighth-note rest.
Q 22The symphony ends with how many bars of fortissimo C major chords?
29
29 bars of fortissimo C major chords close the work; Charles Rosen argued that so long a cadence was needed to ground the tension built up across the whole symphony.
Q 23The 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.
New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic: its very first concert, at the Apollo Rooms on 7 December 1842, opened with the Fifth under Ureli Corelli Hill.
Q 14The Fifth was first recorded in 1910 by the Odeon Orchestra under which conductor?
Friedrich Kark
Friedrich Kark led the Odeon Orchestra in the 1910 acoustic recording, three years before Arthur Nikisch's celebrated Berlin Philharmonic recording of 1913.
Q 15How did the BBC present the Fifth's opening motif before its wartime broadcasts to occupied Europe?
Played on drums
Played on drums: from mid-1941 the BBC opened its European-service broadcasts with the motif beaten out on kettledrums, a call sign kept through the rest of the war.
Q 16Which conductor performed only the first movement of the Fifth after Mussolini's fall in 1943, vowing to finish it 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 17Which Belgian politician in exile launched the "V for Victory" campaign on the BBC in January 1941, giving the Fifth its wartime role?
Victor de Laveleye
Victor de Laveleye, a former justice minister broadcasting for the BBC's Belgian service, proposed V for victoire in French and vrijheid in Dutch on 14 January 1941; Douglas Ritchie's 'Colonel Britton' programmes then spread it.
Q 18How many movements does the Fifth Symphony have?
Four
Four movements: an Allegro con brio, an Andante con moto, a scherzo marked Allegro, and a finale that follows the scherzo without a break.
Q 19Roughly how long does a typical performance of the Fifth last?
30-40 minutes
30-40 minutes: most performances take just over half an hour, the taut first movement alone lasting only seven or eight minutes with its repeat.
Q 20Which instruments, silent for the first three movements, enter for the first time at the start of the finale?
Trombones, contrabassoon and piccolo
Trombones, contrabassoon and piccolo: five extra players sit silent through three movements, then join at the start of the finale as the music turns to C major.
Q 24The slow movement of the Fifth is structured as what?
Double variations
Double variations: two themes, the first lyrical and the second more martial, are presented and then varied in alternation, a form Haydn had favoured in his slow movements.
Q 25Which 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 26Beethoven began using a scherzo rather than a minuet as the third movement of his symphonies starting with which symphony?
No. 2
He kept the practice in every later symphony except the Eighth.
Q 27When 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 28The transition from the third movement into the finale begins pianissimo with a long sequence of repeated notes on which instrument?
Timpani
Timpani: over softly held strings the drum taps out the motif's rhythm on C, pianissimo, while a long crescendo builds until the finale bursts in attacca.
Q 29The finale's quiet recall of the scherzo theme follows a trick Haydn pioneered in which symphony?
No. 46 in B
No. 46 in B: Haydn's 1772 symphony brings back its minuet inside the finale, the same trick Beethoven uses for the scherzo reprise; whether he knew the Haydn is unknown.
Q 30The 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.