Aside:The most famous four-note sequence in music, instantly recognizable to us today as Beethoven’s Fifth and full of associations. Fate knocking at the door. “V” for victory. But how must it have sounded to that original audience? Beethoven presented it as pure music. No clue to its significance or meaning.
Mark Elder: Well, Beethoven, as a personality, was so tricky and so uncouth in so many ways, and had such a difficult, troubled childhood, that the adult that gave us some of these pieces was a man so often at odds with the world around him.
Aside:Born in poverty in the German town of Bonn, he was bullied as a child by his alcoholic father and in his 20s realized he was going deaf, surely the cruelest of tragedies for a musician. But Beethoven was a man with a will of iron, and, in the Fifth, he harnesses the power of the orchestra to an insistent propulsive rhythm, forcing the symphony to articulate the profoundest personal drama.
Host:The story of a soul struggling against implacable fate and emerging incandescently victorious.
Mark Elder: One of the great contrasts available to a composer are the contrasts of darkness and lightness. And in his Fifth Symphony, builds up from hesitant darkness into the radiant blaze of optimism, confidence, whatever. Now he does this through the simplest of means. At the end of the third movement, which is the rather shadowy, dark scherzo, his plan is to burst us into the light without stopping. Now he does this by making the orchestra play as quietly as it can, all the strings just plucking very, very quietly. Then comes the heartbeat of the drum, very, very quiet and distant and the strings just moving up and down, uncertain about which way they’re going to go. And then suddenly, very quickly, the whole orchestra comes in, and, without stopping, we burst into the final movement. This is in the major key. Lights full on, after lights hardly on at all.
Aside: This symphony is a masterpiece of storytelling without words. When the French Revolution erupted, Beethoven was a teenager, struggling to support his family after the death of their mother, and the concept of individual liberty became a lifelong issue. And we, the listeners, are compelled to share his battle against fate.
Host:Although Beethoven wanted to write something that was comprehensible at first hearing, he wasn’t writing simply to give pleasure. He wanted it to be a potentially life-changing experience, music that would resonate in the mind long after the last note had sounded.
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