Expert: Marbeth - 12/7/2007

Question
I have an assignment to write a 4 page paper on what makes Beethoven's 5th Symphony SO unique. Can you please give me the starting points from which to branch on the subject?

Answer
You don't say what level you are (high school, college undergraduate) or what class this is (music appreciation? analysis? musicology/music history?), so I am going to give you what I would call a pretty rigorous approach, applicable to a senior paper or in graduate level of musicology in the first year.

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1.  Background
When was the piece written and where?  What physical and cultural influences might there have been?  State of general European politics at the time? (Before or after Napoleon?, for ex.)

Written for someone in particular?  A commission?  What was his financial condition at this time?  (How much, if any pandering would Beethoven have done?  Was Beethoven prone to this?  What likes/dislikes did the person have that B might have reflected in the music?  What about the person might B have been praising?) A civic event?  What was being celebrated?  Pure concert music?

With whom did Beethoven study?  What influences might that have had over Beethoven's compositions, in general, and this piece in particular?

What was the state of Beethoven's hearing?

How was music "communicated" to listeners?  Public concerts?  Private "salon" events?  How would this piece have been presented?

How was the piece received by music critics?

2.  Beethoven's other music at the time.
What was he writing concurrently?  Would compositional techniques and/or approach to this piece be the same as for concurrent pieces?  How did this piece resemble or contrast with those pieces?

Number of movements?  Key?  Orchestration? (Specific instruments, such as the newly-introduced clarinet?  Larger or smaller string section?) Counterpoint?

3.  Who were the other major composers active at the time?  What were they doing?  Form?  (Opera, symphonies, overtures, art songs?)  Precursors of the symphony.  I'm thinking Bach/Handel/Vivaldi and their concerti grossi & large-scale works such as masses and B's Brandenburg concerti, plus rococo composers.  Nothing comparable in Renaissance music, IMO.

4.  This piece in particular.
How many movements?  More or fewer than others' similar compositions?  Contrast with the number of movements in piano concerti and piano sonatas.  Keys?  Forms of each movement?

There is something curious in the first mv that you might not come across in your research:  the first mv doesn't have a cadence until m. 127.  (Not exactly sure of the # of measures, but it's a huge long time over 100 measures.)  How does this "refusal" to come to a cadence influence the rest of the mv?  The other mvs? Speculate as to why he did this?  What was the reaction of the music community to this?  See also truncation, mentioned below.

Texture. A great deal of chordal texture?  How much melodic material with relatively "thin" accompaniment support, as compared with full orchestral material?

Fugal/imitative sections or just small tidbits of contrapuntal writing or none at all?)  

Orchestration, etc.?  Same in each mv?  (Plus all the topics you covered in his concurrent compositions.  You also might want to compare this with what contemporaries were doing, esp with the symphony format.)

Innovations?  For ex, the first chord is truncation of the slower, introductory mv used by, for ex, Haydn, which was quite revolutionary.  

What keys are the movements in?  (Beethoven was particularly fond of seconds, both in harmonic progression of triads and in relationships between keys – don't forget enharmonic equivalents, esp those that "look" like seconds on paper but actually are the same key - - for example the "Moonlight" Piano Sonata.)

5.  Position in music history.
In what way did this piece reflect previous approaches?  In what way was it consonant with contemporaries' works?  In what way was it forward-looking?

How was this piece, and Beethoven in particular, influential?
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There are lots of other things you can investigate, suggested by my comments, but this ought to get you started with 4 pgs!
mb