# Symphony No. 5 **Artist:** Ludwig van Beethoven (1808) **Tags:** #📐productizing #👂music **Link:** [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOk8Tm815lE) 2025-06-21 ![[Pasted image 20250621102002.png]] **Why it represents Productizing:** Beethoven's Fifth Symphony exemplifies structured implementation of musical ideas. Its famous four-note motif (often described as "fate knocking at the door") is systematically developed throughout the piece, demonstrating how a simple concept can be transformed into a complex, fully realized work through disciplined technique and architectural design. The symphony's progression from darkness to triumphant light illustrates the productizing journey from rough concept to polished creation. **Note:** As a classical orchestral work, this piece does not contain lyrics. ---- 2025-06-21 Video title: Symphony No. 5: Subversive subtexts | Gardiner and the ORR on Beethoven's Symphonies Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_TbMmV0OgU there's just nothing like the opening of the first symphony for demonic power when you think that it's just eight years ago since he started out as a composer of symphonies and then you hear the opening of the most famous of all his symphonies the fifth symphony and c minor with its iconic motto beginning you wonder how he managed to traverse such a huge terrain of uh developing sonata form developing the symphonic ideas the fact that that it's just these fallens and then there's a fermata there's a pause on it so that no sooner have you started that you're you're stopped in your tracks and it does the same thing a second fermata that's a very odd thing to do unless it's a quotation of some sort the most iconic of all the beethoven symphonies is the fifth and it's been purloined it's been used it's been exploited by every single political regime that says there's ever been often it's regarded as fake knocking on the door it was v for victory this all may be true but i have a feeling and this comes from a wonderful german musicologist called arnold schmitz in the 1920s that actually what's going on here is a french revolutionary quotation which he'd dare not make explicit because if he'd put words to the symphony as he did in the night symphony he'd ended up in clink but behind it is this piece by carobini who was a composer that beethoven revered and his du had these words we swear sword in hand to die for the republic and for the rights of man it's terrific and it makes sense to me that the fifth symphony is all about a a kind of statement of belief in the values that came out of the french revolution and which spread around europe like wildfire so let's hear what he does for the republic of jerusalem fanny you get the prize fantastic fantastic in a way it doesn't matter at all the fact that he's quoting another composer and he does it in in a way that is almost um an elaboration of caribbean's initial idea what i think does matter much much more is the fact that he is formulating political incendiary ideas another thing that's so remarkable in this symphony is the concision of ideas the fact that it's really basically only two themes the bomb theme the lyrical expansion [Music] it leaves you breathless because there's no room to to to breathe practically until he brings everything to another female to another pause and lets the oboe for the first time play a tiny cadenza which is a kind of human whisper against this sort of political drive it's it's it's whether it's a suffering soul or or just an a vague human response a very feeble in a way very eloquent human response to his machine that's just thundering through [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] wow [Music] then the second movement is marked and con motto it's like a prayer it this is beethoven in his religious mode it's got already associations with what's going to be manifest in the pastoral symphony the next symphony that comes along [Music] now breathe that's lovely [Music] what's that [Music] no sooner has that lyricism started to sort of take wing then he brings in the big guns he brings in the brass particularly the two trumpets the timpani and the horns and we're back to a type of martial protest [Music] [Applause] there's so much color that he's using here subtle colors of different combinations of instruments and then there's another moment when he uses the basic theme of this second movement as an almost a frivolous sket sandal and he goes and there's a little comment from the over boom like a drop of black ink on the page [Music] and then where you might expect a conventional schedule but perhaps you wouldn't with beethoven because pretty well nothing is exactly conventional with him he starts um the movement with what seems to be a solo lyrical effulgent melody in the bases in the chosen bases and again you think well we're into a mode of lyricism and of gentility but what does he do he brings back that basic motto but this time in the horns it's a triumphant match [Music] it's a creed occur at the same time a call to arms is it is a again another political subversive statement and then he develops uh in what would be normally a trio situation a few and that is the end of the trio and it leads back but this time to a version of the sketcher that's quite different it's it's almost as if it's looking at the same music but through a broken glass so that the main cello theme becomes a pizzicato theme this time doubled by the passage [Music] and then you hear the bum of the horn marshall theme but this time it's reduced to a clarinet it's sort of etilated right down to a thin squeak of a sound imagine a whole rookery slightly hitchcockian birds and then suddenly when google starts to play his pedal there is a sort of upsurge of energy and then it explodes with the d major of the finale [Music] so [Music] finally the whole thing settles on an a flat chord and you hear the timpani playing c natural and that signals danger because for the next 30 bars or so he's playing on his own just that little kind of horizon against that beethoven is writing these eerie modulations on top it's all suppressed it's kept in the background and it's pianissimo and then just over six bars he writes a mammoth crescendo and the windows fly open and you're into the finale [Music] a sort of brilliant triumphant statement and what is the statement of we don't know to start with we can only guess but later on when you get to the double bar we hear which sounds very very portentous and there again it turns out to be a direct quote from the guy who wrote the marcies [Music] it stands out almost like um you know beautiful colored or gold lettering in a medieval missile compared to all this chaos of ideas that are either rejected or being still evolved as he's working on on the symphony and it seems to me that that is an indication that these concepts uh that he's he's bringing in a clandestine but very powerful defense of liberty and i ask the orchestra when we're playing is to sing it as well and i hope they will all you need to sing is [Music] that's all thank you [Music] then [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] all right