Shortly after completing his Third Symphony ("Eroica") in 1803, Beethoven began sketches for the Fifth. By the time the work was finished in 1808, the composer had introduced several piano sonatas, including the well known "Waldstein" and "Lebewohl"; the three "Rasumovsky" string quartets; the fourth concerto for piano and the one for violin; several chamber music works; and of course the Fourth Symphony. The program that featured the premiere of the Fifth Symphony also included the Sixth ("Pastoral") and the Choral Fantasy. Beethoven had reached his full powers as a composer, and many were already referring to him as the greatest of all time. His reputation lay not on any one piece, but on the combined effect of all of his great works, including symphonies, chamber music, solo piano pieces, and concertos.
Yet among a lineup of masterpieces, the Fifth Symphony has always held a special place. Even when the piece was new, some critics were able to proclaim its genius. Goethe said, "How big it is ... enough to bring the house about one's ears!" while a fellow composer of Beethoven's, his contemporary Jean-François Le Sueur, was even more overwhelmed: "It's incredible! Marvelous! It has so upset and bewildered me that when I wanted to put on my hat, I could not find my head." The young Richard Wagner was so impressed with the work that he wrote out his own copy of the score by hand, one note at a time. The New York Philharmonic, opening its doors for the first time in 1842, featured the Fifth as the highlight of its first program. Brahms, requiring twenty years to complete his own First Symphony, used approximately the same harmonic plan that Beethoven did in his Fifth. In more recent times, the "short-short-short-long" rhythm that opens the piece came to signify victory, owing to its agreement with the letter "V" in Morse code. The first movement achieved crossover status through several disco versions. The work appears in every music appreciation textbook, and the opening motive is surely the best known orchestral "sound byte" in the world.
Why all the excitement? Musical analysis can demonstrate that the entire first movement is derived from the first four notes, and that this musical building block has a profound influence on the third and fourth movements as well. Yet millions of people have felt the symphony's power without knowing the analysis. It is what the taut motivic construction achieves that really matters: a remarkably efficient drama, entirely coherent from start to finish - a full-length novel or stage play compressed into about 35 minutes of music. Moreover, the Fifth offers a transformation that had never been heard before in a symphonic composition: from the despair of the first movement to the triumph of the last. This feature has ultimately proved to be as influential to later composers as the motivic development that attracts detailed (and often fascinating) analysis. Symphonic composers after Beethoven returned time and again to the theme of victory through struggle, nearly turning into a cliché what had recently been a brilliant innovation. Of Beethoven's many contributions to symphonic form and style, perhaps the most significant is that he established the symphony as the vehicle of choice for musical essays on artistic self-exploration, where inner doubts can be exposed, worked through, and overcome. The Fifth demonstrates that potential for the first time.