Discover Beethoven's 5th

-Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

We'll explore the first movement, next, on this Discovery Concert.

-Funding for this Discovery Concert has been made possible in part by... -I'm George Marriner Maull, artistic director of the Discovery Orchestra, where we believe that the more detail we notice in music, the more pleasure we can receive from listening to it.

Ludwig Van Beethoven, while completing other projects, worked off and on, from 1804 until 1808, to finish his Fifth Symphony, perhaps the most well-known of all his works.

We know the tragic loss of his hearing was also in progress, yet, amazingly, he conducted the first performance on December 22, 1808.

Join us now as the Discovery Orchestra and I explore details of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in this Discovery Concert.

[ Applause ] [ Applause ] Thank you.

Thank you for that wonderful show of appreciation.

I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, "I know this piece.

Been there, done that."

And, if you believe that you know everything there is to know about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, you're excused.

But for those of you who are staying, we just want you to know that we're very, very happy to be with you and we thank you.

We will ask you tonight during the performance to respond in certain ways.

I'll be asking you sometimes to put up your hands to show that you noticed something in the music, or perhaps even to stand.

Now, if those physical responses are not easy to do, feel free to invent a response of your own.

If you want to do the eyebrows or blink at us, whatever you want to do to indicate that you notice what we're doing up here.

So, feel free to invent.

Composers always use a recipe of some kind when they are creating a piece of music.

They don't just sort of throw sounds together.

They actually have a plan.

It's very similar to chefs in the kitchen.

And they also, like chefs, feel free to change the recipe slightly if they feel like it.

You know, a little bit more paprikash here, you know, a couple dashes of sugar over there.

It doesn't matter if they want to change it slightly, as long as it serves their purposes.

Now, the specific musical recipe that Beethoven was using on this occasion is known as sonata allegro form, sometimes just called sonata form for short.

Sonata form has three large sections.

The first section is called the exposition, the second section is called the development, and the third section is called the recapitulation.

Now, we're going to investigate these sections tonight to help us understand how he created this movement that we just played for you.

All movements written in sonata form have a first theme, which is, of course... -Da-da-da-dah.

[ Laughter ] -Yeah, this is the theme known 'round the world.

Tell it to me again.

- Da-da-da-dah -Right, exactly.

That's the one.

That's the first theme of this movement.

We're going to break the audience into four parts.

We're going to assign you a theme.

Balcony people, you are owners of the first theme of this movement.

We're going to play the first theme for you, and as we play it, I want you to wave your hands so that we know that you own this thing.

You were great.

[ Laughter and applause ] Now, where there's smoke, there's... -Fire.

-Right, and where there's a first theme, there's always a second theme.

What's the second theme of this movement?

The silence is deafening.

[ Light laughter ] We don't know what the second theme is, do we?

Maybe.

But I'll tell you what, we're going to assign it to the center orchestra.

Now, as we play it for you, we would appreciate it if you would wave your hands to that.

If the orchestra would be so kind to provide us with the second theme, I'll watch you while you wave.

You see, it's kind of a stentorian question from the horns, followed by this very lovely, warm, fuzzy answer that's repeated three times.

But composers don't like to just jump from one theme to another sort of helter-skelter.

To continue our food analogy here, they like to write a sort of musical mayonnaise.

If you can imagine how, in a sandwich, the mayonnaise sort of melds the disparate elements of the sandwich into some sort of edible concoction, composers write transitions to bring us logically from one theme to the next.

So this exposition also has a transition, which I'm going to assign to you, over here, in the orchestra to my right.

Listen to this transition as we play it, and wave.

Fun, isn't it?

Okay.

And, of course, to conclude an exposition, we have a way of rounding it out called the closing section.

And we're going to assign the closing section to the people in the orchestra on my left.

So, would you wave as we play the closing section for you?

Usually, composers like to write discrete ideas for these sections.

The first theme will not sound like the second theme.

Let's suppose that the composer wrote for the first theme... Dum-ba-di-di-di-di-di Dum-ba-di-di-di-da We would get something really different for us to latch onto in the second theme, maybe... Dee-da-da-da-da Da-da-da, dee-da-da-da Something very different.

And the same thing would be true of the transition and the closing section as well.

You would feel that they are distinct.

But, in this particular case, Beethoven... Well, did you notice anything about these parts?

I mean, was there anything about the musical content of each of these sections that seemed similar?

Let me remind you that "da-da-da-dah" seemed to be occurring in every single one of them.

In fact, before the 1 minute and 30 seconds of this particular exposition is over, Beethoven has used the rhythmic figure "da-da-da-dah" more than 50 times.

So if he were alive today, we could give him the Green Composer Award for getting the most mileage out of one musical idea.

[ Laughter ] Alright, we've now covered all the parts of this exposition.

Of course, we have our first theme.

We have our transition.

I'm beginning to feel like an airline attendant showing the exits.

We have our second theme.

And we have, of course, our closing section over here.

Why don't you say it, just so I know you're grounded in this?

I will just point to you and you say your thing.

First theme, transition, second theme, closing section, when I point to you -- Are you ready?

-The first theme.

-Exposition.

-Second theme.

-Closing.

-Exactly, the closing section, so now we have all the parts.

What we're going to do now is we're going to play the entire exposition for you, and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is, when your material is being played, wave your hands.

Now, you might want to wave even in time with the music.

I would just ask you just to be a little careful.

We don't want any injuries to take place.

Just be mindful of people that are around you as you're moving your body.

[ Laughter ] What's funny?

-Wrong music.

-Right.

We played the wrong music.

We played the last movement on purpose, just to see if you were actually paying attention.

[ Laughter ] And we did that because we wanted to just revisit this whole idea that listening to music is not the same as hearing music.

Now, we can physically hear music, while we do all manner of other things.

I mean, for instance, we can be dining or we can be driving the car and have music on in the background.

Even when you're here in the concert hall, we know what you're doing, because we see you from up here.

But what are people doing while we're playing?

Well, people are texting each other.

Reading the program.

You know, we provided people with a program so people are reading it.

We probably shouldn't provide people with programs, because they read them.

There's always the contributors' list.

Wow!

They gave that much to the arts center?

You know?

[ Laughter ] But the problem with this is that if we, in fact, think about other things, we may not notice what's going on in the music.

And that's kind of a loss for us because so much pleasure is to be had by noticing the detail.

We believe that the more detail we notice, the more enjoyable the experience is.

And by the way, we don't bring these things to your attention just so that you can name them.

In other words, we don't want you to become so expert that you can sit there and go, "Oh, yeah, here's the first theme, whoa!

Here comes the closing section."

You know, sort of like amaze your friends at parties with your knowledge of musical techniques.

These things are to be noticed and enjoyed as they're happening.

No more jokes.

We promise not to taunt you.

And those of you who may be at home, put down that sandwich and listen up!

[ Laughter ] Raise your hand for your material.

I'm going to turn around to verify that you're in compliance.

You all have little blue listening guides.

Look at number 1, and you see there that it says, "the first theme is introduced by two strong unisons."

Unisons.

Now, a unison is the absence of harmony in music, so that we have melody alone.

Beethoven started with a unison statement.

You might wonder, what would it sound like if he did it with harmony?

Yecch!

[ Laughter ] He knew what he was doing.

He knew that it would be much stronger if it was just melody at the beginning.

Listen to what that sounds like again with just melody.

You'll notice in the guide that there are a number of places where there are gaps in the information.

Hopefully you will fill in those blanks, as we go on, by listening.

But I'd like you to listen at number 2.

Tell me how many chords there are at the end of number 2 and which instrument hangs on.

If you want to really be honest about this, maybe you would close your eyes.

Well, what's the easy answer -- who hung on?

The violins.

How many chords were there?

-Three.

-Three?

Everybody feel good with three?

Any other answers?

-Four.

-Four?

Alright.

Whenever that happens, we have to play it again.

[ Laughter ] [ Laughter ] Everybody feel good about three chords, I hope, now?

Yes.

Good.

At number 4 on your listening guide, it talks about ascending sequence.

Now, sequence is a really exciting concept in music.

It has to do with repeating a musical idea but at a different pitch level.

Just so that you know what it would sound like if this were a repetition, I'm going to ask the orchestra to play the music without changing pitch level.

I mean, it's not bad.

This time they're going to play it as written.

I want you to count the number of ascending steps in this sequence.

-Seven.

-Seven.

-Seven.

Seven?

[ Audience shouting ] Seven.

Six?

Seven?

Do I have some six?

Alright, I'm going to ask them to leave off the last note.

[ Laughter ] [ Laughter ] How many steps are there in this sequence?

-Six.

-Six.

There are six.

Listen to it with just the violins alone, so that there's no surrounding harmony or timbre.

You can focus on the melody.

And I'll ask you to leave off the last note, too, if you don't mind.

[ Laughter ] Everyone feel the six?

Okay?

Yes, alright.

[ Laughter and applause ] Alright, now, here's the thing.

We're going to play it all again for you together.

Notice that we will put that last note on there because that's the arrival point.

And that's one of the great things about sequence.

It makes us feel like we're going from here to here.

And no one has left their seat, but it feels like we've gone from here to there, to that note of arrival.

At number 5 in the listening guide, I want you to count the number of chords that end this idea.

-Two.

-Two.

Yes, two.

And not only are there two chords there -- Which really feel like exclamation points at the end of that idea -- But one of the reasons that they're strong is because Beethoven separated them with a tiny little bit of silence.

He could have gone "bum-bum," but he didn't do that.

He went "bum...bum."

And that little bit of silence there is what adds to the strength of the chords.

I'd like to play this again for you, and, please, would you raise your hands during the tiny little silence that occurs between those chords?

Now, you're going to have to be fast because it doesn't last long.

[ Laughter ] You wanted to put an extra silence in there.

In fact, he does give us an extra silence after that before he goes on to the second theme.

But this time I want to play it again for you and just feel the effect of the silence in your entire body while we play those two chords with the silence between them.

We see that this idea, like so many ideas, is really an evolutionary process.

I mean, we just didn't wake up one morning and suddenly there was sonata form on the table.

This idea was the product of many minds.

Some of the important ones in this process were Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

How about this one -- Johann Vanhal?

Do we have any Vanhal fans out there?

And my personal favorite -- Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf.

[ Laughter ] Vanhal was a fabulous cellist as well as composer.

And Dittersdorf was a violinist/composer.

Now, Mozart, Haydn, Vanhal and Dittersdorf were all friends.

And we have in the historical record that at least on one occasion, they played string quartets together.

We also know that Beethoven studied composition, or at least counterpoint, with Haydn for a while.

So we see that all of these people were involved in the evolution of this idea.

And we can see that sonata form is really taking its cue from an even earlier idea called ternary form, which is simply A-B-A.

Composers and audiences, listeners, love a-B-A because it has unity and variety in it.

The "A" sections provide the unity, and the "B" section in the middle provides the variety.

Now, let's do an A-B-A with the audience here.

Everybody on the floor in the orchestra is going to be "A."

The people in the balcony are going to be "B."

What's wonderful about it is the fact that it provides unity and variety.

You start in one place, you go someplace different, and you come back to where you were.

You start at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, you go on a journey somewhere, and you come back to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

So, let's have the "A" people practice their part.

A.

-A.

-Say it again, please, very nicely.

-A.

-Now, the people in the balcony are going to say "B," but I want you to say it in the most annoying voice that you can muster.

Are you ready?

-B!

-Good.

Now let's do the whole thing -- A-B-A.

Are we ready?

-A.

-B!

-A.

-Doesn't it feel good to come back to "A"?

[ Laughter ] That's the kernel of the idea that we find in sonata allegro form, except that what we have now is taken those "A" sections and greatly expanded them, to include a... -First theme.

-Transition.

-Second theme.

-Closing section, right.

So, we have all of those in both "A" sections, in the so-called exposition and the recapitulation.

But!

What is really fascinating about sonata form is that it's not really A-B-A.

What it is is "A", changed "A", "A".

Now, what do I mean by that?

The composer takes ideas that are presented in the exposition and alters them in the development, in such a way that people who are paying attention -- again, this is only good for people who are not reading the program notes while this is going on.

People who have paid attention during the exposition notice the changes that are made to the ideas there in the development.

It has another emotional impact, to have changed an idea.

It creates tension in the listeners, which has to be released by getting to the recapitulation.

Let's listen to some of the strange things that Beethoven does at the beginning of the development.

The very first thing he does is to take a rather abrupt left turn, harmonically.

In your listening guide, this occurs at number 9.

There's a strange twist in first theme, which announces the development.

Let's pretend for a moment that we weren't taking this strange twist.

Let's pretend that the car was going in the direction that we hoped it would or anticipated that it would.

Let's listen to what that would sound like.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

But listen to what he did.

Do you sense that left turn?

Everything in music is contextual.

In other words, the reason that we can enjoy what's happening in a piece of music is because we remember what happened before, which is why it's so important to pay attention from the beginning.

At number 10, it says that the music is like the beginning, but he keeps changing keys.

Now, what this does is create an unsettling feeling.

It's like we don't know where we're going because he's not remaining in one key.

You might also notice that there are crescendos.

Just so that we know what a crescendo is, would you please do this with me?

Repeat after me -- we're going to go... Aaaaaah!

Please do that.

-Aaaaaah!

-It's a getting louder gradually.

It's fun to do when you're playing, and it's fun to perceive it as a listener.

Now, something else that he does which is really interesting in this section is that he gets suddenly soft at the end.

So they have to be really careful.

They can't go... "Aaaaaah!

Bang!"

They have to go... "Aaaaaah!

Ooooh!"

[ Laughter ] It's very hard -- they have to suddenly pull themselves back and be quiet again.

Alright, let's listen to the changing of keys -- again, this is in the development -- and also these crescendos or rumblings out of the strings.

Sorry to leave you dangling over that musical cliff.

[ Laughter ] In the exposition, the second theme -- your theme -- has this beautiful question with three answers.

Let's refresh our memories.

We can see that, at this moment, Beethoven is really in a very sort of sublime mood.

You know, we don't have any of this angst of the beginning.

But listen to this pair of questions and answers in the development.

This is wild stuff.

The answers are so violent, and one of the reasons they are is because Beethoven is indulging in syncopation.

What is syncopation?

It's when there is an accent in the music where we do not expect it.

Or, sometimes, where there is no accent where we were expecting one.

But in this case, it's an unexpected accent.

Normally, the stress is on the downbeat, or the first beat, so we say, "one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two."

Say that with me.

-One, two, one, two, one, two, one, two.

-Okay, now let's put the accent on two, ready?

One, two, one, two, one, two, one, two.

You see, that's already creating a disturbance.

You start your ones again, ready?

-One, two... -And I'm going to do this rhythm.

-One, two, one, two... - Da-da-da, da-da Dah!

Da-da-da, da-da -One, two, one, two... - Da-da-da, da-da Dah!

Da-da-da-da Do you feel the answer coming in on "two"?

Alright, let's side-by-side it again with the very pleasant sounds of the exposition.

Then we'll go to this grittier one in the development.

And now in the development.

That's intense stuff.

You know, I always worry when people say to me, "I love classical music, it's so relaxing."

[ Laughter ] Not this passage.

This tension is created in our development, which must be released by the recapitulation.

So now I want you to prove to me that you know when we get to the recapitulation.

We're going to start in the development, a little bit before where we just were, and when we get to the recapitulation, when it's exactly like the beginning, everyone stand.

But...

I'm warning you right now, Beethoven has false starts.

[ Laughter ] He's going to tease us.

He's going to pretend that he's about to recapitulate.

A false recapitulation.

Yes!

Yes!

Thank you, thank you.

Was it exactly the same as the exposition?

No, it wasn't.

And how was it different?

Do we know?

-The chords.

-Chords.

Right.

We had harmony.

It wasn't just the unison.

And, the first time we only had the violins, violas, cellos, and basses, and clarinets playing.

This time we had what?

Everybody.

Everybody was playing.

And they're playing things that really are very stark harmonies.

Listen to it again, the way it sounds at the very beginning, in the exposition.

Now listen to it in the recapitulated version.

Listen to just the winds and the brass, slowly.

Yeah, see, it's, I don't know, more ominous, more something.

But it is a genuine recapitulation.

We feel like we've come back, finally, to where we started.

Beethoven, of necessity, we'll say, had the bassoons announce the second theme in the recapitulation.

Now, who did it in the first?

Does anybody remember?

The horns played it the first time.

Horns, why don't you play it for us the way it happens?

This is the way the second theme gets started.

In Beethoven's time, horns did not have these valve mechanisms with key pads that allow them to play easily in lots of different keys in a short space of time.

You had to have like a little Santa Claus sack of tubes when you came to your seat, and you have to put in the tubes that will allow you to play in certain keys.

Now, all this takes time.

And, of course, in order to take them out and put in the next ones, by the time that happens, the horns might miss the entrance.

Instead, he had the bassoons play it because it's now in a different key, and it sounds like this.

Some conductors actually rewrite the music at this point.

There's a school of conducting that says, "Well, if Beethoven had the valve horns, he surely would have had the horns play it."

Then there are other conductors who are sort of text lovers, and they say, "You cannot touch this.

Obviously, he wanted the timbre of the bassoons."

Now, we thought about making this like one of those popular TV shows that's on right now and have the audience decide which way we would do it, but we thought better of it, and we're just going to play it the way Beethoven wrote it, again, for you this evening.

Beethoven, as you know, had a very difficult life, mostly as the result of his disability.

To lose his hearing, you know, was like the worst possible thing to happen.

So he had pain in his life, which we can all identify with, and he was perfectly willing to share it with us.

I want you to listen to some of this pain from his Third Symphony.

Now, again, what is miraculous about this music is, it mirrors our own emotional inner lives.

Think about the fact, you can go from feeling elated, to depressed, to frightened, to brave, to silly, in a nanosecond.

You can experience all those different feelings.

And that's what is so fascinating about these compositions because they also change feeling state on a dime.

Listen to this passage from the Third Symphony in which Beethoven changes from feeling relatively lighthearted to intensely pained.

That is pain.

That is pain.

Now, in the Fifth Symphony, at the coda, I want you to look at number 21 and 22 in your listening guide.

Codas are optional.

You don't have to have a special ending in one of these constructions because you already have a... First theme, transition, second theme, and a closing section, and you can close it at the closing section.

If it seems appropriate, you can just end it, but Beethoven liked to write codas in many of his movements of this sort.

And this one is short, but it packs a powerful punch.

At number 22, it talks about there being dissonance.

Now, this is not the kind of soul agony that we just had in the Eroica symphony.

This is more like seething anger.

I want you to listen to the dissonances slowly, so that you can digest them before we play them in tempo.

Now listen to them in tempo.

They go by much faster, and you might miss them if you weren't attuned to it, but we have these little painful dissonances in here.

You know, we wonder, why is Beethoven's music so compelling?

Why is it among the favorite of the classical music repertoire?

And I think it's because Beethoven just never would give up, no matter how bad things got.

And we find this in his music.

He wrote in a letter, in 1802, which was already six years into his deafness, "Sometimes, I have been driven by my desire to seek the company of other human beings, but what humiliation when someone standing beside me heard a flute afar off and I heard nothing.

Such experiences have brought me close to despair, and I came near to ending my own life.

Only my art held me back, as it seemed impossible to leave this world until I had produced everything I feel it has been granted for me to achieve."

If you want to follow your listening guide, you can, as we play the first movement again.

If not, you can just listen.

And now, the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony again for you.

[ Applause ] [ Applause continues ] [ Applause continues ] -"Discover Beethoven's 5th" is an exploration by Maestro George Marriner Maull and the Discovery Orchestra of one of the best-known and most beloved symphonic movements in all of classical music.

This program, along with additional chapters containing the three movements of the symphony not included in the original television program, is available on DVD for $12.95 plus shipping and handling.

Order online at www.discoveryorchestra.org.

This offer is made by American Public Television.

Funding for this Discovery Concert has been made possible in part by...