BEETHOVEN - SYMPHONY Nº5 IN C MINOR, OP 67 FATE I, ALLEGRO CON BRIO

BEETHOVEN
SYMPHONY Nº5 IN C MINOR, OP 67 FATE I, ALLEGRO CON BRIO

Ludwig van Beethoven
(Bonn, December 16, 1770-Vienna, March 26, 1827)

He was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and piano teacher. His musical legacy covers, chronologically, from Classicism to the beginnings of Romanticism. He is considered one of the most important composers in the history of music and his legacy has had a decisive influence on the subsequent evolution of this art.

Being the last great representative of Viennese classicism (after Christoph Willibald Gluck, Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), Beethoven managed to make the music of Romanticism transcend, influencing a variety of musical works of the 19th century. His art was expressed in numerous genres and although symphonies were the main source of his international popularity, his impact proved to be mainly significant in his works for piano and chamber music.

His output includes the genres pianistic (thirty-two piano sonatas), chamber (including numerous works for instrumental ensembles of between eight and two members), concertante (piano, violin and triple concertos), sacra (two masses, a oratorio), lieder, incidental music (the opera Fidelio, a ballet, music for plays), and orchestral, in which Nine symphonies occupy a prominent place.

SYMPHONY Nº5 IN C MINOR, OP 67 FATE I, ALLEGRO CON BRIO

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 67, by Ludwig van Beethoven, was composed between 1804 and 1808. This symphony is one of the most popular and performed compositions in classical music. It consists of four movements: it begins with a sonata allegro, continues with an andante and ends with an uninterrupted scherzo, which comprises the last two parts. Since its premiere at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on December 22, 1808, conducted by the composer, the work has acquired notorious prestige, which still continues today. E. T. A. Hoffmann described the symphony as "one of the greatest works of all time".
The Fifth Symphony had a long maturation process. The first sketches date from 1804 after he had finished the Third Symphony. However, Beethoven had to interrupt his work on the Fifth to prepare other compositions, including the first version of Fidelio, the Appassionata Piano Sonata, the Rasumovsky Op. 59, the Violin Concerto, the Piano Concerto No. 4, the Fourth Symphony, and the Mass in C major. The final preparation of the Fifth Symphony, which took place between 1807 and 1808, was carried out in parallel with the Sixth Symphony, which were premiered at the same concert.
When Beethoven composed it, he was already reaching 40 years of age, his personal life was marked by the anguish caused by the increase in his deafness; despite this, he had already entered into an unstoppable process of “creative fury”. Europe was decisively marked by the Napoleonic Wars, the political turmoil in Austria, and the occupation of Vienna by Napoleon's troops in 1805.