Note : It would be a good idea to consult the chapters on ‘Music of the Classical Period’, ‘The Symphony’ and   ‘Sonata Form’ in the Study Area before studying this analysis

Background and Overview

In the autumn of 1802, Beethoven wrote a letter (known as the Heiligenstadt Testament) intended for his two brothers, articulating a life-threatening despair over his increasing deafness. The next major work to be completed, the Third Symphony, is testimony to his triumphant rising above adversity. At first inspired by Napoleon, Beethoven was later infuriated by news of his proclaiming himself Emperor; the original title page has a ragged hole where the dedication once stood.

The revised name ‘Eroica’ suggests a more generalised idea of heroism. The Finale is based on a theme Beethoven had used in 1801 for his ballet on the subject of Prometheus. In the programme for the first performance of the Symphony, conducted by Beethoven himself in the Vienna Theatre in 1805, Prometheus was described as ‘an exalted spirit, who found the men of his time in a condition of ignorance, and who refined them through science and art and brought to them civilized customs’.

Certainly the scale of the work suggests heroism. The first movement, in a hugely expanded sonata form, is probably the longest symphonic movement written up to that date. A Funeral March with two contrasting episodes is followed by a Scherzo, with a Trio which features an expanded horn section. The Finale is one of Beethoven’s favourite, organically developing variation movements on the Prometheus theme; variation form was an unusual structure for a symphonic finale, but set a precedent for the choral climax of Beethoven’s Ninth.

Analysis

First movement: Allegro con brio

The huge dimensions of the first movement are not merely the result of Beethoven’s insistence on the exposition repeat. There are an unusually large number of distinct ideas in the exposition; the development section has a wide tonal range, typified by the emergence of a totally new theme in the distant key of E minor; while the highly significant coda functions as a further development section.

The opening two detached chords make a striking opening. A leisurely piano theme for ‘cellos, built entirely on the notes of the E flat major (tonic) triad

is soon upset by a descent to C sharp and some off-beat reiterations in the first violins, symptomatic of the adventures in key and rhythm which are to dominate. We are then hurled onto sforzando poundings (0.29) which contradict the triple metre, before a forte return of Ex.1 begins the movement away from the tonic key.

The transition begins calmly with a three-note descending idea passed around woodwind and violins, but soon the full orchestra is involved once more, and the violins introduce a more agitated figure (1.16) which leads to an emphatic scalic descent into the dominant key. The second subject announces itself with quiet repeated woodwind chords; the dialogue with the strings that follows suggests tonal uncertainty. A pedal note with a crescendo into a tutti theme offers stability of key, but the triple metre is in danger of being undermined again by a series of detached sforzando chords (2.33). The return to metrical stability is in turn accompanied by some searching chromaticism, before the exposition reaches its final cadence with a crunching repeated discord (2.56).

The development section begins in brooding quiet chromaticism before the calm transition music emerges in C major.  Ex. 1 then hauls the music up in semitones, first to C sharp minor and then to D minor, when it is combined with the agitated violin idea from the transition (6.44). The calm transition idea is then transformed by an imitative string texture (7.44), followed by an extended passage of offbeat chordal pounding of some violence, which throws us via a crashing repeated discord into the remote key of E minor(8.43).

An entirely new theme for strings and woodwind leads into A minor, and then to further reiterations and extensions of Ex. 1. When the new theme reappears in E flat minor, it heralds the beginning of a long elaborate journey back to the tonic major for the recapitulation, with plenty of distractions mainly concerned with C flat. Beethoven employs ingenious tactics to make us wait; and then eventually allows the second horn to pre-empt the return before the violins are ready!

One reason for employing three horns in this symphony instead of the usual two now becomes clear; as the first horn is able to take time to change crooks and give us the opening theme in F major (11.14), following a shift away from E flat major – such a surprise so soon after the beginning of the recapitulation. Normally this is the time to re-establish the tonic key once and for all, but in such an expansive movement Beethoven has plenty of time for that later. His next move is to push his triadic idea into D flat major; but thereafter he is content to toe the sonata form line – that is, until the recapitulation has run its course.

The enormous coda, nearly as long as the exposition, announces itself by employing Ex. 1 in another departure from the tonic key, sliding down to C major via D flat major (compare the move in upward semitones at the start of the development). Soon the new development theme is back, in F minor at first (14.42). As the music builds to a final conclusion over a dominant pedal (15.08), the transitory modulations stay closer to home – but Beethoven continues to deploy his wide-ranging pack of ideas with marvellous ingenuity as he finally re-establishes his tonic key, finishing with the two detached tonic chords with which he had begun.

Second movement: Marcia funebre - Adagio assai

The funeral march had become a popular genre in France at the time of the revolution, and Beethoven had already included a Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un eroe in his Piano Sonata in A flat op. 26 of 1800.

This enormous and serious movement seems to be taking the traditional ABA March and Trio form when a fugato episode suddenly takes the music into a greater dimension (5.54).

The movement begins with a suitably sombre theme featuring dotted rhythms low in the first violins, accompanied by drum-inspired grace notes from the double basses, which spread to the whole string section when the oboe takes up the theme an octave higher. A second idea briefly offers hope of major key consolation (at 0.52 and 1.57).

New material – a first episode in the tonic major - lightens the mood, as woodwind soloists exchange phrases over a triplet accompaniment, leading to a tutti outburst on the dominant chord (4.01). A recurrence of this outburst on the tonic is followed by a descent into a brief reminder of the opening; but a modulation to F minor almost at once leads into a second episode in fugato style. The triplet rhythm from the C major episode returns in the first violins (7.19) to contribute to its climax.

An even more hesitant and short-lived reference to the opening theme, now in G minor, is set aside by a portentous brass fanfare on a monotone (8.01), with more triplets from the strings; but as this subsides we realise that it is in fact making way for a full and decorated reprise of the funeral march theme (8.37). An interrupted cadence makes way for the hushed coda, which begins with uneasy violin syncopations (10.43) and ends with the disintegration of the opening theme – a late inspiration after more ‘obvious’ endings had been tried.

Third movement: Scherzo - Allegro vivace

Note : It would be a good idea to consult the chapter on ‘Binary and Ternary Form’ in the Study Area before studying this analysis.

Donald Francis Tovey refers to this movement as ‘the first in which Beethoven fully attained Haydn’s desire to replace the minuet by something on a scale comparable to the rest of a great symphony’; and yet the subtle whisperings of the Scherzo’s opening propel us away from the tonic key almost before it has started, the woodwind delicately highlighting the strings’ moto perpetuo. Tonal uncertainty continues to complement pianissimo, as the thematic fragment moves into F major (the dominant of the dominant), and then via some furtively accented interplay into the remote region of D major. The music returns to more familiar territory, but nothing – save a single bar of crescendo – prepares us for the sudden fortissimo tutti outburst which at last establishes the tonic key unequivocally (0.49 and 2.00). As the first part of the movement moves to its conclusion, Beethoven – even at this rapid pace – introduces some  off-beat sforzandi (1.00 and 2.11), some anxious dialogue between wind and strings and some even more rapid (quaver) articulation in the strings.
 
The Trio section reveals one important reason why Beethoven needed a third horn for this work. The full triadic harmony offered by the solo horns is a new sound in the classical symphony; and the limited powers of modulation available to these valveless instruments results in a passage of tonic key stability. The woodwind and strings intervene briefly with a sequence which takes us away from E flat major; then a passage of entirely unison writing (3.04 and 3.41), first for wind and then for strings, prepare us for the horns’ return. This time the horns introduce a single chromatic gesture (3.21 and 3.58), picked up on by the strings, which allows the return of the Scherzo music to creep back as subtly as it had begun originally.

Beethoven writes out the reprise of the Scherzo, because he replaces his second off-beat sforzandi group with a brief but energetic switch to duple time (5.16). The Coda begins with timpani, solo, picks up on the chromatic gesture of the closing bars of the Trio, and finally reminds us first of the horns and then of the emphatic detached chords from the beginning and end of the first movement.

Fourth movement: Finale - Allegro molto

Note : It would be a good idea to consult the chapter on ‘Theme and Variations’ in the Study Area before studying this analysis.

The theme which eventually emerges on the oboe (at 1.52) had been used by Beethoven in three previous pieces: as a contredanse, in a set of piano variations op 35, and as part of the final dance in his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus op 43. The above attempt at analysis shows that the movement seems to create its own structure as it goes along. Tovey suggests that ‘the best way to understand it is… simply to identify its material under three headings, a Bass, a Tune and a Fugue’.

An arresting opening unison rush from the strings settles firmly on a tutti dominant seventh chord. We might now expect to hear a statement of the main theme. Instead, we only hear what is to become its bass line

first in pizzicato strings, then decorated by offbeat winds, followed – after a rest - by a mock-heroic outburst from full brass, wind and timpani, before the pizzicato returns. A description cannot match the comic effect of the music itself; we do not realise at this stage how much importance the Bass will assume later. But first Beethoven gives it respectability by clothing it skilfully in string counterpoints, with the bass line first in the middle of the texture (for second violins – 0, 47) and then at the top (1.19)!

Finally, the oboe places the Tune (Ex. 3) on top of the Bass, and the two halves of its binary form are repeated by the violins as the bass line itself is decorated:

A bridge passage provides a first move away from the tonic key (2.28); and a fugato begins in C minor, using the first four notes of the Bass as a starting-point for its main subject. The wind and horns (when they can) join in, and soon the assembled forces are making something new of the octave leap between the Bass’ second and third notes, when suddenly a delightful, unexpected modulation (at 3.30) brings us to D major and a full variation on the Tune.

Part of the charm of this new section is the delicacy of its orchestral colour, especially a passage for flutes, oboes and first violins (from 3.38) and the decorative flute solo which follows. But this is rudely brushed aside by triplets and sforzandi in preparation for a new march-like, even heroic episode in G minor (4.06). The variety of texture, rhythm and colour here disguises the fact that the first four notes of the Bass are almost always present in some form.

Another bridge passage (from 4.51) using the opening phrase of the Tune returns the music to the tonic key; the first four bars of Ex. 3 are twice heard simultaneously combined with their upside-down (inverted) form (5.04), hinting as what is next to come. A second fugato section now follows, this time based on an inverted form of the Bass. As it develops, fragments of Tune and Bass are heard against it, often in unsettling rhythmic guises (listen to the flutes at 5.26, and then the horns). The brass and wind storm in, apparently a beat early, with the Bass at 5.47, and as a climax builds over a dominant pedal (from 5.59) there is another proliferation of octave leaps.

The tempo slows to Poco Andante, and the woodwind are first to reveal how expressive the Tune can be (6.23). This first slow variation gathers chromaticism and cross-rhythms into its intricate texture; its sequel (from 8.05) is a forceful tutti which fills in the dotted crotchets of the theme with pairs of answering quavers and dispenses with the internal repeats.

Before the final affirmation of the tonic in the presto Coda,  Beethoven decides on a final burst of tonal variety, and sends the music off gently into the subdominant key of A flat major, so far hardly used. A climax is built in a dramatic modulatory journey using the rhythm a from Ex. 3 (from 9.24); with its triplets it is rather reminiscent of the music at 7.43 in the Funeral March. At 9.59 the music reaches G minor, momentum is drained away, and Beethoven seems engaged on one of his ‘holding operations’ – what will happen next?

A final abrupt fortissimo and change of tempo (10.31), and we are wrenched back to the tonic key for some rapid reiterations of the Tune’s opening, more offbeat sforzandi and a heroic attempt by the violins to overcome the rest of the orchestra (11.08) – before the detached tonic chords have the last word.

When it appeared, the Eroica Symphony was almost certainly the longest symphony to have been written; and Beethoven was only to exceed its length in the Ninth. It is indeed heroic in spirit and scale, but for all its boundary-pushing innovation, entirely classical in method. Robert Simpson puts the work in context: ‘The first three symphonies show a continuous process of physical expansion that could go no further without threatening a looser kind of romantic exaggeration alien to Beethoven’s nature. Having used the full power of his muscles in the Eroica, his instinct was to concentrate his new strength in denser discharges’. 

Further listening

• Listen to Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 4 (8.553477) and 5 (8.553224) – and explore his next symphonic stage.
• Beethoven’s other Funeral March can be found in his Piano Sonata in A flat major, Op. 26 (8.550166)
• Other uses of the ‘Tune’ from the Finale of this Symphony can be found in Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Piano Variations, Op. 35 (8.110764) and The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 (8.553404)

Bibliography
Robert Simpson: Beethoven Symphonies (BBC, London 1970)
Basil Deane: The Symphonies and Overtures; from The Beethoven Companion ed. Arnold/Fortune (London 1971)
Donald Francis Tovey: Essays in Musical Analysis I(Oxford 1935)
Richard Osborne: Beethoven; from A Guide to the Symphony ed. Layton (Oxford 1995)