Beethoven's Fifth

Pogue & Speck's Classical Music for Dummies

The opus Classical Music for Dummies, by David Pogue and Scott Speck, is my guide and yours to all things classical, but it's not perfect. For instance, there are certain things about their blow-by-blow on Ludvig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, First Movement, that leave something to be desired.

For one thing, they think the famous dit-dit-dit-DAAAAH! opening is a theme. It's not. It's only a motif. Or it can be called a motive, same difference. True, it announces the first theme of the first section of the first movement, but, themewise, it is not the whole ball of wax.

Likewise, there is a six note motif, dit-dit-dit-daah-diit-daah, kicking off the second theme at 0:46, but Messrs. P & S don't actually call it a theme this time, they call it a "line." And they fail to notice that the second theme already has somehow morphed back into the first theme at 1:19, even before the "three decisive statements of the four-note theme," at 1:23, which end the exposition segment of the exposition-development- recapitulation in sonata-allegro form.

As you see, it only takes a little knowledge before you start calling the professors stupid.


Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, for all you who are not yet former dummies, the way I am, is made of movements, four of them. Why they're called movements makes no sense, since while they're being played in a concert hall is exactly when you're not supposed to move. It is between movements that you're allowed to shift positions in your seat and perhaps even scratch discreetly. But while the conductor's baton is waving, don't even think about it.

Anyway, the four main sections of a classical symphony are its movements. The first movement is usually in sonata-allegro form, meaning exposition-development-recapitulation sections are in order. (The "allegro" part means the conductor waves his baton pretty darn fast.)

In the exposition the composer trots out two themes, playing the first all the way through — that takes 46 seconds here — and then, logically, the second, lasting maybe 37 seconds. The second theme is in different key than the first. Messrs. P & S forget to tell us that the first key in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is C minor and the second is its "relative major," E-flat, but that minor-to-relative-major shift — we experts call such key shifts "modulations" — is pretty standard stuff.


Just so you can see how important this modulation aspect is, I'm going to skip right ahead and discuss the recapitulation part of the first movement. It's just about exactly the same music as the exposition, except for two importnt things. One, whereas the exposition is repeated a second time, right after the first time ends, the recapitulation isn't. Two, the modulation to the relative major doesn't happen in the recapitulation! That's because you simply cannot end the whole movement in anything but the original key of the piece. (Never mind that Ludvig van tacked on a humongous coda at the end of the movement. That was strictly optional.)

There is one other thing about this particular recapitulation which makes it stand out. Right in the middle of it, the orchestra takes a time out. Just so the paying customers don't get confused and start to shift around and scratch and cough, one oboe takes up a reedy little solo that the sensitive souls among us would call downright winsome, if not precious. That lasts for all of about 12 seconds before the rest of the orchestra starts to feel upstaged and begins rehashing the first theme yet again.

Oh, and another interesting thing which Messrs. P & S do bring out quite nicely. At the place in the exposition where horns play dit-dit-dit-daah-diit-daah to bring along the second theme, you now hear bassoons instead. Why? Not because the bassoonist union complained. Because in Beethoven's time, horns couldn't play this motive in the key of C minor rather than E-flat major, as in the exposition. Bassoons, which could, did.


But I see I have completely neglected the middle part of the movement, the development. Here is where I feel Messrs. P & S fall down most severely.

In order to be able to fill you in as to why, I need to ask you to dodge over to this web page, in which someone named Duck Schuler who really knows his onions takes you through the entire Fifth Symphony as if it were a story being told to us by Beethoven, with a hero and a heroine and an (possible but averted) tragedy.

The hero of the piece is that first theme which begins dit-dit-dit-DAAAAH! It is a "proud" theme. The heroine is the second theme, "lyrical" and "jubilant." The story is about how difficult it is for our heroine to convince our hero that he can only gain victory in this life if he gives up his stubborn, foolish pride. We've all been there, right?

Here's Mr. Schuler's inside dope on the development section:

Although conflict is introduced simply by the advent of theme two, the real conflict begins with the development section, which follows the repeat of the exposition. Ominous theme one makes us forget the glory of theme two, but deep in the recesses of the hero's mind, the heroine's influence is working, causing greater and greater turmoil in the hero. Beethoven uses imitation, modulation of keys, and sequential material to create the mood of instability in the hero. The influential power of the heroine is so great that her theme is not even heard in the development although there are hints of it in the sounding of the horn call motive in the violins. The theme of the hero begins to disintegrate into two-note motives and whimpering chords of despondency with several sudden energetic outbursts. At first it seems that the hero has been broken, but with an abrupt burst of strength, he seems to maintain his original proud character. Has our heroine failed? It would seem so as the development section closes.

True, that needs some picking apart to explain what things like "imitation" and "sequential material" are, but you get the general idea. That our hero is falling apart is made obvious by how Beethoven torments his first theme, musically, during the development section.

Messrs. P & S, meanwhile, don't capture that. They natter on about how Beethoven frustrates us by inserting a couple of phony musical climaxes. They do agree with Mr. Schuler about how the heroine is, conspicuously, the next thing to absent in this section. But then they get sidetracked by considerations of things like how Beethoven stretches out his first four-note motif into longer and quieter notes at the end of the development section, yet they fail to say anything at all about what it all means, story-wise.

(By the way, here is another interesting essay on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, for those of you who simply can't get enough. Oh, and in case you were wondering about Beethoven's supersized coda to the first movement of his Fifth Symphony, Messrs. P & S mark its beginning at 5:34. It lasts until 7:22. See what I mean by "humongous"?)

Like Classical, Like Beer

It's about time I got back to posting to this blog about music. Months have slipped by since my last post, and my project to develop a website on music theory has pretty much bitten the dust. Meanwhile, oddly enough, I find that my interest in classical music has picked up. For whatever reason, I have somehow gotten over the hump of not being able to relish the so-called complexities of classical as well as I'd like to.

Classical music seems to be something of an acquired taste, much like beer. Over the last several years I've developed a taste for so-called craft beers — the beers with lots of flavor, and with flavor notes of all different sorts — by drinking a lot. A nasty job, but someone had to do it. At first, it was hard to like the more complex ales, especially the ones that have a great deal of hop bitterness. Now, those are my favorites.

The same is true of classical music. The more complex the piece — the greater the composer's admixture of the harsher musical "flavors" — the more off-putting the listening experience can be at first. Yet those are the very pieces that grow on one. With repeated listening, one is surprised to find the greatest loveliness in the most astringent sounds.


The real secret of my success at conquering my total classical ineptitude may turn out to be the book Classical Music for Dummies, by Pogue and Speck. Here is a book that manages to set forth the entire history of classical music in 80 pages! True, 40 would have been better, but there are a lot of pictures.

Here is a book that gives you advice on how to score cheap symphony tickets and even recycles the ten best classical music jokes ever.

Most important, here is a book that gives you a play by play on each piece on the accompanying CD, broken down by time. For example, take the piece identified as Handel's Water Music Suite No. 2, Alla Hornpipe. (I don't know who that Alla fella was, but never mind.) Actually, that designation should probably be "Suite No. 12," not "Suite No. 2," according to the track listings of several Handel's Water Music CDs at Amazon.com. I'm confident the authors, well-known experts in the field, made that slip just to give this budding savant an opportunity to say he one-upped the pros. But never mind.

Alla Hornpipe, at any rate, purports to be not a person but a piece of music based on (you guessed it) "a familiar 'sailor's hornpipe' melody." The authors don't say whether it was "familiar" before Handel ever "wrote" it — perhaps he was some sort of Baroque-period plagiarist or something. At any rate, it starts off with that "familiar 'sailor's hornpipe' melody," played in the woodwinds. Then, at time code 0:16, the trumpets start playing that same "familiar 'sailor's hornpipe' melody." At 0:23, for something completely different, it's the French horns' turn to play that very same "familiar 'sailor's hornpipe' melody."

A major upheaval then transpires at 0:35: for the very first time — but by no means the last — it's the strings that start playing that same "familiar 'sailor's hornpipe' melody."

From that point on, in a delightful bit of sheer pandemonium, the various sections of the orchestra take turns with the entire orchestra as a whole in bringing that "familiar 'sailor's hornpipe' melody" to that which the authors (as well as Handel) deem to be "a satisfying conclusion."

That takes us up to moment 1:03, at which time, I kid you not, "the musicians repeat everything they've played up to this point, note for note." And you thought classical music was tricky!

Not only that, but after a contrasting "middle section" that lasts for an all-too-brief 58 seconds, Handel has the orchestra simply repeat the first 1:02 of the piece. It's not quite déjà vu all over again, though, since this time the "familiar 'sailor's hornpipe' melody" starts off in the strings (gasp!) not the woodwinds.

That contrasting "middle section" that lasts for an all-too-brief 58 seconds is, however, a cool idea of Handel's. It's contrasting because it has, believe it or not, a different melody. And it's kinda quiet, since the brass have shut up for this part. Moreover, for you technical aficionadoes, the music's key shifts from major to minor.

Because the "middle section" is bookended by two sections that are for all intents and purposes carbon copies of one another, what we have here is that which seemingly "became the basis for sonata form," just about the greatest thing since sliced bread at the time, which was 1717. Sonata form: that's basically when a composer with two good musical ideas just doesn't have a third ready to hand. So what he does is present the first good idea in — get ready for some insider lingo here — the "exposition." Then he presents the second, contrasting good idea in the "development." Finally, lacking yet a third good idea, he sneakily recapitulates the original exposition one more time, in what is called, appropriately, the "recapitulation."

Oh, it gets way more complicated than that in the true Classical period which followed the simpler Baroque — the time of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and all those good folks — but understand the pattern A-B-A and you basically understand sonata form.


So there you have it. Classical music is prmarily a matter of repetition. Plus, contrast. Plus, a whole bunch of extra fillips like key changes and assigning the same music to different instruments so you don't really notice how few musical ideas the composer actually had.

Maybe that's why I like beer so much. After a few cold ones, you don't really care whether you hear a fresh musical idea, ever again.