About this Piece

It is wrong to tamper with the description placed at the head of this work by the composer himself. The inscription runs “Heroic Symphony to celebrate the Memory of a Great Man.” In this we see that there is no question of battles or triumphal marches such as many people, deceived by mutilations of the title, naturally expect; but much in the way of grave and profound thought, of melancholy souvenirs and of ceremonies imposing by their grandeur and sadness—in a word, it is the hero’s funeral rites. I know of few examples in music of a style in which grief has been so consistently able to retain such pure form and such nobility of expression. —Hector Berlioz (from À travers chant, 1862)  

In 1802, Beethoven, confronted with his growing deafness, produced the document that has since become known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, named for the Vienna suburb where it was written. In it the composer confessed, with wrenching candor, to his altered physical—and, even more, psychological—state. Beethoven later mentioned in correspondence that he was seeking a “new path,” one that at once reflected his anguished state of mind and allowed him to overcome it.  

This resulting catharsis through composition came simultaneously with Beethoven’s discovery of theater music (primarily the now-forgotten operas of Cherubini and Méhul), composition of the oratorio Christus am Ölberge (Christ on the Mount of Olives), and embarking on his own operatic project, which would ultimately result in Fidelio. The “new path” was the road beyond music in the abstract and in the direction toward a sort of program music, not in the Romantic era’s sense of telling a story (for example Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique), but one in which the element of feeling drawn from life experience was prominent.  

The “Eroica” Symphony is among the most influential responses by a composer to extramusical stimuli. And the stimulus was Napoleon Bonaparte. Beethoven, like many of his educated peers during the Enlightenment, initially regarded Napoleon as the savior of Europe, if not of mankind. And it is his presence that looms over every page of this symphony. In the same vein as many other intellectuals, Beethoven became disenchanted, even disgusted, when Napoleon crowned himself emperor. The inscription “Bonaparte Symphony” was withdrawn and replaced by the less specific “Sinfonia Eroica.”  

With those two thunderous E-flat chords that open the symphony, Beethoven becomes a new man—and the creator of a new music. Following those two cannon blasts we hear the cellos intone what seems to be the main theme. But the movement isn’t centered around a principal motif. By bar 85 four separate thematic ideas have been introduced with more fanfare from the brass section than in any previous symphony by another composer.   

Too much can be made of the programmatic suggestions of the ensuing slow movement, a funeral march recalling, in the pithy description of the German American critic Paul Bekker, “the emotions of someone watching the funeral procession from afar, passing by, and then fading in the distance.” It has been suggested that with this dirgelike music Beethoven “buries” his erstwhile hero, Napoleon, after his self-aggrandizement. But Napoleon’s power grab did not take place until after Beethoven had completed the symphony, adding mystery to its meaning. 

The dazzlingly fleet, dynamically soft scherzo signifies a revival of the spirit. The trio section serves as a stunning display piece for the horns. In this movement Beethoven fully realizes “Haydn’s desire to replace the minuet by something on a scale comparable to the rest of a great symphony,” according to musicologist Donald Francis Tovey. 

The finale is the giant (let’s call him Beethoven) fully reborn. The opening flourish leads into a favorite theme of the composer’s, previously employed in his Creatures of Prometheus ballet, in the Op. 33 piano variations, and in a little contredanse. The full statement of the theme, in which the trivial is transformed into something splendidly noble, is succeeded by a stirring, relentless march melody. The symphony ends, fittingly, on a note of fiery triumph. 

The “Eroica” Symphony was first performed at a private concert in the Vienna home of the composer’s patron Prince Lobkowitz in 1804. The public premiere was at the Theater an der Wien, the home of so many other Beethoven firsts, on April 7, 1805. —Herbert Glass