BBC Documentaries

The Secret of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (2016x151)

: 28, 2016

Often cited as one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, the opening notes of the fifth symphony are among the most recognisable in the history of music, but the inspiration behind it is less clear. Many believe that Beethoven was railing against fate and his deafness in this piece, which was composed in Vienna between 1804 and 1808. In this documentary Gardiner argues that the music features a little-known, radical message expressing Beethoven’s belief in the ideals of the French Revolution, and shows how his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique convey that message in their performance of the Fifth Symphony. To investigate Gardiner’s theory, Hislop visits the German city of Bonn, where Beethoven was born, raised and exposed to radical ideas, and Paris, where a new wave of composers were creating original compositions in a musical revolution that mirrored the political movement of the era. He also goes to Vienna, where the composer lived from 1792, visiting the apartment where he wrote the bulk of his Fifth Symphony and the Theater an der Wien, where the premiere of the work took place in 1808. This is part of the BBC’s Revolution & Romance - Soundtrack To The 19th Century season this May and June, exploring the surge of musical creativity and the key players to emerge during this seminal era of music, revealing the real inspiration behind Beethoven’s most famous work, and with complementary programming on BBC Radio 3 in Essential Classics.