ABSTRACT

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony opens with a dramatic fl ourish, the famous fournote motif, short-short-short long, which provides the theme for the fi rst movement. As it weaves in and out, the tune is picked up by different instruments with ‘pithy imitations tumbling over each other with such rhythmic regularity that they appear to form a single, fl owing melody’. With echoes of the theme drifting through the third and fourth movements, the symphony merges into a coherent whole.