by Nathan Perkins

Created on: August 27, 2011   Last Updated: September 02, 2011

Open up Grooveshark or Pandora and listen to Beethoven’s 5th.  In the midst of listening, you may get lost and find you’ve forgotten all about your game of Internet billiards.  You’ll see a story or a whirlwind or you might start to imagine, horses galloping away upon some great siege.  Later in the symphony, you might imagine yourself walking through a vast wheat field that is creating pictures as the wind carves away at it in live action.  Some listeners swear they see Mickey Mouse wearing a wizard’s hat, and yes this symphony is in the Disney movie Fantasia. 

According to the history channel’s calendar page, the symphony's beginning constitutes “three short Gs followed by a long E-flat.  Used in World War II-era Britain to open broadcasts of the BBC because it mimicked the Morse code "V" for "Victory"”.

Is this the sound and meaning that Beethoven was looking for?  It does seem to be such a song, one of great victory.  But Morse code and World War II came almost one hundred years later. 

Fair maidens may dance through the woods in your mind as some scenes created in Beethoven’s 5th open up to war and war horses gallop through.  You know the scenes will eventually go together because the war is for those maidens.  The tympanis demarcate the beating heart of the warriors and those who care for the maidens. 

One might wonder if the shouting horns are the cry of Beethoven’s own heart as he longs to be able to better hear through his failing ears the music he creates.  Those chasing notes may be Beethoven’s hope to chase away the ringing in his ears from his condition of tinnitus or they could be the chasing search for the register that he could best hear. 

There seems to be a race to some finish in this symphony.  Could it be the finish of a Napoleonic war or to the political strife in Austria?  A mix of happy and stressed notes play games with a listener’s emotions.  They feel some victory is about to come, that some search is about to be ended while there is a question expressed in the minor notes as they play.

A theme of soft answers that follow a pounding collection of four notes, the victory notes seems to indicate the musician is fighting to find a place somewhere in between.  Again, lower horns announce in dramatic fashion and a cacophony ensues.  Then the answer comes with peace and tranquility. 

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