# The Beethoven "Fate" Symphony



## KevinW (Nov 21, 2021)

Hello People,

In many Eastern Asia countries, people call Beethoven's fifth Symphony "The Fate Symphony". I am not so sure what is behind this symphony, but I am sure that it is a wide-spread misconception that Beethoven himself gave this name to the symphony, kinda similar to how Mahler's Symphony No.1 was called "Titan"... So, do you think "Fate" is a proper name of this composition for what it conveys, and if not, what are your understandings toward this (probably the most) famous Classical Music composition?

Kevin


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## KevinW (Nov 21, 2021)

_*the fate is knocking on your door!!!*_


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

The first version of Mahler was really called "Titan" and associated with a today obscure novel from the early 19th century author Jean Paul (a German, despite the French name version).
The "fate knocking at the door" quotation might be spurious but it was widely communicated and up to the 1960s or even later you will find "Schicksalssinfonie" printed on record covers occasionally.

I don't think it is a particularly useful name. If there are some programmatic associations with this pieces, I rather suspect they are a bit political. The music of the finale has a relation to French revolutionary music (there is an anecdote of a French veteran crying out "C'est l'Empereur" (i.e. Napoleon) when he heard the finale) and I always found the "previews" of the triumphal music in the andante like "rallying the revolutionary masses" (but it doesn't succeed yet).

But one should usually be wary about all this. E.T.A. Hoffmann was historically very close, certainly did not lack fancy or fanciful associations (cf. his many stories and tales, often spooky or weird) but celebrated this symphony as absolute music precisely in contrast to popular programmatic music (such as the later Wellington's victory by Beethoven himself, or La prise de la Bastille by Dittersdorf).


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

It would be more accurate to call it _Eroica-Pastoral_.

Main motif inspired by a bird, storm in the first movement, peaceful pastoral setting in the second movement, and what sounds to me (in the context of the Napoleonic wars) like a return of conscripted soldiers to the village and general celebration in the fourth movement.


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## christomacin (Oct 21, 2017)

KevinW said:


> _*the fate is knocking on your door!!!*_


"When fate comes knocking at the door, tell your mother-in-law to answer it."


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

christomacin said:


> "When fate comes knocking at the door, tell your mother-in-law to answer it."


It's probably the mother-in-law who's knocking!

(When I was a kid there was a popular, silly re-texting of "Toreador, en garde" in German: "Auf in den Kampf, die Schwiegermutter naht". The Torero song goes "Auf in den Kampf, Torero" in German and the spoofed version means "Get ready for battle, mother-in-law approaching!", I am not quoting any further as it gets a bit rude/burlesque although not really bawdy and it would not work in translation anyway.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

The "Fate" title comes from Anton Schindler, Beethoven's personal secretary, who claims that Beethoven said of the opening motive: "Thus Fate knocks on the door." I believe it's from his book _Beethoven as I Knew Him_(?). Alas, Schindler is a notoriously unreliable witness who tended to make stuff up. A couple of decades later Adolf Bernhard Marx ran with the quotation in his highly influential analysis/interpretation of the symphony (Beethoven _Leben und Schaffen_, 1859). Later still Tchaikovsky, who had read the Marx book (translated into Russian within a year and available in the St. Petersburg Conservatory library) described his own Fourth Symphony as a struggle with "Fate," stating that he had not copied Beethoven's music for the Fifth, only the basic Idea. The term Idea, meaning a broad poetic conception underlying the structure of a musical work, was borrowed from Marx. The "plot archetype" underlying the Marx/Tchaikovsky interpretation of Beethoven's Fifth became a central basis for the doctrine of Socialist Realism as it applied to symphonic music in the USSR under Stalin. The triumphant (or pseudo-triumphant depending on ones interpretation) finale of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony was an attempt to live up to this standard.

To answer the OP: It is impossible to know if Schindler's quotation is accurate. But it is certain that the interpretation of the Fifth Symphony that followed from it was highly influential on generations of composers and one that became a standard for ideological correctness in Soviet musical aesthetics.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Kreisler jr said:


> The music of the finale has a relation to French revolutionary music (there is an anecdote of a French veteran crying out "C'est l'Empereur" (i.e. Napoleon) when he heard the finale) and I always found the "previews" of the triumphal music in the andante like "rallying the revolutionary masses" (but it doesn't succeed yet).


That story relates to the 5th piano concerto, not the symphony....

_The origins of the concerto's epithet, Emperor, are obscure and no consensus exists on its origin. An unlikely and unauthenticated story says that at the first Vienna performance, a French officer said, "C'est l'Empereur!"_


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I think have seen the story also attributed to that finale. Or maybe it was the (mostly correct) claim that it SHOULD be applied with more justification to that finale that has tunes similar to revolutionary music than to the piano concerto.


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## Skakner (Oct 8, 2020)

I have never associated this Symphony with fate, karma, destiny, whatever...
I don't perceive music into a context, except for programmatic music.
Music compositions speak for themselves.


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## christomacin (Oct 21, 2017)

Kreisler jr said:


> It's probably the mother-in-law who's knocking!


That's what bathroom windows are for. Always have an escape route prepared.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

In ‘modern’ times, the fifth symphony became more associated with ‘Victory’ during and since WW2 given that the opening motif was the same as the Morse code for the letter ‘V’.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Skakner said:


> I have never associated this Symphony with fate, karma, destiny, whatever...
> I don't perceive music into a context, except for programmatic music.
> Music compositions speak for themselves.


Ah, but some would say the symphony does speak for itself … about Fate and the overcoming of adversity.  In a sense it's the very structure of the whole. That's why the "Fate" motive comes back in the finale, so it can be negated by the material of the major mode finale.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Beethoven has been an icon for revolutionaries since Lenin praised him, nicknaming the piece specifically means its underlying stories of painful process of composition have been a fabled lore for most chinese people（japanese do not share this sentiment). Probably because of Lenin and his support for French Revolution, Beethoven`s 5th has been programmatically promoted. But there is another lore about how the nickname came, it is said to have begun with his students:


> The Fifth's opening theme, pounded out once and then repeated a whole step down, really does sound like "fate knocking at the door," a phrase that has stuck to it ever since Beethoven's students Anton Schindler and Ferdinand Ries circulated the story. In the original German, with the loaded word Schicksal denoting fate or destiny, it takes on even more drama. Rodda, for one, has his doubts about whether this idea really originated with Beethoven, but does it matter? Beethoven's philosophical and passionate third symphony, the "Eroica" (1804), announced his departure from the Classical restraint of his first two symphonies. And though the fourth has a serene and Hellenic air, the fifth is even more dramatic and cerebral than the third; it was begun before the fourth, and the work continued for about two years after the fourth was completed.


BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 5

by Michael Clive


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## Michael122 (Sep 16, 2021)

For the record, the story that the self-serving Schindler made up to sell his book about the 1st few notes of the 5th being death or fate knocking at the door, is pure, total, and utter horse hockey. 
The truth of those opening notes comes to us from Carl Czerny; a very sincere and honest man of unquestionable character who was not only student and friend, but saved LVB's Emperor concerto by a magnificent public performance, which LVB asked him to do {LVB was fearful he'd botch it up given his deafness and the disaster of his last public piano performance}, which garnered wonderful reviews, consequently spurring sales.
Anyway, Czerny tells us that LVB was occasioned by the whistle of a Yellowhammer bird while on one of his daily nature walks and rushed home to get quill in hand and ink on parchment to capture it for the opening of the 5th.
You can hear how easily the bird's sound lent itself to LVB via recordings online.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Fate, of course, hints at a destiny or promise that suggests struggle with adversity and an ultimate result. Fate can bring on "victory" or triumph over adversity; it can also (as in Greek tragedies) promise doom and deliver big time. If the "Fate" title is to describe the Beethoven Fifth, I would suggest it indicate something more akin to "Fate's Triumph" or "Victory Over Fate", though neither of those prove viable titles for such a complex work. Tchaikovsky's Sixth is very much also a "fate" symphony, but one with a finale closer to the spirit of those Greek tragedies. "Fate" is simply too vague a term, leaning as it does to polar expectations. Fate remains the unstoppable "plan" for one's life. The Beethoven Fifth seems more a symphony of struggling with fate and overcoming its initial promise of doom, which of course contradicts the very meaning of "fate", which is a final destiny, regardless of what "struggles" one goes through.

The Greek tragic heroes and the Old Norse heroes, all victims of fate, know well enough that one cannot do anything about one's fate except to accept it. Beethoven might struggle with something and in the end come to accept that something, but it isn't exactly "fate" he struggles with or accepts.

The more one contemplates "fate", the stranger the concept becomes. I know, because I've contemplated the term for many years, especially during those sessions when I taught the Greek tragedies or the Old English poem _Beowulf_, which poem's thematic line may well be: "Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel" or, in modern translation "Fate will unwind as it must." Folks have little to no control over fate, which is the whole point of the matter, as Oedipus teaches us. One must just "accept" or "defy" fate's results. Perhaps the Beethoven symphony would be better named "Acceptance."


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Sonnet, in my humble opinion, you're way overthinking this. "Fate" as used in reference to works of this kind is just a placeholder for any malady, curse, or inconvenience. For Beethoven it might be impending deafness, for Tchaikovsky it was "XXX," what he entered in his diaries in place of homosexuality, for Satie it might have been a rack of purple suits. The vagueness is the point. The sense as it applies to Beethoven's Fifth is obviously adversity later overcome.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> For Beethoven it might be impending deafness, for Tchaikovsky it was "XXX," what he entered in his diaries in place of homosexuality, for Satie it might have been a rack of purple suits.


For Allegro Con Brio, it's Toscanini.


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## Holden4th (Jul 14, 2017)

The 'Fate' name came from a motif that Beethoven used in a number of his works with the 5th symphony being the most obvious. The motif consists of four notes, three are repeated and the fourth goes down a minor third. So at the start of this symphony you have G G G Eb, followed by F F F D. This was called the 'knock of fate' and whether LvB or someone else coined that phrase is unclear. Another place where you'll hear this motif is in the Appassionata where it appears in the left hand in the opening bars of the first movement and reoccurs a number of times in both right and left hands. There are other works that have a version of this covering a variety of genres and it seems to one of Beethoven's favourite motifs.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

KevinW said:


> So, do you think "Fate" is a proper name of this composition for what it conveys, and if not, what are your understandings toward this (probably the most) famous Classical Music composition?


The name of _any _composition is, for me, not relevant.

As for 'fate' - I don't hear it, though I understand the musical explanations given that describe it. I get the whole 'knock on the door' thing, but since only bailiffs might knock on the door for any length of time, I soon get over it; I just hear music. I also hear the 'triumph' in the fourth movement, but only in the sense that fanfares tend to be triumphal. Who or what is enjoying or enduring triumph I haven't the faintest idea.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

I think every other symphony in the world is a symphony of "Fate".

"I love the Fate Symphony by Mozart!"
"There is no better than the Brahms 30th Fate Symphony."
"Mahler and his Fate Symphony makes me tremble."
"The Fate Symphony by Johann Shostakovich Telemann is wonderful."


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Michael122 said:


> Anyway, Czerny tells us that LVB was occasioned by the whistle of a Yellowhammer bird while on one of his daily nature walks and rushed home to get quill in hand and ink on parchment to capture it for the opening of the 5th.
> You can hear how easily the bird's sound lent itself to LVB via recordings online.


Have you listened to the song of the Yellowhammer recently? Its only resemblance to the Beethoven motive is the relatively well-tuned drop of a major third. The rhythm, articulation, and dynamics are all wrong. So Czerny wants us to believe that Beethoven had to rush home in a tizzy to write down this song because he, a man who could improvise a fantasy on another composer's theme on first hearing, was going to forget a two note motive, a major third? If Czerny was indeed "a very sincere and honest man of unquestionable character," one can only assume he had an impish sense of humor because the tale is ludicrous.

Perhaps he meant this Beethoven:


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

Michael122 said:


> Czerny tells us that LVB was occasioned by the whistle of a Yellowhammer bird while on one of his daily nature walks and rushed home to get quill in hand and ink on parchment to capture it for the opening of the 5th.
> You can hear how easily the bird's sound lent itself to LVB via recordings online.


By 'capture it' did he mean capturing the _variations on it_ that came to Beethoven's mind?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Waehnen said:


> "I love the Fate Symphony by Mozart!"


The passage at 3:22 is essentially Mozart "shaking his fist at fate" (upon having had all kinds of health problems at a young age and realizing he has a short life to live): 







EdwardBast said:


> Perhaps he meant this Beethoven:


Or maybe this Beethoven: 



. Who knows?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> Or maybe this Beethoven:
> 
> 
> 
> . Who knows?


That's Mozart, not Beethoven.


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