# Beethoven’s famous allegretto from his 7th symphony



## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

In Beethoven’s time this was his most popular orchestral movement, as often an encore was demanded including at the premiere and it was even by some conductors used replacing the 2nd movement of the 2nd and 8th symphonies to sell more tickets. Most conductors play it extremely slow (9+ min), solemn and spiritual and few conductors like Kleiber (8 min) and especially Szell (7:30 min I believe) take it at a faster tempo and interpret it more energetic and lively. I prefer the latter. About the movement itself, it’s a masterpiece of epic proportion. Every single passage is amazing and it holds your attention very well. It’s also not repetitive at all and follows a nice journey I think. I love it very much and my dad does as well and sometimes puts on the 7th symphony purely for this movement. I also love all the other movements. What approach do you prefer? And do you agree with the Viennese audience in the early 19th century that this is his best orchestral movement?


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

My favorite, by far, recording of this movement is Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra. 



. 

I don't agree that it's the best movement. not even in the 7th symphony. I like the 1st and 4th movements better.


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## Brahmsianhorn (Feb 17, 2017)

I’ve always liked Bernstein’s VPO version. To me, there is passion and even a bit of melancholy built into the music. Kleiber sounds too clinical.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Bruno Walter's version with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra is my overall entry into classical music. I wouldn't call it allegretto, but I still love it.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

The 7th Allegretto figured prominently in the climax of the Academy Award winning 2010 The King’s Speech, a tour-de-force of movie-making and acting (by Colin Firth). It is a rewarding historical movie to watch, reminding that, while Winston Churchill skillfully guided Britain through the years of WW2, King George VI also played an important role. I can’t think of a better work than this Beethoven movement to add to the presentation of this moment in history:


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

The first movement of this symphony is the one that has always drawn me in the most, but of course the rest of the piece is marvellous too. I have an LP of James Loughran's performance with the Halle Orch.which I cherish above any other. On CD I like the version by William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony. I'm a big Kleiber fan but would agree that this isn't his finest recording, not helped - IMHO of course - by his choice of the pizzicato ending to the Allegretto.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Animal the Drummer said:


> The first movement of this symphony is the one that has always drawn me in the most, but of course the rest of the piece is marvellous too....


Agreed, ATD.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

People always claim that the first chord is so special because it's a 6/4 (a minor) chord, with the e in the bass. Very unusual to start a piece like that.
But while the e of the bassoons is written lower than the a of the cellos, there's still the basses who play that same a an octave lower. So no 6/4 chord, but it still sounds unbalanced/unstable. I assume it was Beethoven's intention to give the chord a suspenseful character, leading into the main theme. That kind of suspense couldn't be achieved by a minor chord with standard voice spreading, while an E7 chord would sound too banal.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

RobertJTh said:


> But while the e of the bassoons is written lower than the a of the cellos, there's still the basses who play that same a an octave lower. So no 6/4 chord, but it still sounds unbalanced/unstable.


Liszt just writes a plain i6/4 in his piano transcription-







RobertJTh said:


> an E7 chord would sound too banal.


I think it would give an impression like a "frightened child" or something.


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## Bigbang (Jun 2, 2019)

EvaBaron said:


> And do you agree with the Viennese audience in the early 19th century that this is his best orchestral movement?


I am not sure the Viennese audience had this thought such as comparsion to B's other works available for them to hear at any point in their lives. I think music comes to them and they ride the current along with other works being circulated at the time. But to think they knew all of Beethoven's symphonies by ear and picked the allegretto of the 7th as their favorite, to me is a stretch. Haydn used to get alots of repeated movements of his symphonies, though I cannot remember the most popular. The slow movement of symphony 44 I believe was popular.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

hammeredklavier said:


> Liszt just writes a plain i6/4 in his piano transcription-


Beautiful piece by Liszt. This guy has potential.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

RobertJTh said:


> People always claim that the first chord is so special because it's a 6/4 (a minor) chord, with the e in the bass. Very unusual to start a piece like that.
> But while the e of the bassoons is written lower than the a of the cellos, there's still the basses who play that same a an octave lower. So no 6/4 chord, but it still sounds unbalanced/unstable. I assume it was Beethoven's intention to give the chord a suspenseful character, leading into the main theme. That kind of suspense couldn't be achieved by a minor chord with standard voice spreading, while an E7 chord would sound too banal.


You are incorrect. The first chord is indeed a 6/4 chord. In addition there are no strings in that chord. The instruments are: 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns. The lowest note in the chord is the E below middle C played by the second horn. And neither of the bassoons is playing an E.

Take a look:


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I've long loved the Beethoven Seventh, from my first hearing over a half century ago. And it was that Allegretto movement that made the strongest impression. I recall, from that first listen via a vinyl record, repeating it on the old record player I had at the time, I was stunned by the music.

I once designed a sound plot (incidental music) for a production of Shakespeare's _Macbeth_ utilizing Beethoven's music for all but the banquet scene (which featured a Medieval band playing Medieval music). The curtain opened to strains of the opening of the Ninth Symphony and the introduction of the Witches. The Seventh Symphony Allegretto was the music accompanying Lady Macbeth's famous sleepwalking scene. The music started and Lady, holding a candle, stepped out of the shadows of a dark stairwell doorway. She then proceeded (to those duh... da da ... dum ... dum measures) to descend the staircase to the main stage floor of Dunsinane Castle where she finally speaks: "Yet here’s a spot. ... Out, damned spot! out, I say!–One: two: why, / then, ’tis time to do’t.–Hell is murky!–Fie, my / lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we / fear who knows it, when none can call our power to / account?–Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him." 

Alas ... now, well over four decades later, I still imagine that scene each time I hear that splendid Allegretto.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Haydn70 said:


> You are incorrect. The first chord is indeed a 6/4 chord. In addition there are no strings in that chord. The instruments are: 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns. The lowest note in the chord is the E below middle C played by the second horn. And neither of the bassoons is playing an E.


I stand corrected - but I'm quite confused now, I remember for sure that there's a spot in one of Beethoven's symphonies that has this "6/4 or not" controversy going on, with the 8va basso note of the basses being the deal breaker. Strange, I always thought it was the 7th.
But what's even stranger in the allegretto is that it ENDS with a 6/4 chord, the exact same chord that opens the movement. The strings add the low a (pizzicato or not...) but only on the first beat, and the sound dies away on the 6/4 chord
It's good to add that the strange hollow sound of this chord is partly caused by the peculiar voice spreading. In all orchestration books one is advised to have the voice pairing interconnect, in this case the first clarinet would play above the 2nd oboe, in order to create a more homogenized sound. Beethoven doesn't do that, he just stacks the instrument pairs on top of each other, which causes the timbres to stand apart.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

Beethoven's Allegretto movement in his 7th Symphony isn't a sarabande--which is a kind of dance style, yet it has a strong similarity to the 3rd movement 'Sarabande' of Georg Frideric Handel's Keyboard Suite No. 4 in D Minor, HWV 437. This becomes even more apparent when you listen to a modern orchestral arrangement of Handel's Sarabande, such as the one used in Stanley Kubrick's film "Barry Lyndon":






Though Kubrick's film isn't the only modern orchestration that has been done. Here are several others,














Traditional sarabandes are quite slow--slower than Beethoven's Allegretto movement, but with the same rhythm repeated over and over again, as in Beethoven's movement. For me, the strong emphasis on a repeated rhythm evokes a sense of gravitas & tragedy (and perhaps forlornness?).

Now here is Beethoven's movement played first on period instruments, & then in three modern instrument performances, which I like,






Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: II. Allegretto
Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: II. Allegretto
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 - 2. Allegretto

To my ears, the similarity between Handel & Beethoven here is striking, & can hardly be a coincidence (we know that Beethoven played Handel's Keyboard Suites at Baron von Swieten's house earlier in his life, & was studying Handel's scores & learning from them later in his life): Indeed I'd consider the 7th to be Beethoven's most Handel influenced symphony. Which is why, to my mind, the period conductors tend to have a better understanding of the work than modern conductors, generally. It's the one Beethoven symphony that all the period conductors do uniformly well (Immerseel, Gardiner, Bruggen 1, Hogwood, Norrington, etc.); unlike the 5th & 9th, where they all mostly flop (except for Harnoncourt in the 5th, & Gardiner in the 9th).

Interestingly, conductor Jos van Immerseel astutely included Beethoven's Handel like Die Weihe des Hauses, Op. 124, or "The Consecration of the House" as the coupling on his recording of the 7th Symphony,

Beethoven: Overture "Die Weihe des Hauses" (Consecration of the House), Anima Eterna, Immerseel

The Handel connection to Beethoven's Overture & to the 7th are brought even more to the forefront with Immerseel's use of authentic Viennese horns & period woodwinds, which figure so prominently in both works: Where Beethoven uses the rustic sounding, valveless, blustery period horns, woodwinds, & heavy drums in way that is reminiscent of Handel (in his Water Music, The Music for the Royal Fireworks, Samson, etc.),

Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: I. Poco sostenuto - Vivace

Handel: Water Music; Appendix - 12. Alla Hornpipe (Variant in F, HWV 331/2)
Water Musick, Suite No. 2 in D Major & Suite No. 3 in G Major, HWV 349-350: [Hornpipe]
G.F. Händel: "Water Musick" in Seven Parts HWV 348, 349, 350 [Zefiro-A.Bernardini]
G. F. Händel - The Musick for the Royal Fireworks [Zefiro, Alfredo Bernardini]

Among modern instruments recordings, Eugen Jochum likewise doesn't seek to temper the horns, but lets them play out (unlike lesser conductors, who seek to constrain the brass). Even so, Jochum's modern brass & woodwinds aren't able to achieve the same effect as the historical instruments. For example, at one point in Immerseel's recording of the 7th I hear the sounds of horses galloping in the interplay between the period horns & woodwinds, & I don't hear this same effect, or at least not to the same degree on modern horns, which are naturally more controlled & less blustery & rustic sounding, i.e., less authentically Handel like:

Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92. LSO, Eugen Jochum. Rec. 1977


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

That Handel Sarabande (used to great effect in a Levi's Jeans commercial in the 1990s, probably the first time I encountered the piece, being a bit to young for "Barry Lyndon") also seems to be related to the famous "Folia" tune/pattern although this is usually in even time. The 7th's allegretto is often called a funeral march but I don't think it is a march. The rhythm is quite different from common funeral marches (who are usually dotted). (The ancient dance most similar to it is probably the Pavane which was slow and in even time and later associated with "tombeau", memorial music) It might still be inspired by some kind of procession. Some time after Beethoven the melody was used for a choir (by Silcher or someone like that) with a funereal text.

Two for me fairly obvious followups to this movement (and both symphonies are indebted to the 7th) are in Schubert's Great and Mendelssohn's "Italian" (the latter supposedly inspired by Italian religious processions).


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

The Handel sarabande also has a feel similar to the aria "Lascia ch'io pianga" in certain respects.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Because the latter is also a sarabande and the rhythm is similar. 
That rhythm seems a common pattern for sarabandes and when they were still danced they were probably a bit faster than often played today.
Of course, the allegretto has a different meter and rhythm but it seems a not too far from a pavane. There is a video on youtube with people in Elizabethan garb playing and dancing a pavan and there is a girl with a hand drum marking a simple rhythm quite similar to the allegretto. But this rhythm is so commonplace (every other Schubert andante seems to be based on it, e.g. the "Rosamunde" used in the quartet as well as Death and Maiden and many others) so I seriously doubt that Beethoven needed any archaic inspiration. And as the piece became popular immediately I also doubt that it was perceived as "archaic" by 1812-20s listeners.


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