# Why is Beethoven's 3rd considered better than the 5th?



## Fabulin

It's a very specific question. Not 3rd vs 9th, not 5th vs 9th, or any other pair. Just the two. I want to know. Beethoven prefered Eroica himself. Great conductors like Furtwängler, Toscanini, Bernstein also considered it superior. In popularity polls the 3rd wins as well. 

I just don't know why.


----------



## Merl

Purely as a listening experience, I prefer the 3rd too. Obviously I love both but the 3rd is on balance, for me, a slightly superior symphony. The middle of the 5th isn't as strong as the the opening and closing movements, IMO. The 3rd works better and more consistently as a whole piece for me. I couldn't care less about historical significance, it's all about the music!


----------



## mbhaub

In some surveys, the 3rd is sometimes regarded as THE GREATEST symphony of all time. I won't go that far, but it is somehow more appealing than the 5th. Maybe the 5th is so over-exposed. As far as a unified, organic experience, the 5th is vastly superior to the 3rd - those three short one long notes unify the 5th to a high degree. There is none of that in the 3rd (nor was it a necessary component by the inventors of the symphony). Every time I hear the 3rd it always seems so fresh and new - like it was written just last week. The 5th shows its age maybe? Of course, they're both inferior to the 7th....


----------



## KenOC

I can’t say that one is “better” than the other because they’re too different. The 3rd is a big, sprawling work with world-class writing in a variety of sub-genres (sonata-allegro, funeral march, hunting trio, theme and variations), generous with drama and incident. It lacks, to an extent, “unity.” Critics usually excuse this by applying a somewhat literary program to the symphony, but unity is better expressed through the music directly.

The 5th is almost the polar opposite. It is highly compressed, especially the first movement, sacrificing everything to conciseness and force. The verdant variety of the 3rd is nowhere in sight. The second movement, although still featuring the rhythmic motto that runs throughout the symphony, seems a bit pedestrian by comparison – again, often forgiven by critics as a “moment of relaxation”. The third movement is a totally original conception, mysterious and gripping at the same time, and the passage that connects it to the finale is, rightfully, one of the most famous in music. As for the finale, nobody but Beethoven could have carried it off, and he does so by virtue of his rock-ribbed belief that this over-the-top and bombastic music deserves to be taken seriously. Miraculously, he convinces us.

I can’t place one higher than the other. I think it’s amazing that two so different and so excellent pieces should have been written by the same man, and at the same period in his life.


----------



## Larkenfield

The third is considered better by who? The fifth is one of the most recognizable and popular works in all of classical music, even compared to the third. Both are generally considered great symphonies and the third is historically important because it was a breakthrough symphony for Beethoven because it was longer compared to his first two symphonies and on a much more expanded scale.


----------



## KenOC

A ranking from the old Amazon forum:

1 - Symphony #7 in A major
2 - Symphony #3 in E-flat major, 'Eroica'
3 - Symphony #6 in F major, 'Pastorale'
4 - Symphony #4 in B-flat major
5 - Symphony #9 in D minor, 'Choral'
6 - Symphony #5 in C minor 
7 - Symphony #8 in F major
8 - Symphony #1 in C major
9 - Symphony #2 in D major

"Hofrath Kueffner told him (Krenn) that he once lived with Beethoven in Heiligenstadt, and that they were in the habit evenings of going down to Nussdorf to eat a fish supper in the Gasthaus 'Zur Rose.' One evening when B. was in a good humor, Kueffner began: `Tell me frankly which is your favorite among your symphonies?' B. (in good humor) 'Eh! Eh! The Eroica.' K. 'I should have guessed the C minor.' B. 'No; the Eroica.' " (from Thayer’s notebooks)


----------



## KenOC

Larkenfield said:


> The third is considered better by who? The fifth is one of the most recognizable and popular works in all of classical music, even compared to the third.


Here's Sir George Grove, repeating a story told by Wagner:


----------



## Larkenfield

KenOC said:


> Here's Sir George Grove, repeating a story told by Wagner:


 Wonderful quote. If only there were more heart in the discussion of the music… all music... as a wonderful living force that can lift the human spirit.


----------



## Merl

mbhaub said:


> In some surveys, the 3rd is sometimes regarded as THE GREATEST symphony of all time. I won't go that far, but it is somehow more appealing than the 5th. Maybe the 5th is so over-exposed. As far as a unified, organic experience, the 5th is vastly superior to the 3rd - those three short one long notes unify the 5th to a high degree. There is none of that in the 3rd (nor was it a necessary component by the inventors of the symphony). Every time I hear the 3rd it always seems so fresh and new - like it was written just last week. The 5th shows its age maybe? Of course, they're both inferior to the 7th....


For me, the 7th is Beethoven's greatest creation. I've heard well over 200 different accounts over the years but it never gets boring. The first movement is the key for me. Those who nail that give us a 7th to remember. With the 3rd I'm finding that more and more I'm loving more pared-down performances like Weil, Honeck, Lan Shui, Krivine, Savall, etc.


----------



## Bulldog

Here's some hard data from ArkivMusic:

Symphony no 1 in C major, Op. 21 (197)
Symphony no 2 in D major, Op. 36 (186)
Symphony no 3 in E flat major, Op. 55 "Eroica" (281)
Symphony no 4 in B flat major, Op. 60 (193)
Symphony no 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (301)
Symphony no 6 in F major, Op. 68 "Pastoral" (234)
Symphony no 7 in A major, Op. 92 (284)
Symphony no 8 in F major, Op. 93 (213)
Symphony no 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Choral" (298)


----------



## gellio

It’s not. It’s not better than the 6th, 7th or 9th either.


----------



## Bulldog

My preferences:

Choral
6th
7th
5th
3rd


----------



## MusicSybarite

Who in the hell anyone thinks that the 3rd is better than 5th? Please!!! It's the 4th, obviously (?)


----------



## Olias

Watch the BBC Film "Eroica" and you will get a sense of the impact that the 3rd symphony had on the evolution of music.


----------



## KenOC

From an 1806 AMZ article:

"Two years ago, Beethoven composed a third great Symphony, in approximately the same style as his Second Symphony but richer in ideas and artful execution. It is also broader, deeper, and longer, so that it plays for an hour… it is certain—all connoisseurs' voices that the reviewer has heard agree, if not the authors of certain leaflets!—it is certain, I say, that this symphony is one of the most original, sublime, and profound products that music has to show for itself."

After a review like that, it's little wonder the Beethoven felt warm and fuzzy about the Eroica. But let's not forget that he felt the same way about Wellington's Victory… :lol:


----------



## Bwv 1080

Yes, the 3rd is of greater historical performance, but the 5th is more popular (and no less of a work, but it came after the 3rd)


----------



## MarkW

Beethoven was a compulsive experimenter, and you have to view most of his compositions in that light. You have to view the two symphonies as "expansion" vs. "compression" (much like the Opus 79 and Opus 95 string quartets). I personally like the Eroica because there's more to listen to and sink your teeth into. It's more harmonically daring, emotionally expressive, and gets where it's going by a more interesting route The Fifth undoubtedly does what it does very well, but there's less to it, and once you "know" it, it's easier to go into auto-pilot. I've never particularly liked the variations, the finale is too much like your team winning the Super Bowl (hangover the next morning -- then what?). I do like the end of the first movement's exposition, and the double bass in the trio.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

The 5th is the greater work. It's just that too many people see it as beneath them to say so due to its popularity and recognizability. The 3rd has a great 1st two movements but sinks after that. The 5th has obviously one of the most perfectly composed opening movements and then the final two movements are sizzling, with the unmatched genius of the transition from pianissimo.

My ranking of the Beethoven symphonies:

9
5
3
7
6
8
4
1
2


----------



## Strange Magic

H.L. Mencken's classic paean of praise for the Eroica:

"The older I grow, the more I am convinced that the most portentous phenomenon in the whole history of music was the first public performance of the Eroica on April 7, 1805. The manufacturers of programme notes have swathed that gigantic work in so many layers of banal legend and speculation that its intrinsic merits have been almost forgotten. Was it dedicated to Napoleon I? If so, was the dedication sincere or ironical? Who cares—that is, who with ears? It might have been dedicated, just as well, to Louis XIV, Paracelsus or Pontius Pilate. What makes it worth discussing, today and forever, is the fact that on the very first page Beethoven threw his hat in the ring and laid his claim to immortality. Bang!—and he is off. No compromise! No easy bridge from the past! The Second Symphony is already miles behind. A new order of music has been born. The very manner of it is full of challenge. There is no sneaking into the foul business by way of a mellifluous and disarming introduction; no preparatory hemming and hawing to cajole the audience and enable the conductor to find his place in the score. Nay! Out of silence comes the angry crash of the tonic triad, and then at once, with no pause, the first statement of the first subject—grim, domineering, harsh, raucous, and yet curiously lovely—with its astounding collision with that electrical C sharp. The carnage has begun early; we are only in the seventh measure. . . . what follows is all that has ever been said, perhaps all that ever will be said, about music-making in the grand manner."


----------



## KenOC

I am always surprised to see B’s 1st Symphony rated ahead of his 2nd, which seems to me the better work. Grove says that it was well-received, although with some caution because it wasn’t seen as “safe” as the 1st. It was commonly described with words like “colossal,” which it certainly was in those pre-Eroica days.

The whole symphony is of the highest quality and, in the coda of the finale, we enter for the first time into the landscape of middle-period Beethoven, suffused (in Grove’s crib from Wordsworth) by “the light that never was on sea or land.”


----------



## Fabulin

Strange Magic said:


> There is no sneaking into the foul business by way of a mellifluous and disarming introduction; no preparatory hemming and hawing to cajole the audience and enable the conductor to find his place in the score. Nay! Out of silence comes the angry crash of the tonic triad, and then at once, with no pause, the first statement of the first subject-grim, domineering, harsh, raucous, and yet curiously lovely-with its astounding collision with that electrical C sharp. The carnage has begun early; we are only in the seventh measure. . . . what follows is all that has ever been said, perhaps all that ever will be said, about music-making in the grand manner."


This is such a subjective attempt at trying to turn the virtue of the 5th Symphony's superior beginning into a weakness, that after the first sentence I couldn't help but hear the rest narrated by the voice of Jesse Ventura


----------



## Strange Magic

^^^^I completely missed the reference--any reference--to the 5th symphony in Mencken's discussion of the 3rd. Perhaps it could be pointed out to me.


----------



## Woodduck

Brahmsianhorn said:


> The 5th is the greater work. It's just that too many people see it as beneath them to say so due to its popularity and recognizability. The 3rd has a great 1st two movements but sinks after that. The 5th has obviously one of the most perfectly composed opening movements and then the final two movements are sizzling, with the unmatched genius of the transition from pianissimo.
> 
> My ranking of the Beethoven symphonies:
> 
> 9
> 5
> 3
> 7
> 6
> 8
> 4
> 1
> 2


Works of art can be great in different ways. I agree that the 5th has a terseness and unity that the more expansive 3rd does not. It's a blockbuster without compare. On the other hand, the "Eroica" has the grand sweep of an epic poem or, which is much the same thing, the biography of a hero, achieving its unity less structurally and more programmatically. The contrasts are meaningful, and I think of Beethoven's late works, including the 9th symphony, the last piano sonatas and quartets, which achieve their unity by often mysterious means, juxtaposing moods of the utmost gravity with the humorous and even the bizarre, yet somehow "adding up." I personally find the vigorous energy and the relative simplicity of the third and fourth movements of the "Eroica" just right after the drama of the first two; the funeral over, they open a window to the light and the fresh air, remembering briefly the struggle but celebrating life. No less than the first two movements, they reinterpret and deepen the established Classical model of the symphony.

I'll go along with your top five of the nine, but I feel incapable of ranking them.


----------



## millionrainbows

Why is Beethoven's 3rd considered better than the 5th?

The answer: rhythmic identity. I can bang my fist four times on the table, and you will recognize it as the "da-da-da-daaaah!" of the Fifth. 
The Third has no such recognizable element.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Why is Beethoven's 3rd considered better than the 5th?
> 
> The answer: rhythmic identity. I can bang my fist four times on the table, and you will recognize it as the "da-da-da-daaaah!" of the Fifth.


Only if you can sustain the fourth bang. Otherwise it's just four equal bangs. It might be fate knocking at the door, or it might just be the pizza guy.


----------



## KenOC

The Eroica does a faceplant. Who ever heard of a heroic, military-type movement written in waltz time? Clearly Beethoven had a very off day.


----------



## millionrainbows

If the room is right, and very reverberant, you can get away with four bangs because of the reverb tail. It might be the cops, too, so make sure you flush the gummy bears.


----------



## Enthusiast

I feel the Eroica is far more ambitious than the 5th and, as it seems to me to succeed fully, it is the greater work. I do think it is hard to hear the Eroica without also hearing something of its context. I can try to listen only to the music and ignore its having burst onto a scene that had never heard its like before but I can't quite succeed. But if I could just weigh the two pieces solely as music I think I would still love the Eroica more. For me there are not very many symphonies that are greater than either of them.


----------



## LudwigVanBodewes

Did he actually express that he liked the Wellington?


----------



## Swosh

Well the 3rd is by far more enjoyable for me as a listener. It also has more of a story.


----------



## LudwigVanBodewes

Woodduck said:


> Works of art can be great in different ways. I agree that the 5th has a terseness and unity that the more expansive 3rd does not. It's a blockbuster without compare. On the other hand, the "Eroica" has the grand sweep of an epic poem or, which is much the same thing, the biography of a hero, achieving its unity less structurally and more programmatically. The contrasts are meaningful, and I think of Beethoven's late works, including the 9th symphony, the last piano sonatas and quartets, which achieve their unity by often mysterious means, juxtaposing moods of the utmost gravity with the humorous and even the bizarre, yet somehow "adding up." I personally find the vigorous energy and the relative simplicity of the third and fourth movements of the "Eroica" just right after the drama of the first two; the funeral over, they open a window to the light and the fresh air, remembering briefly the struggle but celebrating life. No less than the first two movements, they reinterpret and deepen the established Classical model of the symphony.
> 
> I'll go along with your top five of the nine, but I feel incapable of ranking them.


Very well put. The funeral march of the Eroica, is majestic to an extent that it just leaves me in pure awe. The equivalent of seeing a hundred lions running with grandeur. It touches me in a way as if I knew this hero, king or both. I think the funeral march is what makes me like the 5th more than the 3rd. Although I actually think this is kind of an invalid statement because you should look at the Symphonies as whole.

The 5th is raw and overpowering, yet feels like a victory of your own at the same time. Sometimes it's like something far bigger than yourself is fighting adversity _with you_. The way the opening motive is driving the music forward, giving it energy, is brilliant. The mysterious crescendo leading into the march is a moment of ecstasy.

Conclusively I think I like the 5th better theoretically but when just _listening_ the story of the 3th is more compelling to me. Like you said, an epic poem about the death and victory of a hero (Bonaparte?) from the time of great men, with a degree of class and royalty that just doesn't exist anymore.


----------



## LudwigVanBodewes

*Poem*



Woodduck said:


> Works of art can be great in different ways. I agree that the 5th has a terseness and unity that the more expansive 3rd does not. It's a blockbuster without compare. On the other hand, the "Eroica" has the grand sweep of an epic poem or, which is much the same thing, the biography of a hero, achieving its unity less structurally and more programmatically. The contrasts are meaningful, and I think of Beethoven's late works, including the 9th symphony, the last piano sonatas and quartets, which achieve their unity by often mysterious means, juxtaposing moods of the utmost gravity with the humorous and even the bizarre, yet somehow "adding up." I personally find the vigorous energy and the relative simplicity of the third and fourth movements of the "Eroica" just right after the drama of the first two; the funeral over, they open a window to the light and the fresh air, remembering briefly the struggle but celebrating life. No less than the first two movements, they reinterpret and deepen the established Classical model of the symphony.
> 
> I'll go along with your top five of the nine, but I feel incapable of ranking them.


Very well put. The funeral march of the Eroica, is majestic to an extent that it just leaves me in pure awe. The equivalent of seeing a hundred lions running with grandeur. It touches me in a way as if I knew this hero, king or both. I think the funeral march is what makes me like the 5th more than the 3rd. Although I actually think this is kind of an invalid statement because you should look at the Symphonies as whole.

The 5th is raw and overpowering, yet feels like a victory of your own at the same time. Sometimes it's like something far bigger than yourself is fighting adversity _with you_. The way the opening motive is driving the music forward, giving it energy, is brilliant. The mysterious crescendo leading into the march is a moment of ecstasy.

Conclusively I think I like the 5th better theoretically but when just _listening_ the story of the 3th is more compelling to me. Like you said, an epic poem about the death and victory of a hero (Bonaparte?) from the time of great men, with a degree of class and royalty that just doesn't exist anymore.


----------



## gellio

I said the 3rd wasn't better than the 5th, 6th, 7th or 9th, but they are all better than the others depending on what I'm listening to. Rocked out to Harnoncourt's 3rd earlier. Just magnificent.


----------



## Ethereality

Because it's more Beethoven-y all around. People love when Beethoven plays Beethoven and not Mozart.


----------



## 89Koechel

Ken - Hmm, a movement that sounds military-type. Well, I (and many others, of course) favor the 2nd movement of Schubert's Symphony #9, and it, at times, almost sounds "military type", almost "martial"/marching also ... in it's insistent pace. Well, and so ... if Mr. B had a military-type movement in a WALTZ time, then why would that latter time be objectionable, to you? As we know, these geniuses used the tempos and structures of THEIR day. Just a question.


----------



## KenOC

89Koechel said:


> Ken - Hmm, a movement that sounds military-type. Well, I (and many others, of course) favor the 2nd movement of Schubert's Symphony #9, and it, at times, almost sounds "military type", almost "martial"/marching also ... in it's insistent pace. Well, and so ... if Mr. B had a military-type movement in a WALTZ time, then why would that latter time be objectionable, to you? As we know, these geniuses used the tempos and structures of THEIR day. Just a question.


The post you are responding too was a bit ironic. But to be sure, marches were marches even in Beethoven's day (he wrote a few -- check his WoO numbers). It's rather difficult to march off to war to a waltz, unless you happen to have three legs! :lol:


----------



## Larkenfield

The third is suggestive of Napoleon (before Beethoven x-ed out his dedication); the fifth is suggestive of someone's galloping horse & cannons: dah-dah-dah-_bang_.


----------



## Judith

Don't think one is superior or better than the other because everyone one of his wonderful symphonies are totally different and no similarities in any of them


----------



## Weston

A bit late to this party, but as stated in Mencken's quote above, I had always heard that the insane descent to a C# in the opening theme changed music forever. The 5th was nowhere nearly as shocking.


----------

