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Those pieces all premiered together because Beethoven habitually worked on several compositions simultaneously. He began the work now known as the Fifth Symphony around 1804, just after finishing the Third Symphony. Many other projects intervened, however, including what became the Fourth Symphony, pushing this one a bit further down the list. In fact, it nearly moved down even more. Beethoven completed this c minor symphony at nearly the same time he finished the F major Symphony, the Pastorale, and, at that first concert, it was the Pastorale that bore the number five. Somewhere between performance and publication, Beethoven renumbered the two. The c minor became the Fifth, and the F major became the Sixth, as they are known 1today.
Music critics had little to say about the Fifth at its premiere. However, a year and a half later, the Allgemeine musicalische Zeitung gave a highly favorable review of another performance. The reviewer described the work this way: "Radiant beams shoot through the deep night of this region, and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy all within us except the pain of endless longing --- a longing in which every pleasure that rose up amid jubilant tones sinks and succumbs. Only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with a full- voiced general cry from all the passions, do we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits". Few reviewers today write with such descriptive energy, perhaps because few reviewers are novelists and few are composers. E. T. A. Hoffmann, author of that particular review, was both.
The Fifth Symphony has undergone much analysis since Hoffmann's attempt, and those first four notes have drawn much of the attention. Beethoven himself allegedly described them as "Fate knocking at the door". It's an evocative image, but the source on that statement, Beethoven's sometime friend Anton Schindler, was known for not letting facts get in the way of a good story. Furthermore, the supposed conversation took place years after the symphony was finished, and Beethoven had been known to say nearly anything to relieve himself of questioning pests, such as Schindler. Whether or not there is a symbolic meaning to the notes, their musical meaning is clear: G and E-flat are two of the three notes that comprise a c minor chord. Thus, with this opening motif, Beethoven bellows at his listeners the key of his symphony, then hammers the point home by repeating the rhythm throughout the work. Sometimes ominous, sometimes triumphant, the four-note pattern remains the recurring element that unites the symphony's four movements.