In the autumn of 1806, Beethoven was invited to attend a private performance of his Symphony No. 2 at the residence of Count Franz von Oppersdorff in Silesia (at the time, a part of Prussia situated in modern-day Poland).  The Count further commissioned Beethoven for a new symphony, which Beethoven was happy to accept.  By this time in 1806, two of his most forward-thinking large-scale works had just recently premiered but they were meeting with considerable negativity from the Viennese public: his Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” in 1804 and his sole opera Leonore (later renamed Fidelio) in 1805.  Beethoven was grateful for Count Oppersdorf’s vote of confidence, and he obliged the commission with his Symphony No. 4 which premiered the next year in 1807.

The Fourth is one of Beethoven’s most good-humored and joyful symphonies.  Oddly, the Fourth’s more genteel sentiments have been overlooked for the fieriness of both the groundbreaking Eroica Symphony and the pathos-turned-triumphant Fifth Symphony.  The techniques that Beethoven experimented with here became inspirational both for him and for composers to follow, and a listener will often be surprised to hear passages and tonal colors that foreshadow music yet to come.   Perhaps most important and musically ingenious, though, is how Beethoven experiments with musical motion – of his surprising compositional techniques used to move music forward.

 Notwithstanding the cheer that will dominate this Symphony, however, the introduction begins with stunningly beautiful mystery.  Over a static, sustained chord in the winds, the strings then slowly descend through a sequence of ethereally evocative, falling intervals.  Glowing with an inner strength while it meanders in a kind of timelessness, this sequence is not only one of the most imaginative symphonic introductions, but one that would capture the imaginations of composers to follow.  Brahms would emulate it in the fourth movement of his Second Symphony, as did Mahler in the opening of his First, for example, and Beethoven himself saw its potential and explored the idea even further in the beginning of his towering Ninth Symphony.  But here, after those drifting downward intervals, a section of pizzicatos (plucked strings) and ever-changing keys seem to wander aimlessly and in the shadows – as conductor Leonard Bernstein described it, “tip-toeing its tenuous weight . . . through ambiguous keys.” But all this mystery soon leads toward a wonderfully unexpected change of atmosphere.

Suddenly, a massive fortissimo (very loud) chord in the full orchestra stops all motion, and the strings break out with several super-fast sets of notes shooting upwards, creating a kind of musical “rip.”  These rips then lead directly into the first movement proper, Allegro vivace (fast and lively), where a series of seven of these rip motives sound hilariously as though Beethoven is musically trying to crank up the Symphony’s engine.  It’s a wonderful bit of humor, and when the symphonic machine starts moving, there’s hardly any stopping the forward momentum.  Filled with lyricism, this is surely one of Beethoven’s most freely joyful musical works.  And the upward rips will populate the musical landscape all throughout the movement, but one particularly inventive moment occurs around eight-and-a-half minutes.  The volume here drops dramatically, and as the violins repeat these short little rip motives at a whisper, the timpani rumbles in the background – it’s a remarkable moment where although the momentum has almost stopped, the sonic disturbance that the rumbling timpani creates keeps the movement’s energy moving, like electricity brimming before a thunderstorm, giving the strings a chance to rev up the engine again with volume and rhythm.  From this point forward everything bustles to the end, building up to several emphatic chords, and then the engine simply stops.

The slow second movement, Adagio, is a marvel of both motion and beauty.  For motion, Beethoven turns to a unique rhythm which later became regarded as the “timpani motive.”   The movement begins with this solo motive first heard in the second violins (but which will shortly after be heard in the timpani) – two different pitches, a fourth of an interval apart, crisply tick-tock like a heartbeat back and forth.  Although this timpani motive isn’t outrightly present in every bar, it continually finds pride of place as a solo throughout the movement.  But almost without fail, nearly every bar does indeed rustle with some variation of that motivic energy, overtop of which the winds often sing long and lovely tunes, with variations and wanderings that are as fresh and simple as any music Beethoven ever wrote.  The underlying energetic commotion, however, isn’t so much restlessness as it is quietly gleeful, as though the heart is thrumming along in sheer happiness.  Hector Berlioz was particularly mesmerized by this movement and described it in a most enchanting way:

“[It] seems to have been breathed by the archangel Michael . . . standing on the threshold of the Empyrean.”

The third movement scherzo, Allegro vivace, is a fun romp with devilish energy.  Its structure has two contrasting sections – in the first section, Beethoven creates a kind of rhythmic dissonance by fitting two-beat phrases into three-beat measures, on which, again, Berlioz whimsically commented that the “cross-rhythms have in themselves real charm, though it is difficult to explain why.”  Then appears a counter melody where the bassoon (an integral instrument in this entire Symphony) and the cellos recall the falling intervals in the strings from the Symphony’s mystery-rich introduction, but which is now humorously recast so that it seems that the downward intervals will continue forever.  The second, lovely and slower contrasting section (Trio) is a serene call-and-response, first between the winds and upper strings, then between the upper winds and lower winds and horns.  The greatest fun about this Trio, though, is how Beethoven transitions it back to the return of the first section – the strings begin to quicken up their rhythm, until suddenly they’re in the original fast tempo with the two-versus-three beat feel, and racing upwards into this next section as if they’re stumbling over themselves in excitement.  The two sections repeat again, but most comical is that when the movement comes to its seeming end, the horns then tag on two inflated notes, in an almost absurdly braggadocio manner, to which the full orchestra puts a stop to them with a final chord.

The final movement, Allegro ma non troppo (fast, but not too much so), is filled with motion, joy, and excitement.  To end such a Symphony of movement and wit, Beethoven chooses the grandest of all motion makers: perpetual motion – a technique in music that uses a rhythmic device that plays continuously (like a very fast-moving metronome).  Here this technique is launched in the very first bar by a near constant whirlwind of sixteenth notes (a typically very quick rhythm) in the strings.  The sixteenth notes rarely quit throughout the entire movement, but over top of their constancy is a delightfully relaxed, lyrical theme in the flute that comes and goes.  The sixteenth notes get passed between nearly all the instruments – listen especially for several manic solos in the bassoon and clarinet along the way – even though they’re often stomped on by several outbreaks of fortissimo (very loud) chords in the full orchestra.  But mainly, the rhythm chatters away with verve and gaiety, until almost the very end.  Just before the final bars, Beethoven brings everything to a halt, and several bars seem to question what all the madness was about – first the first violins, then bassoon, then the violins and violas, play a little bit of the flute’s relaxed lyrical theme, each of their phrases separated by fermatas (a note held indefinitely longer than written) – and then three bars of sixteenth notes catapult this great Symphony to its final, joyful conclusion.