Run Time: Approx. 8 minutes

In the years following the French Revolution, Beethoven greatly admired Napoleon Bonaparte. Many, including Beethoven at first, saw him as a self-made revolutionary who would bring democracy to Europe. As the Napoleonic Wars approached, Beethoven was finishing his third symphony, which he had reverently inscribed with the subtitle “Intitolata Bonaparte.” The story goes that in 1804, when Beethoven learned that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of France, the composer became furious, violently scratching “Bonaparte” off the top of his manuscript and replacing it with “Eroica” or “Heroic.” “Now he, too, will tread underfoot all the rights of man,” he declared, and “indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men [and] become a tyrant!”

Unfortunately, Beethoven’s original biographers Anton Schindler and Ferdinand Ries were somewhat prone to exaggerate. We may never know what truly happened, although the surviving manuscript certainly bears the evidence of one very scratched-out “Bonaparte.” What we do know is that Beethoven was strongly inclined toward democratic ideas, once writing, “To do good whenever one can, to love liberty above all else, never to deny the truth, even though it be before the throne.”

Beethoven was justified in being upset; Napoleon spent the following decade invading across Europe, including twice in his homeland of Austria. The 1809 attack on Vienna forced the composer to evacuate, sending him to his brother for refuge, where he spent much of that time with pillows over his ears, desperately trying to protect his remaining hearing.

Just a few months later, Beethoven was approached to compose the incidental music for a play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the heroic life of Lamoral, Count of Egmont, from the Low Countries (now known as the Netherlands), who takes a valiant stand against oppression, laying down his life in the name of liberty. It must have been a no-brainer.

With his overture, Beethoven prepares the audience for Goethe’s politically charged story. The heavy burden of oppression weighs on the orchestra as it plays the opening chords—slow and restrained, as if the music is being forced out while shackled. Sighing sounds in the woodwinds create a sense of lament. When the main theme begins, it’s tentative at first, just a flicker of an idea—the faint hint that a better world might be possible. Over time, it gains strength and momentum, becoming a powerful force—until, in a burst of joy and victory, it shifts from minor to major. Now, the plodding figures from the beginning have become grand declarations, and a flurry of strings pushes the orchestra toward a lively, triumphant ending.

The work has become a symbol of populist movements worldwide, even serving as an unofficial anthem of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Bold brass fanfares herald Enlightenment ideals as victorious above all else. As Patrick Henry stated just 20 years earlier, and half a world away, “Give me liberty or give me death.”