The work opens in medias res with two strong chords, the chief subject entering on the cellos.
There is some lovely responsive work between the wood-wind and the string bands for the second subject. The development is masterly and embraces a wonderful new subject, first entering on the oboes in the strange key of E minor. The recapitulation is approached in a marvellous way—the climax of the development being reached with a chord in C flat, the echoing reflections of which gradually die away until they reach a mere shimmering of violins, into which is suddenly thrown an unexpected entrance of the horn with the chief theme in the tonic key. Was it a slip? Of course not. Rather a stroke of genius. The movement has an immense coda, which with Beethoven at this period amounts to a second development.
The Funeral March is one of the grandest things in music. It is a pageant of a great world tribulation rather than an elegy for Napoleon, who was certainly not dead at that time. More probably Beethoven's mind was occupied with the misery and wretchedness caused by war than with the single hero of that period who reaped both glory and dishonour at one blow. The oboe subject in the Trio portion is only one of many wonderful passages in this piece. The speaking bass melodies, the majestic second subject on the strings almost bursting with eloquence, and the wonderful coda, not broken-hearted but buoyed up by the rhythm of things viewed broadly. Any attempt to connect the Scherzo and Finale with Napoleon must fail ludicrously. The Scherzo is simply one of Beethoven's finest productions in one of his bubbling, vivacious moods. The three horns have a subject which appears to be a genuine hunting call.
It is a seven-bar phrase, the echoes to which are enchantingly coloured. The common chordal formation of the duple time interjection near the end suggests something more massive, and the little coda figure, E flat, E natural, F, comes from the opening theme of the Symphony. The Finale is an amazing set of variations, the bass of the eight-bar theme being displayed and varied many times before the melody itself enters at the eightieth bar; and even then we continually hark back to the bass. It is not until the close, after the melody has been given at a slow rate on the wood-wind in its proper setting, that it is taken up triumphantly and carried victoriously into the coda. Beethoven used this particular theme four times—in a Contretanz, in his Finale to the Men of Prometheus, as the theme for his set of variations for piano, Opus 35 and in this Symphony. This curious method of writing a set of variations recurs 20 years later in the Ninth Symphony. A somewhat similar process has been adopted by Elgar in his Enigma Variations, as the theme used there is said to be the counter-subject of a concealed melody.
4th Symphony in B flat, Opus 60.
Dedicated to Count Oppensdorf.