Symphony no. 1

With his very first symphony, Beethoven redefined this genre, already well established in the early 19th century and popular in public concerts: from the outset, the work stands on its own, and is not attached to an opus of three or six compositions (as was still the case with the String Quartets Op. 18). It is also characterized by an individual, even "superior" idea. Although tone and gesture are still imbued with the conventions shaped by Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven is already asserting his originality from the very first bar of his First Symphony in C major, Op. 21: the introduction to the first movement is not a flash in the pan, it is slow and leads directly to the subdominant via a seventh chord, passes through the sixth degree (also via a seventh chord) before finally reaching the dominant of G major in the fourth bar.

To contemporaries with a keen ear (if not an absolute ear), this introduction must have seemed revolutionary at the time of the successful premiere on April 2, 1800, all the more so as C major is not truly defined as a tonic until much later, with the arrival of the allegro. And that's not all: the finale is also preceded by a brief adagio in which Beethoven does nothing more than decline the dominant scale note for note. An enchanting simplicity of genial inspiration.

Today, it's all but forgotten that this first symphony was preceded by two abandoned attempts. Beethoven had, for example, begun sketching a movement in C minor while in Bonn (111 bars have survived), and there are sketches of another symphony in C major dating from 1794-96 (listed in the catalog as "Unv 2"). Beethoven would reuse the latter sketches a few years later when writing his Op. 21: in the finale, he takes up in modified form the theme originally intended for the first movement. How strange.

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