Eroica finale

[Peter]

Interesting analysis of the finale of the Eroica.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vZ1I122JNo[/YOUTUBE]

[gprengel]

Dear Peter, thank you for this hint to this most revealing presentation of this gigantic movement! I haven't listened to the Eroica finale for quite some time and enjoyed it all the more!!

[Chris]

It's amazing how you can love music like this by just sitting back and taking it in, but there is also more to appreciate if you want to devote some time to analyzing it more closely. Truly the gift that keeps on giving.

[hal9000]

I've listened to the finale hundreds of times. Read countless analysis and watched hours of lectures on it over the years, and yet the piece still illuminates. Great video. The oboe chorale has always been one of my absolute favourite Beethovenian moments. One of the greatest movements in all of music, and Beethoven at the absolute peak of his craft.

[Michael]

This movement always fills me with wonder and admiration. The only comparable symphonic finale is that of Mozart's Jupiter.

It's fascinating to compare the Eroica movement with the finale of the Prometheus ballet which was composed only a couple of years earlier - and, of course, the Eroica Variations themselves.
B certainly got mileage out of that unlikely theme!

It's also worth remembering that the tune would have been very familiar to his Viennese audience because the ballet was quite a success and ran for nearly 30 performances.





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[Enrique]

What's all this noise about the finale. The true giant and a peak in Western music is the first movement, called by Richard Strauss a revolution in music.

[Michael]

What's all this noise about the finale. The true giant and a peak in Western music is the first movement, called by Richard Strauss a revolution in music.

Nobody would argue with that. But isn't it nice to see that tremendous final movement getting its share of the limelight?

[Peter]

What's all this noise about the finale. The true giant and a peak in Western music is the first movement, called by Richard Strauss a revolution in music.

Analysing and highlighting the great contrapuntal skill of the finale in no way takes away from any of the other movements including the first which is as you rightly say a pinnacle in Western music. Each of the movements of the momentous Eroica is revolutionary - what about that 2nd movt? I can't think of a funeral march appearing in a symphony before this, nor anything so powerful, dramatic and expressive. Beethoven's inspiration for this may have been the slow march which opens Cherubini's Hymne funèbre sur la mort du Général Hoche (1797) and Gossec's "Marche lugubre".