Above :Benjamin Northey… Photo courtesy Sydney Symphony Orchestra
In the third of this year’s excellent Listen To This concerts, on Tuesday September 15, conductor Benjamin Northey and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra dissected Beethoven’s Symphony No 7. The orchestra played short excerpts from the symphony while Northey provided explanations in, as it was billed, “a concert helping you to understand, explore and listen to orchestral music like never before.” Conductor and orchestra had similarly taken apart Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 5 at a concert I attended in March, and also Elgar’s Cello Concerto in June.
Northey echoed the composer Richard Wagner who said that one of Beethoven’s seventh symphony’s vital characteristics was “rhythm for rhythm’s sake”. It’s indisputable that No 7 is characterised by relentless rhythmic energy; it’s certainly the most rhythmic of Beethoven’s nine symphonies.
I think it’s important to mention that Beethoven himself, at the time of the symphony’s completion in 1812 and premiere in Vienna on December 8, 1813, regarded it as one of his best works. Furthermore he maintained a high opinion of this work throughout the rest of his life, even while audiences and critics alike were debating the merits of its eccentric rhythms and energetic drive.
It’s said that if you ask someone what their favourite Beethoven symphony is, they’re most likely to say the Fifth, or the Ninth. It’s possible that some may underestimate the Seventh, as Beethoven reverted to a relatively small orchestra, no larger than that of his Symphony No 1. But ask a classical musician the same question, and a surprising number of them will nominate the Seventh. Wagner once again was effusive: “Here every impetuosity, every longing and ranting of the heart becomes a blissful exuberance of joy.”
Northey stressed that emotions were high at the premiere in 1813, as it took place at an important juncture in European history. The concert was a fundraiser for soldiers who were wounded in the Battle of Hanau, which took place when Napoleon’s 100,000-strong French army was retreating towards the safety of France after losing the famous Battle of Leipzig on October 16-19, 1813. The latter, with 500,000 combatants involved, was the largest and bloodiest battle in European history prior to the First World War, with armies from Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden participating against Napoleon.
Let’s return to the music itself. Northey made the point that the work is also about Beethoven’s penchant for repetition. Beethoven understood that, if he repeated something enough times, the musical idea he was stressing could not be ignored.
In order to support his thesis further, Northey borrowed from other musics in order to throw light on Beethoven’s rhythmic devices in the symphony. For example, Northey asked the SSO to play the famous first four bars of Beethoven’s Symphony No 5, featuring the distinctive four-note “short-short-short-long” motif.
Northey also played an excerpt from the orchestral score for the 1978 film Superman: The Movie, written by the then fledgling American composer John Williams. It was clear that Williams’ somewhat loud and repetitive music for this film, was influenced by Beethoven’s legendary “da-da-da-dum” or “da da da DUM” figures in the fifth symphony.
Northey made the point that Beethoven’s rhythmic approaches were also felt in the later works of many other composers, for example in Stravinsky’s famous 2013 ballet and orchestral work Rite of Spring, as the excerpt played by the SSO showed.
Northey’s analysis was further supported by the nature of the second movement of Beethoven’s symphony, the famous Allegretto. We know that this movement was an instant sensation at the 1813 premiere, with the audience demanding that it be played again as an encore. According to Northey, this remains one of the most loved movements ever written in classical music.
Northey pointed out that, consistent with Beethoven’s overall purpose, this movement also has rhythm as its defining feature, as a five-note passage is repeated “in stubbornly relentless fashion”. What I found fascinating in the SSO’s version of this movement, was the beautiful way in which Beethoven incrementally modified the passages in turn which he wrote for the orchestra to play over this repetitive rhythm.
Northey encouraged the audience to hear how Beethoven layers the music here, referring to the fugue being played in this movement, as Beethoven elaborates on the primary rhythmic theme whereby different sections in the orchestra imitate the subject in turn.
While that terminology makes absolute sense to me, I still prefer to hear Beethoven’s orchestral writing here as improvisational, just as a great jazz musician modifies his solo as he proceeds with subtle variations to his preceding passages. While my thoughts here may be somewhat fanciful, that’s primarily how I hear the music. To my way of thinking, this is just another example of how some of the great 19th Century classical composers anticipated the music that was to emerge in the 20th Century.
I liked very much the gentle sound which the SSO adopted in playing this movement. The term Allegretto is defined as a tempo that is moderately fast, light, and slightly slower than Allegro. In my view some conductors have taken this definition too literally, and played this movement in too strident a fashion for my taste, thereby undermining the rather hymn-like nature of the music which I believe Beethoven intended. I was gratified that the SSO as conducted by Northey captured the melancholia of a funeral march, which is why this movement is still often played at funerals even in today’s world.
The symphony’s third movement, often referred to as a Scherzo, but entitled Presto, was characterised by Northey as a movement where Beethoven continually surprises us, with frequent stops and starts. My own feeling is that Beethoven here is primarily having fun with the listener with a lighter movement that is meant to contrast with the relatively grave second movement.
In his discussion of the fourth movement, the Allegro con brio, Northey played an excerpt from the William Tell Overture from Rossini’s famous opera, written in 1828, 15 years after Beethoven’s symphony. Once again this fortified Northey’s thesis that Beethoven’s rhythmic innovations substantially influenced later composers.
It was here that Northey mentioned another famous quote from Wagner, who described Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 as the “apotheosis of the dance”. Northey said that this was because Beethoven showed in his writing a working familiarity with the folk music of the times.
I’ve since discovered more detail about this aspect of Beethoven’s work. Apparently he spent some three years from 1809 deeply immersed in arranging traditional Scottish, Irish, and Welsh folk songs, commissioned by the Scottish publisher George Thomson. Beethoven wrote 179 such traditional folk song arrangements, which therefore equipped him musically to insert folk elements into his symphony. “This intense work”, we’re told, “required [Beethoven] to internalise the modal structures, rustic phrasing, and dance rhythms of British and European folk traditions, elements that directly bled into the rustic, dance-like vitality of the Seventh Symphony.”
A final comment in relation to my perhaps fanciful suggestion that Beethoven anticipated some of the music that emerged in the 20th Century. If one listens carefully to the fourth movement, one notices, with the music in 4/4, how he emphasises the off-beat, that is the second and fourth beats in each bar, as the music builds up in excitement. This resembles the sort of time-feel one hears in today’s R & B genre. Even in the early 19th Century, Beethoven understood what was needed for the music to get off the ground, and establish an infectious groove.
In his day, criticisms of Beethoven’s seventh symphony were many and varied. After hearing a performance of the symphony the German composer Carl Maria von Weber, who was active in the late classical and early romantic eras, wrote “[Beethoven is] ripe for the madhouse!” Clara Schumann’s father, Friedrich Wieck, thought that “this symphony – particularly the first and the last movements – could only have been written in a state of inebriation.” The English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham said of the third movement: “What can you do with it? It’s like a lot of yaks jumping about.”
Personally, I’ve found that a more detailed knowledge of what Beethoven was thinking when he wrote this symphony, has immensely deepened my appreciation of what a great genius he was. I thank Benjamin Northey for providing much of the clarity I needed for my perspective to evolve. Although Beethoven conducted the premiere in 1813, this was at a stage in his life when his hearing had deteriorated to such an extent that it was completely deficient; one wonders how he was able to conduct the orchestra under that circumstance. With huge difficulty I imagine. It’s very sad to contemplate that state of affairs.
Northey’s comment about Beethoven being 41 years of age and completely deaf when he wrote this symphony was very powerful. He said that Beethoven only ever heard this piece in his head but the audience will be able to hear it when the SSO plays it in full several times from October 14-17, under the baton of conductor Donald Runnicles. That’s something to look forward to.
Of the hundreds of comments about Beethoven’s seventh which one finds on the internet, I very much like this one: “How fortunate we are that this immortal music has been preserved and is recorded with ever better orchestration! Maestro Beethoven had such horrific struggles with his health yet left us with a legacy of such magnificence! Every time we listen to such a masterpiece, we are taken to a higher spiritual level!”
This concert was part of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s “Listen To This” series. It took place on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, and featured the conductor Benjamin Northey who conducted the SSO and analysed Beethoven’s Symphony No 7.
