The music peaks with a sense of urgency, harmonically unsuited for a recapitulation. The tension is punctuated by the oboes and bassoons until the violins arrive holding us in a state of suspension. Gradually the
dynamic level is reduced (eventually to ppp) while preserving the tension. And then it happens. A lone french horn announces the recapitulation...in the wrong key. Or so it would seem. The nineteenth century ear could not reconcile Beethoven's choice of harmony at this crucial passage and throughout most of that era it was 'corrected'.
The discomfort was caused the fact that the strings are suggesting the dominant seventh chord while the horn is in the tonic. Simply put, Beethoven is in two keys at once, a devise he made use of in many of his works.
Grove, in his The Nine Symphonies of Beethoven, points out, "Fétis and the Italian conductors used to take it as if the notes of the horn were written in the tenor clef, and read B , D, B, F (chord of the dominant)". Click below to hear the Fétis 'correction' in the dominant followed by Beethoven's original. |
