Symphony no. 5 in C minor, op. 67

Anton Schindler, Beethoven's secretary and an unreliable witness, reported that the composer said of them: thus fate knocks at the door. Mahler preferred a different reading — that Beethoven might have said, simply, this is me. The sketches go back to 1804. He worked on it seriously in 1807 and finished in 1808, interrupted by the first Fidelio, the Appassionata, three quartets and the Violin Concerto, and writing the Sixth alongside it. The premiere, on 22 December 1808 in Vienna, was a disaster of a kind that would now end a career: four hours of new music, one rehearsal, a freezing hall, and — a detail worth keeping — the two symphonies numbered the other way round on the programme, so that the Pastoral was announced as the Fifth. It was published the following year with a double dedication, to Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky. E. T. A. Hoffmann's review did the rest. What the piece actually does is simpler than its reputation: it takes a rhythmic cell too short to be a theme and refuses to let go of it for forty minutes. In the Second World War the opening figure was taken up for the Allied V for Victory campaign: three short notes and a long one are the letter V in Morse code.