Symphony no. 6 "Pastoral" in F major, op. 68

The Pastoral was heard first on 22 December 1808 at the Theater an der Wien, in a four-hour concert in an unheated hall that also gave the world the Fifth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy. Beethoven headed each of the five movements with a title — arrival in the country, scene by the brook, merry gathering, storm, shepherds' song — and added a warning that has been quoted ever since: more an expression of feeling than painting. He kept the birdcalls anyway, naming nightingale, quail and cuckoo in the score.