What was special about Beethovens symphonies?
Beethoven was one of the first composers to write more than two themes in the first movement. Mozart did a little bit of that sort of thing, but not as much as Beethoven. In fact, the Barlow & Morgenstern index lists 6 themes for the first movement of the Eroica symphony. Beethoven even did this sort of thing in his first two symphonies, which are generally not considered Beethoven’s greatest. For the third movement, Beethoven was the first to substitute the minuet with a scherzo. The last movement of the Eroica Symphony is unusual in that it is a set of variations on not one, but two themes. In “Form in Tonal Music,” Douglass M. Green gets carried away with this movement (pp. 110-114). The Fifth Symphony is especially remarkable in that the two themes in the first movement are germs of only a few notes each. It is extremely difficult to compose a piece using only a couple of germy motifs; I know because I am a composer. Beethoven was probably the first major composer to employ what ar
