They were walking freely in family groups unafraid through the suddenly accessible western part of the city. Outside my window, the Berlin sidewalks were packed with East Berliners. When I awoke in a hotel on the Kurfurstendamm, I turned on the television set and saw the Berlin Philharmonic and Daniel Barenboim playing precisely this movement of the Seventh. I had been flown to Germany to cover the story. “On one occasion, this music was the perfect soundtrack to life at its most exceptional,” he continues. He pauses as the music swells in the background, as interpreted by the Vienna Philharmonic. At eight minutes, its duration coincided with the repeat segment of the morning news that I had no desire to hear again, so I would drive across the Potomac, inching through rush-hour traffic amused by the contrast of the high, heroic early-19th-century drama of Beethoven and the low banality of my late-20th-century commute.” “One year, I kept this piece cued up in my car cassette machine. In the background, you could hear the seductive pulse of the Allegretto. I’m no music critic, not even a musician, but this music means something special to me, with its theme of struggle and progress, of adversity and ultimate triumph,” said radio host Robert Siegel, during a 2003 broadcast commentary on the Beethoven on NPR’s All Things Considered. It’s the second movement, the Allegretto, from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. 92, continues to captivate listeners. Why is the music world so hooked?

Sudden shifts in dynamics and jagged modulations intensify the feeling of unceasing spark and pulse.Two hundred years after its debut, the transcendent Allegretto of Beethoven’s Symphony No. It then gives rise to a lively Vivace that begins the symphony’s dancing rhythms (with no fewer than 61 repetitions of the note E along the way). An expansive introduction is marked Poco sostenuto, with long, ascending scales. This symphony’s bold, peppery repetitions, which took some of Beethoven’s contemporaries by surprise, begin in its first movement. It’s all we can do to keep from jumping out of our seats with leaping gestures that match our feelings about the music as we listen. Despite the appeal of this symphony’s elemental melodies, its powerful rhythmic drive is the work’s emotional driver, thrilling us with a feeling of palpable freedom, like riding in a convertible with the top down on a beautiful, empty road. Its exuberance makes it seem like a symphony of joyful first movements and exciting climaxes, with scarcely a relaxed moment. Yet “fun” is a word often seen in critical appreciations of his Symphony No. When we think of Beethoven as the Promethean composer who broke boundaries and reinvented forms, his symphonies immediately come to mind the word “fun” does not.

Theme from beethoven 7th symphony