Ta Ta Ta Taaa

The guy who wrote this 4 notes catchy riff would be 250 years old this year, and "would" because it is known that he was baptized in December 17th 1770 but there is some controversy on his birthday. Most people know this symphony from Beethoven because of its initial eight notes of the 1st movement which is marked as ? allegro con brio ? which means ? fast with vigor ?.

If you take time to go through the complete movement of Beethoven's first movement of Symphony in C minor No. 5 Op. 67 you will discover a second underneath melody line which is slower and at ascending chord progression which runs concurrently with the weight of strings and timpani played ? Ta Ta Ta Taaa ?. The very first performance was in Vienna in 1808 and it was conducted by Ludwig van Beethoven himself.

The main melody figure suggests an impetuous and careless feeling, and life will be riskier and this sometimes will lead us to be defeated. The other underneath melodic is slower and it is played concurrently with the main figure using same notes suggesting that we have to overcome the defeat and get up to get again moving on. Maybe Beethoven wanted to reflect the back on forth of live with concurrent images of impetuosity and resilience which we all have in our lives.

Some simplistic criticism argues that this piece alludes to an imagetic of death and its darkness to convey the reflection on the ephemerity of life, they also claim that this is the reason why Beethoven had chosen C minor, and he used a minor tone again almost 20 years after in the the last Ninth Symphony that he wrote at D minor.

Indeed I can even somehow agree with this analysis but in despite of this aesthetic discussion we have a lot of Beethoven’s nature here - he putting himself moving forward, and despite of the fact that sometimes life put him on stuck.

"Ta Ta Ta Taaa" - one of the most famous riffs of western music

There is also considerable debate among conductors as to the manner of playing the four opening bars. Some of the them take it strict in allegro; and other goes putting weighty playing on it under a little bit slower tempo. In fact Beethoven wrote it open-ended by specifying the second note lengthened but he did not specify how to play the longer fourth note.

Some of you may feel it heavier. Some of you may feel it faster. Some of you may have a more punctuated impression. And all this may change depending on the interpretation you will go through. Truth is that the famous motif commands listener attention but it worths listening to the general "design" of the complete movement on which there is some recapitulation form that Beethoven wrote by repeating the first two bars to expand the overall theme on which he uses a lyrical passage based on main theme.

As other amazing music throughout the history its real meaning will emerge with something inside you and at the end the meaning format will be different depending on the moment that people is passing through and its context. Maybe Beethoven was a true genius because he was able to capture through his music some quintessential aspects of life as it is the back and forth movement of life ... everybody's life which are amazingly represented in this movement.

I wish you "Ta Ta Ta Taaa" for 2021!