3.2 The fundamental structure and the form

Although Example 10a contains no more than the notes of the fundamental structure with an indication of the bar numbers where I think they occur, it nevertheless identifies some important aspects of the form. The whole of the exposition is seen as a journey from tonic to dominant, with the C maintained as the focus of interest in the melodic lines throughout. Let's look for a moment at the end of the exposition. The structural C is established in bar 90: in the score you can see this note arrive in the violin and flute parts, after a long prolongation of the dominant chord in bars 83–9. The last section of the exposition, from bar 90 onwards, focuses in its melodic line first on E, alternating with its neighbour note F, with alternating C major and G major seventh chords; until this E climbs through the arpeggio in bars 96 to 100 to reach the C again.

Example 11 Beethoven, Symphony No.8, first movement, bars 90–103: (a) (top) Background graph (b) (bottom) Middleground graph

Let's return now to Example 10a, and look further at what its picture of the fundamental structure means. The graph analyses the whole of the development section as leading up, harmonically speaking, to the re-establishment of the tonic F major at bar 198. This is done through a few modulations to keys not terribly distant from F major, aiming towards the long dominant pedal from bar 176 onwards; even the D flat chords around bar 168 are part of a middleground feature in the bass which forms a neighbour note to the C dominant pedal. When the tonic harmony arrives to inaugurate the recapitulation at bar 198, the of the fundamental line is re-introduced at the top of the melody. In my graph, the whole recapitulation is then analysed as keeping the unresolved.

To consider what my analysis means here, look at the end of the recapitulation section, bars 280 to 300, which are parallel to the bars in the exposition that you have just listened to. You can see that this is almost a note-for-note repeat, in fact, transposed from C major to F major. My analysis claims that, despite the very emphatic arrival of the F and the tonic harmony from bar 287 onwards, there is no sense of completion for the movement as a whole here, because there has been no prominent and decisive fall from to in the upper voice. So we are not surprised at bar 301 when the repeated Fs continue in the bassoons, because we are still waiting for this closure.

The structural descent, when it occurs, seems very prominent to me. The first subject reappears ff at bar 323, where the C is emphasised in the violins, doubled by clarinets and bassoons. The melody then comes to rest in bar 332 on B♭, harmonised by a C major chord, where there is even a pause marked. This prominence of B♭has been a feature throughout the movement, and here it acquires great weight aurally. Straight away in bar 333, we hear the B♭leading to an A in the violins, as we would expect; this is no more than a passing foreground feature, though, and an exhilarating passage builds up from here, with the melody slowly rising from bar 341 until the tonic harmony is reached again at bar 351. I have based my analysis on two features of the harmony at this bar: first, there is no dominant chord in bar 350 (despite the C in the bass in the last beat), so this cannot be the final cadence of the movement even though it is the loudest arrival of the tonic anywhere at fff and secondly, although the violin line rises right up to a C at the end of bar 350, the tonic arpeggios at bars 351–3 give great prominence to A, the first note in the violin line. I have therefore analysed the whole of bars 333–51 as a prolongation of the descent B♭–A in the top voice. This makes the dominant chord at bar 354 (repeated in bar 358) the structural dominant for the whole movement. So the G at the top of the violin parts in these bars is the second-to-last note of the fundamental line, and the final note arrives at bars 364–5, alternately played as the top note in strings then woodwind. The fact that this F is approached by the leading note in bars 362–3 is typical of the close of a long movement, and does two things: it emphasises that the tonic is ready to be reached, because the structural descent has already happened, and it serves to spread out the notes of this descent evenly, making the whole section balanced and satisfying (the notes come in bars 323, 332, 351, 354/8 and 364).

Whilst this is not the only way to analyse large musical structures, there are some aspects of Beethoven's craft – such as his mastery in creating a sense of achievement and fulfilment at the conclusion of a movement – which are often noted by listeners, but which seem to escape most attempts at analysis. If you have found this section of the course at all convincing, you should feel that we have at least approached one answer to the question of how Beethoven accomplishes his artistic effect.