“Oh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell,

… Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragment: Yes! All Is Past (circa 1810)

From ancient mythology to modern stories, the idea of fate has long fascinated artists and thinkers across many cultures, but in the 19th century, the examination took on a more personal nature. For Romantic-era composers and artists, the growing interest in individualism and self-determination turned fate from an abstract idea into a foe. Now, it was something to confront, to fight against, or to surrender to.

In music, fate themes are often built using rhythmic, repeated groups of notes that resemble a knocking or the beating of a drum. In fact, the now-ubiquitous personification of fate as a knock at the door may have originated with Beethoven’s landmark depiction in his Fifth Symphony.

To begin this program—one that culminates in Beethoven’s monumental exploration of fate—the ASO offers another take on the theme, one that was undoubtedly influenced by Beethoven (who wasn’t?). Beethoven and Verdi’s depictions of fate have a lot in common: both works open with startlingly ominous declarations, followed by themes that flit nervously through the orchestra, driven by an insistent pulse that evokes a sense of inescapability. However, their responses to the question of surrender versus resistance to fate lead to very different conclusions.

Overture to La forza del destino (1862)

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

Run Time: Approx. 9 minutes

Verdi’s opera The Power of Fate (or The Force of Destiny) tells the story of doomed lovers Don Alvaro and Leonora, whose secret and opposed marriage sets off a chain of tragic events. Despite their desperate efforts—Leonora goes so far as to join a monastery and sequester herself in a remote cave —the ill-fated pair cannot escape crossing paths, and every reunion brings disaster. Though deeply in love, they are ultimately not destined to be together, and they are eventually separated by death.

Verdi begins his overture with three great brass chords that leave no doubt about how this story will end. After repeating the chords once more, he immediately introduces his fate theme—a turbulent, churning figure whose cyclical nature feels like a never-ending ride, a carousel with no exit. Presented in pulsing repetitions, the repeated motive rises three times before descending and beginning again. As the energy builds toward another repetition of the powerful brass chords, the orchestra begins to feel like an unstoppable force.

Though Verdi moves through several of the Opera’s major themes throughout the overture–touching on the tender love of the central couple, Leonora’s adoration for her father, and a few colorful battle scenes–the fate theme is never far away. It’s woven throughout the piece in different voices, sometimes strung together into a rhythmic ostinato that underpins the narrative. Omnipresent and unshakable, it haunts every corner of the music, despite its valiant efforts to move on—just as the lovers themselves try, and fail, to outrun their destiny.

 

Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major (1848)

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Run Time: Approx. 23 minutes

Franz Liszt was a Hungarian pianist, composer, and conductor. He was one of several composers born in the five-year period between 1809 and 1813 to achieve significant fame—a group that also included Mendelssohn (1809), Schumann (1810), Chopin (1811), Liszt himself (1811), Wagner (1813), and Verdi (1813). Among his piano teachers was Antonio Salieri, a name that will be recognizable to anyone familiar with the film Amadeus.

A virtuoso pianist, Liszt was one of a rare few musicians and artists to enjoy widespread recognition during their lifetime. Long before there was “Beatlemania,” there was “Lisztomania.” Sir Charles Hallé, another celebrated pianist of the era, described his performance, saying, “Such marvels of executive skill and power [as Liszt’s] I could never have imagined… Chopin carried you with him into a dreamland, in which you would have liked to have dwelled forever. Liszt was all sunshine and dazzling splendor, subjugating his hearers with a power that none could withstand.”

Liszt achieved great fame from a young age, touring extensively and drawing adoring crowds wherever he went. He was one of the first true rock stars in the modern sense of the word—his playing reportedly moved audiences to ecstasy. Fans wore his likeness on their lapels, scrambled for broken piano strings like fly balls at a baseball game, and some even attempted to obtain locks of his hair. Perhaps modern audiences can take comfort in knowing that this kind of fan behavior has been around for centuries.

The second piano concerto was written during the height of Liszt’s concertizing career. While in manuscript, he referred to the work as Concerto symphonique, a term often used for solo-instrument works where the orchestra is included as a more equal partner, rather than acting as backup band.

This concerto is also unique in its form—it breaks from the standard musical structures expected of Classical and Romantic-era concertos and instead unfolds as one continuous work without clearly delineated movements. You might find yourself in the second movement without realizing it or knowing exactly when the transition occurred. This lack of rigid structure gives the piece an improvisatory feel, as it progresses episodically from scene to scene like a narrative story.

Another fascinating element of the work is Liszt’s harmonic language—the chords he chooses and the order in which he deploys them. There’s an unexpected quality to the way he changes keys. In most music, orchestral or otherwise, it’s easy to guess what the next chord will be—Western tonality is designed precisely to set up expectations that lead to a satisfying conclusion, much like correctly guessing the punchline of a joke. There’s even a name for a musical phrase that ends contrary to expectation: the deceptive cadence. But Liszt leaps from key to key so rapidly—staying in one just long enough to transition to the next—that we can no longer guess where he might go next. How, then, in this labyrinth of key centers, can we possibly stay grounded? The answer lies in the unifying theme introduced at the very beginning of the piece, which returns in various forms throughout the work, like a beacon in the night.

In some sense, Liszt achieves with this work what a great stand-up comedian does: he continually subverts expectations, never resolving a phrase as expected, and in doing so, undermines the ability to form expectations at all. Yet, through constant callbacks, he creates a thread of connection throughout the music that ferries the listener along. All the material is related, and one can feel this even if not conscientiously aware of it. All this while serving up some of the most virtuosic piano writing in the repertoire.

This artistic audacity made Liszt something of a revolutionary. Austrian music critic Eduard Hanslick famously referred to him, along with contemporaries Berlioz and Wagner, as one of the “most offensive and lunatic” composers of all time. But if there’s one thing music history teaches us, it’s that the “offensive lunatics” are often the very figures who usher in the most revolutionary innovations. Without Liszt, we couldn’t have had composers like Mahler, Strauss, or Stravinsky.  And we could not have had Liszt without first having Beethoven.

 

Symphony No. 5 in C Minor (1808)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Run Time: Approx. 35 minutes

“I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.”

—Ludwig van Beethoven, 1801

Even if you think you’ve never heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, you know it. It bursts forth with what have become the four most famous notes in music history. Though you may recognize these four notes, you might not know what they mean. They are the fate theme, and while composers throughout history have written many such motifs, none have conjured quite the fear and awe that Beethoven’s did. These famous notes are the reaper personified in sound—the ghost of Christmas past, the witches from Macbeth—and they are knocking at the door.

In addition to the usual ruminations on man’s relationship to predetermination that occupied early 19th-century artists, Beethoven had an additional reason to be concerned with his destiny. About ten years prior, he began to notice a ringing in his ears. By the time he began sketches for the Fifth Symphony, it was apparent that his hearing was in severe decline. He would soon be deaf. It’s difficult to imagine a more devastating realization for a musician, but in the face of an affliction that would have taken many people out of the game, Beethoven refused to be waylaid. He doggedly continued composing for the rest of his life, even after losing his hearing completely.

Though we now see Beethoven’s story as a valiant triumph of will, it was, for many years, a source of intense emotional torment, even leading him to contemplate suicide. In an 1802 letter to his brothers, now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, he wrote, “but what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair; a little more and I would have put an end to my life.”

Yet, despite what he saw as an immeasurably cruel twist of fate, Beethoven also believed he was destined to be a creator of great art, and that sense of divine purpose ultimately won out over his pain. “Only Art it was that withheld me,” he wrote, “ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce.”

The first movement erupts from the orchestra with alarming ferocity—those famous four notes seemingly designed to jolt a complacent audience to attention. This will not be like anything you’ve heard before, it seems to say. Pay attention. Beethoven wastes no time on an introduction, the story opens in the midst of confrontation. We meet our villain: fate.

One of the most remarkable features of Beethoven’s music is his ability to take a tiny morsel of melody and develop it into something enormous—enough to build an entire symphony on. We see this again and again in his work, and it’s exactly what he does in the Fifth Symphony. He takes those four notes and makes them dance, makes them sing, makes them rage. He mines them for every characteristic possibility and weaves them through every movement.

The first movement presents an obsessive repetition of the opening fate motif. It drives through various pitch levels, punctuated by abrupt stops that interrupt its restless momentum. Like the Verdi overture, it seems to roil, bubbling through the orchestra until it crashes forward again and again.

The second movement offers a contemplative respite from the tempest. It also includes moments of triumph and joy, sounded out in upward-reaching brass fanfares. Nods to the fate theme are more subtle here, but certainly present—most notably in the music’s constant yielding of major thirds (a very joyful interval) to minor thirds (more dour), the same interval that scaffolds the fate theme. As in Verdi’s overture, fate never strays too far.

Just like the first movement, the Scherzo is relentlessly focused on a single theme, once again derived from those opening four notes. Here, the character is raucous and bombastic, full of hunting horn calls and militaristic flourishes. But Beethoven still holds to the definition of Scherzo, or “joke.” He intersperses the excitement with moments of humor that are almost cartoonish—musical wink amid the storm as the theme tiptoes through the woodwinds.

From one such moment of levity comes an unexpected transition directly into the finale, one of the most victorious in all of music. Structurally, it’s unusual for a work set in a minor key to end in a major one. With this piece, Beethoven begins in C minor—a key that, for him, held the darkest, most dramatic connotations—and ends in C major, a clear progression from darkness to light. Also symbolic is his transition from a descending figure in the opening theme to an ascending one in the finale, another classic device to represent redemption. But even without knowing any of the technical aspects that go into the symphony, it’s impossible to miss the cinematic journey Beethoven crafts.

The Fifth Symphony is not just a rumination on fate, but  a seizing of the reins. It’s a declaration of self-determination. Over the course of the work, Beethoven moves from fiery torment to a conclusion full of triumph and joy. Along the way, he transforms the fate theme again and again, bending it to his will. In this world he has created, he is the master of fate; he has indeed seized it by the throat.

–  Valerie Sly, 2025