Any discussion of program music - music designed to paint a picture or tell a story - has to give special attention to Beethoven's Sixth. There can be no doubt that the symphony is intended to evoke an array of concrete images from nature. Beethoven makes this intention clear in his choice of subtitle ("Pastoral" - and the word choice is his, not that of a publisher or critic), then elaborates on his message in the painstaking descriptive comments accompanying each movement title. At one point the composer considered making his headings even wordier, then rejected the idea, jotting in his notebook, "Anyone who has an idea of country life can make out for himself the intentions of the author, without a lot of titles."

Interestingly, Beethoven decided at the last minute to downplay the symphony's pictorial element, probably out of a desire to distance his work from certain sensationalistic musical paintings that had become the rage in early 19th century France and Austria. In the handbill for the premiere performance in Vienna on December 22, 1808, he advised his audience that his symphony was meant to be "more an expression of feeling than painting." But rather than change anything, the disclaimer only added a new dimension to what was already there. More than "just" a series of pictures, the Pastoral Symphony now became an expression of artistic feeling as well. Nature as depicted in Beethoven's Sixth now emerged as simultaneously subjective and objective, personal and universal.

The symphony is innovative in form, having five movements instead of the traditional four, with movements 3, 4 and 5 played without pause, as a single dramatic scenario.

I. Awakening of cheerful feelings on arriving in the country: Allegro ma non troppo. The symphony begins with an innocent, hopeful four-measure theme, its medium-fast 2/4 meter suggestive of footsteps-perhaps the tramping feet of an outdoor rambler hiking through forests and fields. Though scant, the material contained in these few bars provides Beethoven with enough bricks and mortar to build an entire movement. "Little melodic fragments of the opening theme keep repeating themselves in a sort of naive joy at their own beauty and charm," Edward Downes poetically observes, "with subtle variations of tonality and instrumental color, like the play of light and shade in nature itself."

II. Scene by the brook: Andante molto mosso. The symphony's slow movement combines visual images with artistic self-expression. Undulating strings evoke the picture of a rippling brook and, at the same time, seem to express an etat `d,ame of repose and inner peace. The highlight of the movement is a cadenza for woodwinds featuring the songs of three birds, their identities written into the score by the composer: "nightingale," quail," and "cuckoo."

III. Merry gathering of country folk: Allegro. The standard symphonic format established by Haydn and familiar to Beethoven's audience calls for a scherzo in this spot and Beethoven provides one. The scene fills with outdoor dancers as Beethoven serves up two rustic dances in triple meter, followed by a foot-stomping peasant's dance in duple meter, played by the full orchestra. The section in triple time returns, building toward a frenzied climax, but suddenly yielding to a change in mood, as seemingly aimless string lines create an air of puzzled expectancy, setting the stage for movement 4.

IV. Thunder storm; tempest: Allegro. Hector Berlioz, France's greatest Romantic composer and one of its finest music critics as well, recorded his ecstatic response to this movement in prose worthy of Chateaubriand or Victor Hugo."I despair of being able to give an idea of this prodigious movement. It must be heard in order to appreciate the degree of truth and sublimity that descriptive music may attain in the hands of a man like Beethoven. Listen to those gusts of wind, laden with rain; those sepulchral groanings of the basses; those shrill whistles of the piccolo, announcing that a fearful tempest is about to burst. The hurricane approaches, swells. An immense chromatic run, starting from the highest notes of the orchestra, goes burrowing down into its lowest depths, seizes the basses, carries them along, and ascends again, writhing like a whirlwind that levels everything in its path. Then the trombones burst forth, the thunder of the timpani redoubles its fury. It is no longer merely a wind and rain storm, it is a frightful cataclysm, the universal deluge, the end of the world. Truly this produces vertigo, and many persons listening to this storm do not know whether the emotion they experience is pleasure or pain."

V. Shepherd's song; happy, thankful feelings after the storm: Allegretto. As the thunder recedes, a shepherd's song of thanks rises from a solo clarinet, promptly echoed by a solo horn. This theme then passes to the violins, who transform it, with variations, into the central theme of the finale. Religious feeling permeates the conclusion, an element underscored by Beethoven's handwritten insertion into the score, "Herr, wir danken dir" - Lord, we thank thee.