Schicksals
Da-Da-Da-Dum
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 in C minor, Op.67, is an iconic composition of classical music. It resounds as the keystone in the wide arch of Western musical classics. It was written when Beethoven was already hard of hearing and suffered tinnitus. His hearing had begun deteriorating in 1798 and within 16 years he was totally deaf. In 1802, he wrote to a friend, "I want to grasp fate at the throat — it shouldn't bring me down completely."
The opening four bars of the 1st Movement set a new bar (or, a new set of four of them) that introduced the so-called "Schicksals-Sinfonie" (Fate Symphony). Most musicologists consider this four-bar opening strike as a knock on the door, or the "fate motif." That is, the door of Fate, whether you wish to open it or not.
The GGGF (played short-short-short-LONG), played and then repeated, a step lower. Thus, it is foreboding, ominous, and a hint of the danger ahead. GGGF is what we hear as we enter a forest of dread. Yet, as cautionary as they sound, we proceed.
Fate Knocking or V for Victory?
French conductor Francois-Xavier Roth directed his orchestra to interpret it as a "revolutionary" work:
"The wind, the storm that blows through this work, really comes from these new philosophical aspects of the French Revolution and explodes in the finale," Roth has said. As such, its end in an exploding C major is played — not as finalizing a "symphony of fate," but as a "chant de victoire."
Vive la France!
The French, therefore, adopted Beethoven's 5th Symphony as a symbol of solidarity during resistance. During the war, French artist and designer, Maurice Van Moppès, wrote a collection of 25 songs — derisive parodies — mocking the German occupation. Published as "BBC Songs" in 1944, the back cover read: "The Songs you have heard on the radio (from London) are brought to you by your friends in the RAF." These booklets were dropped over occupied France by Royal Air Force planes.
In 1941, during the unrelenting attacks on London during the German blitz, Moppès' lyrics to the opening bars of Beethoven's 5th were "La chanson des V" (The Song of V). Broadcast on Radio-Londres on June 1, 1944, the Allied forces were sending their first warnings for France to prepare for their attack.
The opening motif of Beethoven's 5th Symphony became a powerful WWII symbol for the Allies. Coincidentally, the short-short-short-long pattern was also Morse code for the letter, "V," the acknowledged letter symbol for victory made famous by Winston Churchill's salutation.
And so, it is ironic that a German piece, a piece of very famous German music, became a percussive strain of comfort and confidence for British troops during the Blitz. Usurping German music as a battlecry was a snarky bravado in the Allies' waging war against their enemies.
As it turns out, Beethoven championed personal liberty, himself. He turned his back on personal gain in exchange for conscience when he renounced Napoleon who named himself Emperor of France. Thus ended his relationship with benefactors, such as aristocratic patron, Napoleon's brother Jerome Bonaparte, who supported him for most of his life. Following his conscience, Beethoven's music became synonymous with resistance to dictatorships.
Enter, a Guy Named Harry
Harry Crosby, the proverbial American Tom, Dick, or Harry, moved by the same moral imperative as had inspired many young people, enlisted one week after the Pearl Harbor “Day of Infamy.” Seventeen months later, he began what would end up being 37 missions over Europe as a B-17 navigator in the 100th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force. In August of 1944, Harry attended the usual morning briefing centered on their next targets. Such briefing consisted of primary ("first choice") targets, and if weather or other circumstances interfered, secondary and tertiary targets were offered the fliers.
Once Harry took off in his B-17 "Flying Fortress" and approached his primary target, a thick blanket of clouds made it inaccessible. Then, the secondary and tertiary targets washed out, too.
What now?
By protocol, an armed and ready Flying Fortress was a terrible thing to waste. Any soon-to-be failed mission was obliged to salvage something — anything — by looking for a "target of opportunity." Such a "T.O." could be a city, railroad yard, airport, or anything else where bombing it could advance the war effort. The city of Bonn qualified.
Flashback: the Night Before
The night before his mission, Harry was relaxing like he usually did, by listening to music on the RCA victrola in his barracks. On this night, the recording he had listened to was Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. He was struck by its powerful sonic 4-note introduction. Da-da-da-dum! Of course, Beethovem's genius was as evident then as it is now, from the get-go, with Fate knocking at the door or, alternatively, the V for victory sounding for the hopeful vanquishing of the Axis.
He read the back of the sleeve for the record and was intrigued to read a little history about Ludwig von. As it turned out, Beethoven had been born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770. Harry found it ironic that he was tasked with bombing, if relegated to mere targets of opportunigy, the place where Beethoven had been born and educated. Also, and a bit disturbing, Bonn was a city of learning and of civilians — plenty of families and children, museums and schools.
Do not ask for whom Fate knocks... It knocks for you.
Music of the Spheres
Harry listened very carefully — to the music and the knocking. This wasn't German music, it was the world's music. Civilization's music. Human music. Music that was our's, their's, everyone's. Mucic that generates gravitational waves into the Universe.
He checked the weather. It didn't look good for his next day's mission. It didn't look good for the primary, secondary, or tertiary targets. He dreaded the thought of "targets of oppotunity," for they were fraught with miscalculation on the human scale of collateral damage. He indeed heard Fate knocking because the weather forecasted that Bonn’s was to face a fateful opening of a terrible door, if not it's being kicked in, the next morning.
Target of Opportunity
As anticipated, the primary target was a no-go. As were the secondary and the tertiary targets. His flying squadron eyed Bonn as the destination of choice. Harry was the leader, so it required his blessing. And whatever he decided the other 63 bombers would do, too. The GGGF was a guiding earworm for him.
“We can’t bomb Bonn,” Harry radioed to the rest of his wing. “That is where Beethoven went to school.”
It was as simple as that. Fate was turned away at the door, despite the V for Victory the knocking sounded. Crosby's B-17 and his other 63 bombers on the mission flew right over Bonn, many of them with their bomb doors open, yet with their bombs undropped.
The target of opportunity was changed to reachable military railroad yards in Ruhr whose bombing would constitute "the effort to advance the war effort." Certainly, it made more sense to Harry, at that fateful moment, than a city of learning, families, children, museums, and schools.
Thanks, Harry
The city of Bonn was chosen to be the capital of postwar West Germany for one reason only: it was the only major city of Germany not utterly destroyed by the bombs of B-17s. Bonn’s fate was set by Harry's not opening Bonn’s door as a target of opportunity.
As the capital of free West Germany, Bonn played pivotal roles in all of the postwar dramas that played out after V-E day in 1945, from the Berlin Airlift to the fall of the Iron Curtain through the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
This (perhaps sentimental) story is not famous. There are no memorials or even a plaque of Harry in Bonn today. Yet, Harry's decision was a great gift, indeed, wrapped in a musical score with a pretty ribbon top tied by no one but Ludwig von Beethoven himself. The last major city of Germany to stand and function was a generous and unexpected present to the free world which led to the unification of a great nation that had been seduced by a madman. Fate and Victory, indeed, harmonized the night that Harry Crosby listened to Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
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Based on the published article by Jim Blakely, MD, son of Everett Blakesly, pilot aboard Harry Crosby's B-17 bomber.
This is from one of many that Harry Crosby chronicled in his 1993 book, “A Wing and a Prayer,” based on his 37 missions on the “Flying Fortress” called the B-17. He is will be portrayed by Anthony Boyle in the miniseries, Masters of the Air, developed by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, and streaming as a miniseries in January.
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First movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7AQeN-x_Xs