In spite of pages of mere routine, the music still has a certain freshness and a quaint beauty. The symphony will always remain a charming work with trivial passages, not to be compared as a whole with the three great symphonies of Mozart or the latter symphonies of Haydn.
The symphony in C major, No. 1, probably originated in 1800, was sketched at an earlier period, and elaborated in 1799.
The first performance was at a concert given by Beethoven at the National Court Theater, "next the Burg," Vienna, April 2, 1800.
The concert began at 6:30 P.M. The prices of admission were not raised. It was the first concert given in Vienna by Beethoven for his own benefit. A correspondent of the _Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung_ (October 15, 1800) gave curious information concerning the performance. "At the end a symphony composed by him was performed. It contains much art, and the ideas are abundant and original, but the wind instruments are used far too much, so that the music is more for a band of wind instruments than an orchestra." The performance suffered on account of the conductor, Paul Wranitzky. The orchestra men disliked him and took no pains under his direction. Furthermore, they thought Beethoven's music too difficult. "In the second movement of the symphony they took the matter so easily that there was no spirit, in spite of the conductor, especially in the performance of the wind instruments.... What marked effect, then, can even the most excellent compositions make?" The parts were published in 1801 and dedicated to Baron von Swieten.
Berlioz[3] wrote concerning it as follows: "This work is wholly different in form, melodic style, harmonic sobriety, and instrumentation from the compositions of Beethoven that follow it. When the composer wrote it, he was evidently under the sway of Mozartian ideas. These he sometimes enlarged, but he has imitated them ingeniously everywhere. Especially in the first two movements do we find springing up occasionally certain rhythms used by the composer of _Don Giovanni_, but these occasions are rare and far less striking. The first _allegro_ has for a theme a phrase of six measures, which is not distinguished in itself but becomes interesting through the artistic treatment. An episodic melody follows, but it has little distinction of style. By means of a half cadence, repeated three or four times, we come to a figure in imitation for wind instruments; and we are the more surprised to find it here, because it had been so often employed in several overtures to French operas. The _andante_ contains an accompaniment of drums, _piano_, which appears today rather ordinary, yet we recognize in it a hint at striking effects produced later by Beethoven with the aid of this instrument, which is seldom or badly employed as a rule by his predecessors. This movement is full of charm; the theme is graceful and lends itself easily to fugued development, by means of which the composer has succeeded in being ingenious and piquant. The _scherzo_ is the first-born of the family of charming _badinages_ or _scherzi_, of which Beethoven invented the form and determined the pace; which he substituted in nearly all of his instrumental works for the minuet of Mozart and Haydn with a pace doubly less rapid and with a wholly different character. This _scherzo_ is of exquisite freshness, lightness and grace. It is the one truly original thing in this symphony in which the poetic idea, so great and rich in the majority of his succeeding works, is wholly wanting. It is music admirably made, clear, alert, but slightly accentuated, cold, and sometimes mean and shabby, as in the final _rondo_, which is musically childish. In a word, this is not Beethoven."