There is a gap of four or so years between the 6th and 7th Symphonies. During the composition of the 7th Beethoven’s hearing loss was increasing, leading to the use of conversation notebooks from 1819 onwards.
Symphony 7 was premiered in a concert in December 1813 that was held for a charity supported soldiers wounded in the Battle of Hanau (Napoleon vs Austro-Bavaria), with the programme including Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory, and the orchestra included Spohr, Hummel, Meyerbeer, and Salieri. Its strong rhythmic feel across the movements led Wagner to call it ‘the apotheosis of dance’. Classic Wagner.
The orchestration of this symphony is less than in 5 and 6 – two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, alongside timpani and strings. Beethoven returns to the Introduction-Allegro in the first movement, opening with a long poco sostenuto giving way to a jolly Vivace with dotted rhythms.
The second movement is the most famous, with its ostinato building up by repetition, moving from A minor to A major and back with a fugato. That is followed by a jolly Scherzo, and the finale has a strong sf accent on the second beat of the 2/4 bars. It also has one of the first uses of fff in bars 438 and 444t of the coda.
The Listening Project Blog 