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We begin at the beginning with those two whiplashes of sound that shattered the elegant formality of the 18th century. And what are these two chords so commanding and brave? Simple triads in E flat major. Now the physical laws of music are so constituted that triads turn out to be the chords on which our classical Western music has come to be based. All primitive wind instruments, for example, automatically produce the notes of the triad that evolved out of the fundamental note of the instrument. That’s how bugle calls were born. If a bugle is built so that its fundamental note is E flat, then by maneuvering his lips, the bugler can produce the overtones of that E flat and they will complete the triad. As you see there are only three different notes, but they go on repeating in order as the player goes higher so that out of these three different notes can come Reveille, and Taps, and Mess Call, and all the others. And out of that same simple triad come the opening two chords of the Eroica as well as the arresting First Statement, which brings us back to the basic materials of music. Beethoven has taken a triad, a series of notes that couldn’t be more basic, and made from it a theme which perhaps by itself is not what I call a great melody. It is only the fact, the bugle call fact, out of which Beethoven is going to create his complex super structure.
