Composer Ludwig van Beethoven loved to push music to its limits, both technically and emotionally.

How exactly did he do it? He employed a variety of methods, but he especially enjoyed using driving rhythms and intense dynamic contrasts (i.e., quickly going from soft to loud, or vice versa).

These preferences led to works that even to modern ears, can sound aggressive, passionate, or even violent.

Today, we’re looking at eight works by Beethoven that are especially violent, going in reverse order and ending with our pick for number one.

Lyser: Beethoven Caricature, 1825

8. Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57 (“Appassionata”), Movement 1

The violence of this work is evident from the first page of the score.

It begins with a rocking rhythm in 12/8 time and a pianissimo (“very soft”) dynamic marking, creating an air of breathless anticipation.

In the thirteenth measure, a flurry of notes leads to a series of passionate, rhythmically lopsided chords marked fortissimo (“very loud”).

It’s clear how the sonata earned the nickname of “Appassionata” (“Passionate” in English).

As the piece goes on, this battle between quiet reserved moments and explosive virtuosic moments, with little transition between the work’s various moods, creates a tempestuous atmosphere.

7. Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 (“Eroica”), Movement 1

The Eroica Symphony begins with two aggressive chords, followed by a gently rocking main theme in the strings.

Before long, Beethoven had transformed this simple theme into a heroic statement, complete with brass fanfares and scrubbing bows.

Title Page of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica”

One of the most violent sections appears in the development section, which is the part in the symphony where a composer takes a theme, deconstructs it, and uses the parts to create new ideas and propel the work’s narrative forward.

Listen to how many violent accents Beethoven writes into the score, starting at 8:20 in the recording above. It sounds like a train engine that can’t quite get going!

These driving rhythms create a real sense of struggle and tension.

6. Coriolan Overture, Op. 62

The Coriolan Overture was written in 1807 for a drama by Heinrich Joseph von Collin about the Roman general Coriolanus.

The legend of Coriolanus served as inspiration not only to Collin but to Shakespeare.

In Shakespeare’s version of events, a military hero named Coriolanus seeks political power. However, he disdains plebeians, gets into political struggles, and is exiled from Rome. He returns allied with the Volscians, Rome’s enemies, and ultimately is stabbed in the back and killed by his new (and fickle) allies.

In his overture, Beethoven dramatizes the thematic motifs of Coriolanus’s story, including war, political struggle, fury, inner conflict, and senseless violence.

5. Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67, Movement 1

It is surely the most famous four notes in classical music: dun dun dun DUN.

Beethoven’s secretary Anton Schindler claimed long after Beethoven’s death that these four notes were meant to symbolise Fate knocking at the door.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 original score

However, despite his proximity to the composer, Schindler has proven to be a notoriously unreliable source for information on Beethoven, so this interpretation is likely a Romantic Era invention.

Whether they symbolise Fate or not, all listeners can agree: Beethoven’s obsessive treatment of this driving four-note rhythm throughout this opening movement comes across as strikingly violent.

4. Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 (“Pastoral”), Movement 4

In Beethoven’s sixth symphony, he portrays a real-life experience: a traveler’s arrival in the countryside, a scene by a babbling brook, a rustic dance, and, in the fourth movement, a summer thunderstorm.

Much of the symphony is relatively serene, but that fourth movement thunderstorm is dramatic, even operatic. When the thunder comes, portrayed by the timpani, its arrival is downright violent.

3. Egmont Overture, Op. 84

Just like the Coriolan Overture, Beethoven’s Egmont Overture explores the violent emotions associated with a dark political story.

The Egmont Overture is based on the play Egmont by Goethe. In it, the Dutch protagonist, Count Egmont, fights against a despotic Spanish conqueror named the Duke of Alba.

Egmont represents Enlightenment values like political freedom, openness, and justice, while the Duke represents a kind of despotic authoritarianism.

Frans Pourbus the Elder: Lamoral, Count of Egmont, 1579

His people do not protect him, and Egmont is ultimately executed, but he dies asking his people to fight for their freedom, becoming a martyr to the cause of political liberty.

Beethoven brings these dark, intense themes to life in his overture. One can hear a musical interpretation of both the personal violence of Egmont’s emotions and the broader violence of political persecution.

2. Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, Movement 1

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony ended up being the last symphony he ever finished. It was premiered in 1824. By this time, Beethoven’s decades-long battle against hearing loss was coming to an end, and he was almost completely deaf.

However, this change in Beethoven’s life didn’t stop him from composing. If anything, his work was more confident than ever, fully embracing the startling sonic violence that had appeared so memorably in his earlier work.

The first movement of his ninth symphony features a brooding opening, loaded with accents, contrasts, and hard sforzandos. The entire movement feels like a battle. Arguably the symphony contains the most violent orchestral music Beethoven ever wrote.

1. Grosse Fuge, Op. 133

Here it is, the work that we think is Beethoven’s most violent: the Grosse Fugue (the “Great Fugue” in English).

Hugo Uher: Ludwig van Beethoven (1929) (Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic)

It was originally meant to be the finale of Beethoven’s thirteenth string quartet, but his publisher was horrified at its violence and sheer impenetrability. He agreed to publish it as a separate work in 1827.

So many adjectives could attempt to describe this work: intense, tortured, turbulent, chaotic, and virtuosic, among others. But one word that sums it all up is violent.

It would take other composers generations to come to terms with it. Stravinsky, no stranger to composing violent music, wrote of the Fugue:

“It is…the most absolutely contemporary piece of music I know, and contemporary forever… Hardly birthmarked by its age, the Great Fugue is, in rhythm alone, more subtle than any music of my own century… I love it beyond everything.”

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