Ludwiggery

I think I am finally getting into Beethoven, two and a half years after becoming an approximate acolyte of classical music. I've been listening to his sixth and seventh symphonies a lot in the last couple of days. I'm getting that throbbing background of tones and motifs in my head after I stop listening to the music, like it's snagging on something up in me. I know then when that happens that after a few days more listening I'm really going to start understanding the piece.

In the long introduction in the first movement of the seventh there is a trill motif played on the winds after the rising scales... I think this is incredibly similar to the third theme that Schnittke uses in the viola concerto, the one which is in the last minute or so of the first movement and is grotesquely repeated in rising keys in the middle of the second movement. I wonder if it is a deliberate quote... maybe I'll look it up in the music library tomorrow.