It is hard to imagine a more dramatic shock at the opening of a symphony than that which occurs moments into Robert Schumann's First Symphony (1841). The movement begins with a brief motto theme in trumpets and horns, assertive in rhythm and timbre, yet slightly unsettling (Ex. 8.1). It is in fact ambiguous as to tonality – it could be G minor, B flat major or even D minor. After a fermata, the next iteration of the motto clarifies the tonality as B flat major, with a somewhat odd emphasis of the third, D (it is much more common for the repeated note in an opening figure like this to be the fifth or the tonic). Fuller orchestration (winds and strings), cadential harmony and another fermata set this second version of the motto as an orotund, closed-off statement (compare the much more open-ended effect of the initial two fermatas of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony). The motto seems to be headed on a progressive course of consolidation: first a brass declamation on a single line, followed by a tutti-like confirmation. But then everything falls away, into the suddenly gaping abyss of D minor. Here is the real tutti: trombones and timpani join angrily swarming strings; the effect freezes us as in terror. The untoward emphasis on the pitch D in the opening strain proves to have been the only hint that we could possibly find ourselves in this spot.