Beethoven wrote the Second Symphony without a standard minuet; instead, a scherzo took its place, giving the composition even greater scope and energy.

The scherzo and the finale are filled with Beethovenian musical jokes, which shocked the sensibilities of many contemporary critics.

One Viennese critic for the Zeitung fuer die elegante Welt (Newspaper for the Elegant World) famously wrote of the Symphony that it was "a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, in the fourth movement, bleeding to death.

Ferdinand Ries, working under Beethoven, made a transcription of the entire symphony for piano trio which bears the same opus number.

[4] This movement, Scherzo: Allegro, encloses a melodious oboe and bassoon quartet within a typical-sounding Austrian side-slapping dance.

Musicologist Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music describes the highly unusual opening motif as a hiccup, belch or flatulence followed by a groan of pain.

[6] Greenberg does not cite any references to reinforce this interpretation he puts forth in his courses "The symphonies of Beethoven" and "How to listen to and understand great music".