Although there are few signs in the music, it is apparent that even at this relatively early stage in his career Beethoven was already aware of his growing deafness, since the famous "Heiligenstadt Testament", written two years later in 1802, records that he had been aware of the problem "over the last six years".

The short adagio introduction to the first movement is highly original in that a work professing to be in the key of C major should start with a discord in the key of F and by the third bar reach G major. The brisk opening statement of the ensuing allegro is also unusual in that after a few bars it is lifted bodily to the next note of the scale and from there ascends to the dominant. The rising sequences are developed to a climax and after a brief transition lead to a melodious second subject, correctly in the dominant key of G major. The development is built mainly on the terse figure of the first subject, with numerous imitative passages, following which there is a conventional recapitulation and a vigorous coda.

The second movement opens with a quasi-fugal treatment of a stately and elegant theme, and the second subject continues with similar characteristics of repeated and dotted notes, the latter being continued in the drum rhythm which follows. Unusually, the drums in this movement are not tuned to the key of the movement, which being F major would require F and C, but are in the key of the dominant C, namely C and G.

Berlioz considered the minuet to be the one real novelty of the symphony, and it is instantly recognisable as the first of the characteristic Beethoven scherzos. The trio is equally original with its blocks of wind chords offset by interpolated string passages. There follows a lively finale which, with its false starts in the first violins, dancing second subject, and syncopations at the close of the exposition, could easily be taken for late Haydn were it not for numerous touches of authentic Beethoven humour and wilfulness, particularly in the coda, where an entirely new theme, in the shape of a prim little march rhythm, is introduced just before the end.