There are many wonderful entry points, moments, and fine details to consider in the Great C major Symphony. Let’s compare and contrast just two things: a recurring uneven rhythm that is used in all four movements, and a melodic fragment that appears in the last movement which has characteristics of another very famous tune.
Rhythm
Let’s start with rhythm. It’s kind of hard to define! A fundamental way to think of rhythm is to consider it as an auditory way to chop up time into short and long durations. By contrast a beat, or pulse, measures time in a steady flow. For example, you may have learned a steady beat by saying “TA TA TA TA.” You may also have learned a rhythm that fits with that steady beat by saying “TA tee-tee TA tee-tee.” In the case of that rhythm, we are expressing the flow of time being chopped into LONG short-short LONG short-short.
Try this out! Get a steady beat going in your hands or your voice, and add a rhythm layer to it.
Schubert uses short and long notes to add different character and interest when combined with a feeling of steady beat or pulse. Check out the examples below, just a few from each movement of the symphony. In these examples, you can compare the rhythms using the music notation, or the “Long, L, S” notation for “longer, long, short.” They’re notated here for cowbell (because Christopher Walken has a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!), but you could try them by clapping or speaking.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Watch and clap along as Catherine Beeson, Assistant Principal Viola, takes you through these rhythms:
Melody
Now let’s turn our attention to melody. In the last movement there is a melodic fragment at 3:50 which appears again at 4:04 and then riffs its way through the orchestra for a bit. Compare it to the Ode to Joy melody from the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, premiered to great acclaim just two years prior to Schubert composing his Great C major Symphony.
Try each of these, notated below in C for oboe. If you don’t have an oboe handy you can use your voice, piano, soprano recorder, kazoo, or slide whistle – whatever you have handy!
Schubert's Melody

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Beethoven's Melody

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Watch and listen as Nick Tisherman, 2nd/Assistant Principal Oboe, takes you through these melodies:
Do you see and/or hear similarities? If so, what are they?