Thanks for reading! And while I can see the importance of those opening chords, surely they, too, only increase in interest and significance because of all that happens between the begining and the end of the movement! Those open chords are startling, and dramatic, but there's so much playfulnness and humor and just out of left field surprises in the Eroica which I think says more about spontaneous inspiration than a rigid plan on Beethoven's part. I think too often as critics, we want artists to be great engineers, investing every word and note with colossal, inevitable meaning, But the reality is that much of the meaning comes from us, the readers and listeners, and whatever plan Mozart or Beethoven, etc., had is lost to history, and since they didn't want to share it with us, why try to dogmatically decode it? I think art is more powerful for not being able to be translated for all time, like a Rosetta Stone that keeps switching languages when we're not looking. That's why we all have to come to the music and the words with fresh eyes and ears, and not assume that there's a high and mighty 'meaning' out there which explains it all away. In short, I totally agree with you!