(Ashgate Historical Keyboard Series) Barry Cooper-The Creation of Beethoven’s 35 Piano Sonatas-Routledge (2017).pdf

The Creation Creation of Beethoven Beethoven’’s 35 Piano Sonatas

Beethoven’s Beethoven’s piano sonatas are a cornerstone corne rstone of the piano repertoire repert oire and favourites of both the concert hall and recording studio. The sonatas have been the subject of much scholarship, but no single study gives an adequate account of the processes by which these sonatas sonata s were composed and published. With source materials mater ials such as sketches and correspondence increasingly available, available, the time is ripe for a close close study of the history h istory of these works. Barry Cooper, who who in 2007 produced a new edition of all 35 sonatas, including three t hat are often overlook overlooked, ed, examines exami nes each sonata in tu rn, addressing add ressing questions such such as: Why were they written? Why did they turn out as they did? How did they come into being and how did they reach their nal form? Drawing on the composer’s sketches, autograph scores and early printed editions, as well as contextual material such as correspondence, cor respondence, Cooper explores the links between the notes and symbols found in the musical texts of the sonatas, and the environment that brought them about. The result is a biography not of the composer, but of the works themselves. Barry Cooper is Professor of Music at the University of Manchester. He has a wide range of research interests from medieval to 19th-century music, notably on English Baroque music and the music of Beethoven and his contemporaries. A world authority on Beethoven, his books on the composer include Beethoven Beethove n and the Creative Process (1990; Process (1990; 2nd edn, 1992), Beethove 1992), Beethoven n’s Folksong Settings Sett ings (1994), Beethove (1994), Beethoven n (The Master Musicians, 2000; 2nd edn, 2008) and Beethove and Beethoven: n: An Extraordinary Extraordi nary Life (20 Life (2013 13). ). He is also the General Gene ral Editor Ed itor and co-author co -author of The Beethoven Beethove n Compendium Compendiu m (1991 (1991;; 2nd edn, edn , 1996). His scholarly perform ing edition ed ition of Beethove of Beethoven n’s 35 35 Piano Sonatas S onatas (London: (London: ABRSM, 2007) won the award ‘Best Classical Publication’ of the year from the Music Industries Association.

Ashgate Historical Keyboard Series Series Editors: David J. Smith, Master of Chapel and Ceremonial Music, University of Aberdeen, and Andrew Woolley

The Ashgate The Ashgate Historical Keyboard Series Serie s is designed to provide a natural home for studies in all aspects of keyboard music by musicologists, organologists and analysts, as well as for performers performers and instrument instru ment makers engaged in practice-led research. It therefore provides an outlet for research in the eld of keyboard studies in its broadest sense, straddling many and various approaches and research methods in the study of music. What makes the series cohesive is the focus on keyboard music; what lends it vibrancy is its embracing of all historical contexts and styles. The format of each volume is likewise exible, ranging from mono graphs, editions edit ions of theoretical theoret ical texts and their translation, tra nslation, to multi-author volumes. ‘Historical’ should not be taken ta ken to imply ‘early’. ‘early’. Although the t he word ‘historical’ may conjure up images of early instruments (pre-1800), it is in fact open-ended and non-prescriptive. It is used in the sense of the author not being directly involved in the creation of the musical artefact (except, perhaps, in the case of reconstructions of instruments); it implies objectivity, or in other cases reinter pretation, pretat ion, by virtue virt ue of being removed from an earlier creative cre ative context, or belonging to a different one. The series is therefore concerned with the music of the past, including in cluding potentially pote ntially that t hat of the most recent past. pa st. Academics and students often have interests in keyboard music which extend across chronological boundaries and embrace music intended for different instruments. stru ments. This series not only provides a natu ral home for research in the eld of keyboard studies, but also allows libraries and individuals to subscribe to a series ser ies of publications that are of benet to a wide range of readers. Other titles in the series: Interpreting Historical Keyboard Music Andrew Woolley, John Kitchen

The Creation of Beethoven’s 35 Piano Sonatas

Barry Cooper

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Grou p, an informa business © 2017 Barry Cooper The right of Barr y Cooper to be identied as author of this work has been asser ted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs a nd Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of th is book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any for m or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any in formation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing f rom the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered tradema rks, and are used only for identication and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cooper, Bar ry (Barr y A. R.) author. Title: The creation of Beethoven’s 35 piano sonatas / Barry Cooper. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. | Series: Ashgate historical keyboard series | I ncludes bibliographical references and index. Identiers: LCCN 2016047542 | ISBN 9781472414311 (hardback) | ISBN 9781472414328 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315615080 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827. Sonatas, piano. | Sonatas (Piano)—History and cr iticism. Classication: LCC ML410.B42 C68 2017 | DDC 786.2/183092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047542 ISBN: 978-1-4724-1431-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-4724-1432-8 ( pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-61508-0 (ebk) Bach musicological font developed by © Yo Tomita Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

List of music examples List of tables Abbreviations Preface and acknowledgements 1 Approaching Beethoven’s piano sonatas

vi ix x xii 1

2 The Bonn sonatas

15

3 The Opus 2 sonatas and Haydn

27

4 The sonatas of 1796–97

42

5 The sonatas of 1798–1800

57

6 New century, new approaches

76

7 A ‘new path’?

99

8 The middle period opens up

117

9 A Clementi commission

140

10 Moving into the late period

153

11 The last three sonatas

177

Bibliography Index of original sources Index of Beethoven’s works General index

207 215 219 223

Music examples

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

WoO 47 No. 3.I, bars 31–2 WoO 47 No. 2.II, bars 53–7 WoO 47 No. 2.I, bars 8–9 WoO 47 No. 1.I, bars 1–2 WoO 47 No. 1.II, bars 53–4: (a) printed version; (b) revised version Bars 1–6 of sketch for abandoned sonata in E minor (Bonn, Beethoven-Haus, Wegeler Collection W 3, f. 1r) Bars 1–13 of sketch for abandoned sonata in E at (Bonn, Beethoven-Haus, Wegeler Collection, W 3, f. 2v) Sketch for Op. 2 No. 1.I (from N-II, p. 565) (a) WoO 36 No. 3.II, bars 1–2; (b) Sketch for Op. 2 No. 1.I (from N-II, p. 564) Sketch for Op. 2 No. 2 (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 25r) Op. 2 No. 3.I, bars 27–31 Early sketch for Op. 2 No. 3.I (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 21r) WoO 36 No. 3.I, opening Op. 2 No. 3.I, opening Early sketch for Op. 10 No. 1.II (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 24r) Alternative to Example 4.1 (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 24r) Sketch for theme of WoO 52 (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 24r) Sketch probably for early nale for Op. 10 No. 1 (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 24v) Sketch for Op. 49 No. 2.I. (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 106r) Sketch for Op. 7.III (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 58v) Sketch for Op. 10 No. 3.I (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 102v) Sketch for Op. 10 No. 3.II (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 157r) Op. 10 No. 3.II, bars 41–2 Sketch for ‘Allegretto’ (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 101v) Sketch for violin work? (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 66r) Preliminary idea for Op. 13.I? (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 117r) Sketch for Op. 13.I (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 48r) Embryonic Sonata in E at (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 149v) Sketch for Op. 14 No. 1.III (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 121r)

20 20 21 21 22 24 24 29 30 33 33 34 34 34 47 47 48 49 50 52 53 54 54 57 58 59 60 62 66

Music examples 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Sketch for Op. 14 No. 1.III (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 121v) Sketch for Sonata in D (‘Summer 1800’, f. 18v) Sketch for Sonata in A, nale? (Pn, Ms 71) Sketch for Sonata in A, ‘Alla Marcia’ (Pn, Ms 71) Sketch for Op. 22.I (Pn, Ms 71) Sketch for Op. 22.IV (‘Summer 1800’, f. 32v) Op. 22.IV, bar 59 (rst edition) Trio sketch for Op. 26 (Bsb, Landsberg 7, p. 180) Finale sketch for Op. 26 (Bsb, Landsberg 7, p. 56) Cramer, Sonata Op. 6 No. 1, nale (a) Sketch for Prometheus (Bsb, Landsberg 7, p. 103); (b) Prometheus, No. 10, bar 22; (c) Sonata Op. 27 No. 1, bars 36‒8 6.5 Isolated sketch in B minor (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 139r) 6.6 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, bars 15‒19 6.7 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, early version of bars 55‒7 (BNba, BH 60) 6.8 Sketch for Op. 27 No. 2.III (BNba, HCB Mh 66, f. 1r) 6.9 Unused sketch for Sonata in D (BNba, HCB Mh 68) 6.10 Sonata Op. 28, early version of bars 161‒2 and repeat of 1–2 6.11 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2.III, early version of bars 38‒9 6.12 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2.III, nal version of bars 38‒9 6.13 Sonata Op. 26.IV: (a) bars 5–6; (b) bars 19‒20 7.1 Quartet sketch preceding Op. 31 (Wgm, A 34, f. 88r) 7.2 Slow-movement sketch for Op. 31 No. 1 (Wgm, A 34, f. 92v) 7.3 Sketch for second sonata for Op. 31 (Wgm, A 34, f. 93r) 7.4 Op. 31 No. 3.II, bars 50‒1 7.5 Sketch in A minor for second sonata for Op. 31 (Wgm, A 34, f. 95r) 7.6 Sketch in D minor for second sonata for Op. 31 (Wgm, A 34, f. 90v) 7.7 Sketch for Op. 31 No. 3.II (Mcm, F. 155 No. 1, f. 5r) 7.8 Later sketch for Op. 31 No. 3.II (Mcm, F. 155 No. 1, f. 5r) 7.9 Op. 31 No. 1, four inserted bars in Nägeli edition 7.10 Op. 31 No. 1, bars 1‒2, Cappi edition 7.11 Op. 31 No. 3, bar 16, Clementi edition 8.1 Preliminar y sketch for Op. 53 (Kj, Landsberg 6, p. 119) 8.2 (a) First sketch for Op. 53.I, second subject (Kj, Landsberg 6, p. 120); (b) First sketch for Andante (ibid., p. 121); (c) Later sketch for Andante (ibid.); (d) Later sketch for Op. 53.I, second subject (ibid., p. 122); (e) Op. 53.I, second subject, nal version (bars 35‒8) 8.3 (a) Sketch for Op. 53 nale (Kj, Landsberg 6, p. 126); (b) Sketch for Op. 53.I, bars 136‒9 (ibid., p. 127) 8.4 Opening bars of WoO 56, 1803‒04 version (Pn, Ms 29) 8.5 Sketch for opening of Op. 54 (Bsb, Mendelssohn 15, p. 8)

vii 66 68 68 69 69 71 73 79 80 81

84 85 85 86 87 90 93 94 94 95 101 103 104 105 105 107 109 109 111 112 114 119

121–122 122 123 127

viii 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8

Music examples Sketch for accompanying motif in Fidelio (Bsb, Mendelssohn 15, p. 22) Early sketch apparently for nale of Op. 57 (Meyer leaf) Sketch for Op. 57.I (Bsb, Mendelssohn 15, p. 192) Op. 57.III, bar 352 (published version) Preliminary sketch for Op. 79 (Bsb, Landsberg 5, p. 75) Preliminary sketch for Op. 81a.III (Bsb, Landsberg 5, p. 86) Op. 81a.III, bars 9–10: (a) early version (BNba, NE 274); (b) published version Early sketch for Op. 79 (Bsb, Landsberg 5, p. 97) Op. 79.I, bars 199–201: (a) Clementi version; (b) nal version Op. 78.II, bars 79–81: (a) Clementi version; (b) nal version Preliminary sketch for Op. 90.II (from N-II, p. 299) (a) Sketch for Op. 90.II (Bsb, Landsberg 12, p. 30); (b) Op. 90.II, bars 41–8 Preliminary sketch for Op. 101.II (PRu, Scheide MA130, p. 74) Sketch for Op. 101.III (Bsb, Autograph 11/1, f. 3v) Sketch for Op. 101.III (Kj, Mendelssohn 2, p. 69) Sketch for Op. 106.II (Wgm, A 45, f. 25, from N-II, pp. 131 – 2) Sketch for Op. 106.IV (Bsb, Landsberg 9, p. 1) Sketch for abandoned F minor movement (Bsb, Grasnick 20b, f. 3r) Early sketch for Op. 109.II (Bsb, Artaria 195, p. 35) Op. 109.III, bar 110: (a) autograph score; (b) original edition (a) and (b) Early sketches for Op. 110.III (Bsb, Artaria 197, p. 65) Sketch for reprise of minore section of Op. 110.II (‘Late 1821’, p. 20: Pn, Ms 51/3B, recto) Sketch for diminution of fugue theme of Op. 110.III (‘Late 1821’, p. 21: Pn, Ms 80, f. 1r) Sketch for sonata to follow Op. 110 (‘Paris Ms 51’, p. 4: Pn Ms 51/5, verso) Early sketch for Op. 111.II (Bsb, Artaria 197, p. 79)

128 129 130 136 143 144 145 147 149 150 154 156 161 163 163 168 170 178 182 186 188 190 192 194 195

Tables

1.1 3.1

4.1 5.1 6.1

Principal sketch sources for Beethoven’s piano sonatas Comparison of two drafts and nal version of exposition of Op. 2 No. 1 Drafts for bars 77–117 of Op. 10/2.I on f. 101r of ‘Kaf ka’ Drafts for exposition of Op. 14 No. 1 Sketches for Op. 26 in Landsberg 7

7 31 52 64 77

Abbreviations

Literature AAlb-

AMZ BB-

JTW KC KH LvBWV

N-II TF WR

Letter no. in: Emily Anderson, tr. and ed., The Letters of Beethoven, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1961). Letter no. in: Theodore Albrecht, tr. and ed., Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence, 3 vols (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1798–1848). Item no. in: Sieghard Brandenburg, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, 7 vols (Munich: Henle, 1996–98). Johnson, Douglas, Alan Tyson and Robert Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks, ed. Douglas Johnson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Kopitz, Klaus Martin, and Rainer Cadenbach, eds., Beethoven aus der Sicht seiner Zeitgenossen, 2 vols (Munich: Henle, 2009). Kinsky, Georg (completed Hans Halm), Das Werk Beethovens (Munich: Henle, 1955). Dorfmüller, Kurt, Norbert Gertsch, and Julia Ronge, Ludwig van Beethoven: Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, 2 vols (Munich: Henle, 2014). Nottebohm, Gustav, Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig: Peters, 1887). Forbes, Elliot, ed., Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2nd edn, 1967). Wegeler, Franz, and Ferdinand Ries, Remembering Beethoven [originally published 1838 as Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven], tr. Frederick Noonan (London: André Deutsch, 1988).

Library sigla BNba Bsb Kj

Bonn, Beethoven-Haus Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska

Abbreviations Lbl Mcm Pn PRu Wc Wgm Wn

London, British Library Moscow, Glinka Museum Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Library Washington, Library of Congress Wien (Vienna), Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien (Vienna), Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek

Other abbreviations Hess r Unv v WoO

Item no. in James F. Green, tr. and ed., The New Hess Catalog (see Bibliography) recto (right-hand page) Item no. in LvBWV verso (left-hand page) Item no. in LvBWV

Pitch: CC-BB, C-B, c-b, c1-b1, c2-b2, c3-b3, c4-f4; c1 = middle C

xi

Preface and acknowledgements

This book arose as a kind of supplement to the edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas that I published in 2007 ( Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas, London: ABRSM) and that I have continued to update since then. The idea of exploring the genesis of each sonata in much more detail than was possible in the introductory material in that edition proved greatly attractive, and the aim has been to embody the fruits of this exploration in the present study. Since the book has limited room for music examples, readers may nd it useful to have my edition or some other recent edition of the 35 sonatas at hand, so as to follow up references to particular passages in the sonatas. I am greatly indebted to numerous people who have provided me with useful ideas, information or practical help over the many years that I have been studying these sonatas or during the time that I have been preparing this volume; without their assistance it could not possibly have been written. They include Theodore Albrecht, Otto Biba, the late Sieghard Brandenburg, Clive Brown, Erica Buurman, Jonathan Del Mar, Siân Derry, William Drabkin, Susan Kagan, the late Joseph Kerman, William Kinderman, Lewis Lockwood, Nicholas Marston, William Meredith, Marten Noorduin, Julia Ronge, the late Alan Tyson, Katharina Uhde, Jos van der Zanden and David Ward. Also to be thanked are the staff of ABRSM Publishing, especially Philip Croydon and Jonathan Lee, for their assistance in the preparation of the above-mentioned edition; David Smith and Andrew Woolley, the series editors for the present book, for their many insightful suggestions; and the staff of libraries and institutions that have been so helpful in providing me with copies of source materials and/or working space for consulting original documents – in particular the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn; the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San Jose; the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna; the Musikabteilung of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz; the Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; the British Library, London; and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Finally I must particularly thank my wife Susan for all her support, interest and practical help throughout the time I have been studying these sonatas and their background. Barry Cooper University of Manchester June 2016

1

Approaching Beethoven’s piano sonatas

Sonata biography Beethoven’s piano sonatas are such a major cornerstone of the pianist’s repertoire that it is hardly surprising that numerous books have already been written devoted specically to them. They are also discussed in a large number of shorter articles and in sections of books that cover a wider range of material. William S. Newman’s The Sonata in the Classic Era, which devotes a substantial section to Beethoven’s piano sonatas, notes that ‘more than fty authors have de voted whole books exclusively to Beethoven’s piano sonatas or certain aspects of them’.1 Some of these were described as ‘comprehensive surveys’, others as ‘structural analyses’ or ‘random subjective comments’. Since Newman’s book was rst published, many more studies of Beethoven’s piano sonatas have ap peared. Noteworthy examples include those by Rudolph Reti, Denis Matthews, Jürgen Uhde, Kenneth Drake, Siegfried Mauser, Charles Rosen, Robert Taub, Dmitri Smirnov and Moo Kyoung Song. 2 There are also whole books devoted to the study of individual sonatas, including Op. 31 No. 2, Op. 57, Op. 106, Op. 109 and Op. 111. 3 None of these many books, however, gives an adequate account of the processes by which Beethoven’s piano sonatas were composed and published, except in a few cases for individual sonatas. Thus the present book aims to answer questions such as: Why did Beethoven write his sonatas when he did, and why did they turn out as they did? How did they start out and how did they reach their nal form? These questions were addressed briey in the present writer’s edition of the 35 sonatas,4 where each sonata was provided with a short historical introduction. But these introductions, which were on average about a single page each, merely served to highlight the absence of more detailed investigation that covered the entire corpus. A much more extensive survey would be needed than could be accommodated within the commentaries of a performing edition. Seeking links between the notes or symbols found in the musical texts of the sonatas, and the environment that brought them about, is hazardous. It is wellnigh impossible to forge convincing connections between life in Beet hoven’s day and individual passages within these sonatas, or even between his personal life and such passages, apart from in one or two very exceptional situations (notably

2


his ‘Lebewohl’ movement addressed as a farewell to Archduke Rudolph in the Sonata Op. 81a). Yet biographical and musical connections can be found very clearly at the interface between the work and its historical context, when one examines the manuscripts on which the sonatas were rst writ ten down, the publishing history of their original editions, and other documents surrounding their creation, such as correspondence with patrons a nd publishers. It is this material that forms the substance on which the present account is based. T he result is not a biography of the composer (though biographical elements are often integrated into the narrative) but more a biography of the sonatas themselves, from the moment when the written record of a sonata begins, with brief ideas in the form of preliminary sketches, or even just a note of a com mission, through its growth as revealed in the advanced sketch record and the wr iting out of the nal score, right up to its nal printed form. The written record is often tantalizingly incomplete, with important documents missing, as with any biography; but enough survives for many new insights to be obtainable. Such a biography should provide a clearer understanding of the subject, with each sonata or group of sonatas observed through a historical lens that is so often absent in other accounts of these works. As with most biographies, the order in which events unfolded provides the main guideline for the discussion, both of individual sonatas a nd the output as a whole.

Beethoven and the eighteenth-century keyboard sonata The sonata as a genre emerged in Italy in t he late sixteenth centur y, and initially the word simply denoted music to be played, as distinct from a cantata – music to be sung. Throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, sonatas were almost invariably composed for more than one instrument, but sonatas for solo keyboard instrument became established towards the middle of the eighteenth century by composers such as Domenico Alberti, Domenico Scarlatti and Baldassare Galuppi. These might have one, two or three movements and the titles of the works sometimes varied. In Germany the leading gure was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who from 1742 onwards published an important series of sets of keyboard sonatas. Beethoven may have become acquainted with some of these during his early years in Bonn, but there is no direct indication. In 1809 he wrote that he had only a few of C.P.E. Bach’s keyboard works and expressed admiration for them; three times between then and 1812 he asked Breitkopf & Härtel to send him scores by the composer,5 though they seem not to have done so. Beethoven also apparently possessed a copy of a set of sonatas by C.P.E. Bach’s brother Johann Christian,6 though it is uncertain when he acquired it, and he is not known to have expressed any admiration for this composer. The main models for Beethoven’s sonata composition appear to have been the sonatas of Haydn, Mozart and Clementi, and it is noteworthy that Beethoven seems to have singled out three composers who are still today regarded as the leading gures in this genre in the late eighteenth century. All of Mozart’s key board sonatas are in three movements, as are most of Haydn’s and Clementi’s, with the pattern fast–slow–fast being the most common structure and therefore the


3

most likely to be followed by Beethoven, at least in the initial stages. Beethoven encountered the music of all three composers at an early age, for the music dealer Nikolaus Simrock in Bonn, a friend of Beethoven’s father, possessed a large store of recent publications. From this collection he lent Beethoven’s father, for Beethoven’s use, ‘all Haydn’s keyboard works, much by Clementi and later by Mozart, of which the boy at the age of 8 could play much very well’. 7 It is not difcult to nd similarities between their sonatas and Beethoven’s, although the extent of direct inuence must remain a matter of conjecture. The theoretical context for Beethoven’s sonatas was provided by a number of writers. For performance issues such as ngering and or namentation, he seems to have relied most on C.P.E. Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, which gives much useful advice on these subjects, as well as on gured bass. 8 For aspects of harmony and counterpoint he consulted writings by Johann Philipp Kirnberger and Johann Mattheson,9 and later Johann Georg Albrechtsberger. More pertinent, however, is a discussion of ‘Sonata’ in Johann Georg Sulzer’s Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Kunste [General Theory of the Fine Arts], 1771–74. The article was apparently written by Johann Adolph Peter Schulz,10 and was probably read by Beethoven, perhaps at quite an early age. It asserts that there is no instrumental genre more capable than the sonata of depicting sentiments, and that the sonata can portray any and every character or emotion. The sonatas of C.P.E. Bach are singled out as outstanding models, and such compositions are deemed to require a combination of genius, knowledge and sensibility. Heinrich Koch, developing some ideas from Sulzer’s book, gives a detailed ex planation of how someone might set about creating a composition, in Volume 2 of his Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, mentioning three different stages: plan, realization and elaboration.11 The explanations here, however, would surely have seemed rather elementary to Beethoven by the time they were published in 1787. The concept of the sonata was also discussed briey by Daniel Gottlob Türk in 1789. Echoing Schulz, he asserts that in no other genre is the composer so free to express sentiments and passions. ‘The more a sonata has expression, the more one hears the composer speak in tones, the more the composer knows to avoid the commonplace, the more excellent is the sonata.’12 Thus the sonata was widely perceived in the 1780s as the most elevated instr umental genre, with the possible exception of the symphony and concerto, and was therefore inevitably going to attract Beethoven’s attention from an early stage. Theories of form, however, and par ticularly sonata form, were ser iously under-developed in his earlier years, and he had to absorb the possibilities inherent in sonata form direct from the models of Haydn, Mozart and others.13 He even developed his own terminology for sonata form: in his sketches he used ‘1ter Theil’ [rst part] to denote the exposition, with the letters ‘m.g.’ (mitte Gedanke or middle idea) for the second subject; ‘2ter Theil’ [second part] marked the beginning of the development section; ‘d.c.’ the start of the recapitulation, or any other type of reprise of the main subject; and ‘Schluss’, ‘Ende’ or ‘Coda’ to indicate the nal section. His aim seems always to have been to compose music at the highest artistic level. He expressed this explicitly later in life: ‘I have always wished just to master

4


the art of music’, and ‘My supreme aim is that my art should be welcomed by the noblest and most cultured people.’14 In 1807 he wrote in like manner: ‘I hope even in my early years to achieve the worth of a t rue artist.’15 Thus he would inevitably attempt to excel in the most advanced genres, where the ‘commonplace’ was to be avoided. During the 1790s he seems to have shared the prevailing view that the sonata was one of the most elevated genres, and he wrote quite a large number in fullment of his aims. By the end of 1802, however, he had already composed 23 piano sonatas and was looking for fresh and greater challenges. From that time onwards he wrote far fewer sonatas, and on several occasions ex pressed reservations about the genre. As early as 23 November 1802, apparently in response to a request from the publisher Johann André of Offenbach for a set of three sonatas, his brother Carl wrote on Beethoven’s behalf: ‘Should you want three piano sonatas … you cannot receive these all at once, but one every ve or six weeks, because my brother no longer bothers much with such tries and writes only oratorios, operas etc.’16 Piano sonatas were now no longer an elevated genre but mere ‘tries’, at least compared with operas and oratorios, and none were currently in progress, which is why it would take ve or six weeks before one could be sent. It may well be that Beet hoven’s emotional crisis as reected in the Heiligenstadt Testament of 6–10 October that year induced him to reassess his artistic direction, which included a tur n away from sonatas. Certainly, having recently sold a set of three sonatas (Op. 31) to the Swiss publisher Nägeli, he was less than eager to compose another set so soon afterwards. A similar attitude is evident in a letter to Breitkopf & Härtel in 1809: ‘I am not keen on writing solo piano sonatas, but I promise you a few.’17 Around June 1818 he complained of having to scrawl for bread and money, to enable him to write a great work; and the following year he stated: ‘It is hard to compose almost entirely for bread.’18 On both occasions the work in question was none other than the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, which he evidently regarded as being on a lower plane than a great symphony or opera. Similarly, he complained in November 1821 that he could not attend to his Missa solemnis as he had to nish some ‘Brot-Arbeiten’ [potboilers].19 The ‘potboilers’ he was composing on this occasion were his last two piano sonatas, Opp. 110 and 111, regarded today as incomparable master pieces. Whatever he thought of the genre in general, however, he always aimed for the highest standards in all his sonatas, and many are now considered among his nest works, including those he dismissed so readily in 1818 and 1821. All his piano sonatas received opus numbers (except the three written in Bonn), which he generally reserved for his more important works. The 35 sonatas span almost his entire creative life, from 1783 to 1822, 20 and reect his changing style perhaps more than any other genre. His output is often divided into three periods, and although his sonatas do not t as well into such a clear pattern as, say, his string quartets, one can discern a dividing line before the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata of 1803–04, and again before Op. 101 of 1815–16, as has often been noted. The resulting three periods for the sonatas match those in other genres, with a signicant sense of expansion of concept in the middle period, and increased sophistication and complexity in the third period. The three periods,


5

however, are very unequal in terms of numbers, with 23 sonatas in the rst pe riod, but only seven in the middle period and ve in the late period. Nevertheless each sonata is completely different from any of the others, and develops his art in a new direction, and so the per iodization could be divided some other way or abandoned altogether as too simplistic. For Beethoven, each sonata was a unique work of art, and t he art was embodied in the written musical text. Whereas in the eighteenth century it was common for performers to add ornamentation of various kinds, including trills and turns, connecting runs (‘divisions’), and perhaps octave doubling, Beethoven was strongly resistant to this approach, which treated the written text more as a recipe for embellishment or adaptation than as a concrete ar twork. Carl Czerny relates that in a performance of Beethoven’s Quintet Op. 16 in 1816 he made many changes to add extra difculties, and received a stinging rebuke from Beethoven, who wrote to him the next day, apologizing for his outburst but explaining: ‘You must forgive this in an author who would rather have heard his work exactly as he wrote it.’21 Ferdinand Ries reports that even Beethoven himself only ‘very rarely indeed’ altered his written text with additions or embellishments.22 This concept of the written artwork was not completely new, for one can discern it in works such as Bach’s Das wohltemperirte Clavier (which Beethoven knew as a child), where the musical text appears paramount, and any performance might seem a less-than-perfect realization. But such attitudes were rare until Beethoven’s day. It is perhaps with Beethoven more than any earlier composer that one senses the primacy of the written text as the norm. In such circumstances the written text could be altered only to create an artistic improvement, with the new text then superseding the old. Such changes could, however, persist to a very late stage in the composition, and could theoretically have continued indenitely. It was only the law of diminishing returns, plus the necessity to call a halt, publish the work and move on to the next one, that dissuaded Beethoven from making further renements beyond a certain stage, in the knowledge that absolute perfection was unattainable.23 This does not mean, however, that Beethoven accepted only one way of performing his sonatas, in which every detail was xed. The written text could be interpreted in different ways to suit particular performance contexts and individual performers. The instrument being used, and the surrounding acoustic, might affect speed or articulation, and the degree of tempo exibility and dynamic nuance were also matters more for the performer than the composer. But such adaptation does not actually alter the text itself – only what the performer adds to the text, which could vary along with the circumstances.

Sketching the sonatas Before reaching the stage where further renement was supererogatory, Beethoven invariably made numerous preparations for a sonata, in the form of rough drafts and sketches. The idea of making preliminary drafts and sketches was far from new, and was even the subject of an article in the above-mentioned

6


Allgemeine Theorie by Sulzer.24 The article relates mainly to drafts for speeches and sketches for paintings, but the principles would equally have applied to a musical composition. Though these principles were already in existence, what was unprecedented was the extent and intensity of Beethoven’s sketching of almost all his works: it is estimated that there are around 10,000 pages of his sketches altogether that still survive.25 For most of the sonatas there are extensive sketches that have not yet been fully explored; and even where there have been detailed studies of them, the sketches have a habit of revealing fresh insights at each new investigation. Where few sketches survive for a sonata, or even none at all, one must presume that sketches have been lost, since sketches are known even for some of his most minor works. Also lost irretrievably are any preliminary ideas tried out at the piano but not written down, and one must take into account the possible existence of such unwritten sketches, as well as those written but now lost, in attempting to tra ce the creation of individual sonatas. By all accounts Beethoven excelled in extemporization, and some of the best ideas that emerged during such sessions could well have been memorized or noted down and perhaps incorporated into later sonatas. That he sometimes operated in this way is implicit in an instruction sent to his pupil Archduke Rudolph in 1823:

Just continue to practise writing down briey your ideas at the keyboard; for this you need a little table beside the keyboard; through this, not only is imagination strengthened, but one learns to pin down immediately even the most remote ideas.26 This clearly reects Beethoven’s own modus operandi, and the table that he kept beside his piano is mentioned by several writers.27 Thus a few of his ideas for sonatas probably emerged through chance discoveries at the keyboard dur ing extem porization. Others were the result of more systematic trials of ideas specically intended for a particular sonata. This type of approach to composition was observed by Ferdinand Ries in the case of the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata (see Chapter 8). In his early years Beethoven wrote all his sketches on loose leaves of manuscript paper. Nearly all those that survive were gathered together into what are now two large collections of sketch leaves – the Kafka Miscellany and the Fischhof Miscellany.28 From mid-1798 onwards, however, most of his sketches were written in manuscript books, acquired or stitched together specically for the purpose. From 1815 he also used a series of pocket sketchbooks that ran concurrently with the series of desk sketchbooks. They were apparently used outdoors and are written almost entirely in pencil, whereas the desk sketchbooks are mainly in ink, though pencil appears increasingly often in later years. He also continued to use loose leaves at times, especially between the end of one desk sketchbook and the beginning of the next. The pages within his sketchbooks have subsequently been numbered, but in some cases this applies only to the leaves or folios rather than individual sides. These sketchbooks, like the two early miscellanies, are mostly known by the


7

names of former owners (with an additional number if the owner possessed several books), though some are referred to by their date or manuscript number. The names adopted here for individual sketchbooks are generally those used in the magisterial study of them by Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson and Robert Winter. 29 A summary list of the main sketch sources for the sonatas appears in Table 1.1; precise locations of the individual manuscripts are given in the discussions in the relevant chapters below.30 Table 1.1 Principal sketch sources for Beethoven’s piano sonatas Up to Op. 14: Kafka and Fischhof Miscellanies Op. 22: ‘Summer 1800’ Op. 26, 27/1: Landsberg 7 Opp. 27/2, 28: Sauer Op. 31/1–2: Kessler Op. 31/3: Wielhorsky Op. 53: Landsberg 6 Op. 54, 57: Mendelssohn 15 Opp. 78, 79: (largely lost) Op. 81a: Landsberg 5 Op. 90: Dessauer Op. 101: Scheide, Autograph 11/1, Paris Ms 78 / Ms 103 Op. 106: loose leaves Op. 109: Wittgenstein, Artaria 195, BH 107 Op. 110: Artaria 197, ‘Late 1821’, Paris Ms 51 Op. 111: Artaria 201, ‘Early 1822’, Paris Ms 51

The sketches present many obstacles to detailed study, and as a result many have still not been published in transcription. One problem is their nearillegibility, with noteheads often placed only approximately. In places where the melody is recognizable, it is normally possible to guess the intended pitch, even where this is different from the apparent pitch in the sketch. With less familiar material, a combination of appearance and musical sense has to be applied, and the results are not always certain. In the examples in the present book the aim has been to transmit the notes that Beethoven is thought to have intended when he made the particular marks on the paper, but sometimes an element of guesswork is involved. Editorial additions are shown in the conventional manner by means of square brackets or dotted ties and barlines, but they have in general been kept to a minimum, and the version presented may not make complete sense rhythmically, where Beethoven omitted some symbols. Another obstacle to sketch study has been Beethoven’s tendency to sketch more than one work on the same page, and conversely to sketch a single work on several unrelated pages. Consecutive sketches for a work might even appear in different books, and so in many cases sketches from more than one source need to be assembled before being assessed. With the main series of sketchbooks from 1798 there is no clear indication of any overlap in the use of consecutive sketchbooks; but even then there can be chronological problems, since some of Beethoven’s homemade sketchbooks were compiled from loose leaves, some of which had

8


already been partly lled. Thus Artaria 197, from 1821, includes a few sketches made as early as 1813. Conversely Landsberg 7, of 1800–01, contains a sketch for Egmont from 1810.31 A further difculty is the wide dispersal of the sketch material after Beethoven’s death. This applies not only to whole books but also to individual pages within a book, which in some cases were removed during the nineteenth century, perhaps to be presented to some friend or collector, or sold off individually. In the late twentieth century the efforts of Johnson, Tyson and Winter enabled the sketchbooks to be reassembled conceptually in something like their original state, but even then there are numerous uncer tainties and missing leaves. Thus it is hardly surprising that past attempts to trace the genesis of the piano sonatas have largely been limited t o individual cases, while discussions of the entire corpus, whether they are ‘comprehensive surveys’, ‘structural analyses’ or ‘subjective comments’, to use Newman’s classication mentioned above, have tended to say little about the sketches. The sketches most often show just the melodic outline of the right-hand part, though sometimes they show a fuller texture on two staves, especially in the sketches for the later sonatas, where two-stave sketching can be even more common than single-stave. Many of the sketches are only a few bars long, and can be classied as ‘concept sketches’ (initial ideas for a movement), developmental sketches (developing new ideas away from the initial concept), or variant sketches (alternatives to earlier sketches). Sometimes two sketches are linked by the word ‘Vide’ (Latin for ‘see’), with ‘Vi=’ at the end of the rst and ‘=de’ at the beginning of the second. Other cross-reference signs are also sometimes found. Longer drafts often appear, especially in the sketches for the earlier works. Such drafts may cover up to half a movement or even occasionally a whole one, and are sometimes known as continuity drafts, where Beethoven attempts to connect together the ideas he had previously invented. A special though relatively rare type of sketch is a synopsis, whether of a whole work or just a movement, where he summarizes the main cornerstones as in the synopsis of a play. Such synopsis sketches often combine notes with words such as names of keys or movement titles, and are particularly revealing in the way they outline Beethoven’s overall plans for a work.32 Further evidence about the genesis of Beethoven’s piano sonatas can be gleaned from autograph scores and corrected copies, which in many cases still survive. The autograph scores often contain interesting early versions of passages, as well as last-minute changes that are of considerable interest for the history of the works. After completing the autograph score, Beethoven sometimes arranged for it to be copied out by a professional copyist in preparation for publication, and he occasionally made further revisions while checking these through. Even when the manuscript (his own or the copyist’s) had been sent to the publishers, changes were still possible, and several examples will be noted in the following chapters. The exact process by which the music was transmitted from manuscript to publication represents the nal stage in the genesis of each sonata, and was by no means always as straightforward as one might imag ine. Although sketches and other preliminary work cannot directly indicate anything in a nished sonata that is not already there, except in rare cases where


9

they help resolve a textual issue (see Example 7.11 in Chapter 7 for an example of this), they can draw attention to hitherto unnoticed thematic or tonal connections or structural features, and enable us to see the work in a new light, where we can appreciate something of the compositional context that Beethoven himself experienced. Moreover, as Sieghard Brandenburg has observed, citing Carl Dahlhaus and Theodor Adorno, some might argue that one branch of music history is the history of the problem of composing, and that the hear ing of a work should become in some senses a recreation of the composing process. If this is accepted, then it is ‘almost criminal and unpardonable’ if the relevant sources for this composing process, namely the sketches, are largely ignored. 33 Although much of the composing process was never written down, and some of what was written has been lost, the sketches offer numerous insights that would otherwise be unobtainable. The nal stage in the genesis of the sonatas was the preparation of the rst editions. These editions, which all appeared during Beethoven’s lifetime and generally not long after the relevant sonatas were composed, are of inestima ble importance where the manuscript sources are lost, as is the case for all his early piano sonatas and some of the later ones.34 They were generally proofread, probably more than once, and have fairly accurate texts; but there are inevitably occasional misprints and possible errors, and when the autograph manuscript survives it is generally easy to identify them. On the other hand, the latest revisions in the printed text might not appear in any manuscript, as noted above. An additional problem arises where Beethoven sent manuscripts to two different publishers, with the result that each edition has some authority. Trying to establish an ideal urtext in such cases is an impossible task. Even today there are occasional debates about which of the surviving authentic versions is superior, and different modern scholarly editions have slightly different readings. Thus in one sense the genesis of Beethoven’s piano sonatas can never be complete.

Performance situations and instruments Two other elements that amplify the context in which Beethoven’s sonatas were created are the situations in which the sonatas were initially requested and performed, and the instruments that were available to him. Both elements potentially affected his approach to how he set about composing sonatas. Most of the earlier sonatas were commissioned by private patrons who would pay for exclusive use of them for six months or more (see Chapter 4), for their own entertainment and that of their friends, to be played either by Beethoven himself or some member of their family or other local pianist. Beethoven also sometimes played his sonatas on his own piano, especially when he was still putting the nishing touches to them, for Czerny reports that their friend Wenzel Krumpholz, a violinist, heard some of these performances and was able to play the themes to Czerny on the violin before the works had become known. 35 The main context for performances of the sonatas, however, was the numerous semi-private matinees and soirees run by the nobility. Few details survive for these, while private domestic

10


performances for individuals or by individuals, which must also have happened, have left almost no trace at all. Public piano recitals were unknown at the time; even public concerts were quite rare in Vienna (where Beethoven settled in 1792), and did not normally include a piano sonata. There are several reports of Beethoven playing a sonata of his at music meetings. In the 1790s musical performances took place every Friday morning at Prince Lichnowsky’s, and on one such occasion Beethoven rst played for Haydn the three sonatas (Op. 2) that he dedicated to him.36 On another occasion he played the Sonata Op. 31 No. 2 at a soiree at Count Browne’s, but with so many mistakes that a princess in the audience playfully rapped him on the head several times. 37 Czerny tells us that Beethoven often played the slow movement of the Sonata in D (Op. 28) and the Andante favori (WoO 57), which was the original slow movement of the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata; and Czerny heard him play the two sonatas of Op. 14 in 1801 or 1802, not long after their publication. 38 On another occasion Beethoven played the rst movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata in a room draped in black, at the funeral of a departed friend.39 In later life he is reported to have played Op. 101 very well at a music meeting, but to have confessed afterwards t hat because of his deafness he had not heard a single note.40 These are just a few known occasions when he performed a sonata in private, and there were doubtless many more that have not been recorded. There are also references to other performers such as Baroness Dorothea Ertmann playing Beethoven’s sonatas in private circles.41 Public performances of a sonata were far fewer, though not quite as rare as some have suggested. In 1798 Beethoven gave a concert in Prague where he played the second and fourth movements from his Sonata Op. 2 No. 2, and he played just the nale at another concert there.42 In January 1801 he performed a ‘grand sonata’ of his, probably Op. 22 (since this was newly written), at a charity concert for wounded soldiers, in the Grosse Redoutensaal i n Vienna.43 Another public performance was given by Stainer von Felsburg in February 1816, at which he played a ‘new’ piano sonata by Beethoven, presumably Op. 90, which had been published the previous June but evidently not yet heard in public.44 Such performances, however, whether by Beethoven or someone else, were very much the exception.45 In his early years keyboard sonatas might be played on harpsichord, clavichord or early piano (often known today as a fortepiano). His rst set of sonatas, WoO 47, was designated as being for ‘Klavier’, with the rst one headed ‘Cembalo solo’. Neither ‘Klavier’ nor ‘Cembalo’ determined precisely what instrument should be used, however, since both terms were often applied loosely to different types of keyboard instrument. His early Viennese sonata publications, Opp. 2, 7, 10 and 13, all had French title pages that specied ‘clavecin ou piano-forte’, and the same applied to Op. 26, while Op. 27 used the Italian ‘clavicembalo o piano-forte’. His later sonatas, however, specied just ‘piano-forte’ (apart from those that used the German ‘Hammerklavier’), as did Opp. 14 and 22. In the case of the Viennese sonatas it seems unlikely that Beethoven had a harpsichord in mind, since so many effects such as crescendos and sforzando marks would not work well on them, and ‘clavecin’, implying harpsichord, was evidently little


11

more than a sales device by the publisher. But the earliest set could be accommodated on harpsichord or clavichord with little loss of effect. There has been much debate about the different types of pianoforte (fortepiano) that were available to Beethoven, and how far he exploited them. 46 In particular, attempts have been made to link stylistic changes to his acquisition of an Erard piano in 1803 and a Broadwood piano in 1818, but such attempts have had limited success. Even extensions to the compass do not exactly coincide with these pianos: the Erard had a compass up to c4 (three octaves above middle C), but Beethoven’s rst sonata after acquiring it, the ‘Waldstein’, never goes beyond a3. Conversely he used a low E ( EE ) in Op. 101 in 1816, well before he acquired the Broadwood that had this note. It must be remembered that his sonatas were not written for his own private domestic use but for his sponsor and for the public at large, and might be played on a great variety of instruments. Pianos then were much more variable than modern ones, and there were major differences between French, English and Viennese types. Even Viennese pianos varied somewhat between different makers and different dates. Thus any attempt to exploit very specic sonorities of a particular ty pe of piano would founder if the sonata were played on a different one. He was well aware of the variety available, and crafted his sonatas so that they would suit most or all instruments (which is one reason why they are still so effective on modern pianos). A useful analogy is his Piano Trio, Op. 11, where the main melodic instrument is either a clarinet or a violin. Almost throughout the work, the part is designed without effects that work on only one of the two instruments; thus Beethoven avoided very low notes in the chalumeau register of the clarinet, and also pizzicato and double-stop effects that he used in other string music but would be impossible on a clarinet. The result was therefore suitable for either instrument. A similar situation occurs with his variations for ute or violin, Opp. 105 and 107. The success of these works depended on such elements as motivic argument, tonal relationships and structure, rather than very precise sonorities, and the same applies to his piano sonatas. There are, of course, occasional special effects such as the use of pedals, including the gradual change from una corda to tre corde in his late sonatas, and these would be less successful on certain instruments. But such situations are very much the exception. Thus the differences between the different types of piano did not signicantly affect the creation of the sonatas. This is in contrast to Daniel Steibelt, who is noted for his contest with Beethoven in 1800. He reportedly played only English pianos, for which he specically intended his works at one stage.47 These, then, were the immediate circumstances in which Beethoven wrote his piano sonatas. Although most were composed for a specic sponsor, he also had his eye on the wider public and indeed posterity – far more tha n did most composers of the time – and he aimed to create monuments of musical art that could benet ‘the noblest and most cultured people’ of all times. This desire led to the need for artistic progress and exceptional levels of excellence, which necessitated the extensive sketching that allows us some glimpses into how the sonatas were conceived and developed, and why they eventually emerged in the form that they did.

12


Notes 1 William S. Newman, The Sonata in the Classic Era (New York: Norton, 1963; 2nd edn, 1972), p. 508. 2 Rudolph Reti, Thematic Patterns in Sonatas of Beethoven , ed. Deryck Cooke (London: Faber, 1967); Denis Matthews, Beethoven Piano Sonatas (London: BBC, 1967); Jürgen Uhde, Beethovens 32 Klaviersonaten (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1968, repr. 2012); Kenneth Drake, The Beethoven Sonatas and the Creative Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Siegfried Mauser, Beethovens Klaviersonaten: Ein musikalischer Werkführer (Munich: Beck, 2001); Charles Rosen, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Robert Taub, Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (Portland: Amadeus, 2002); Dmitri Smirnov, The Anatomy of Theme in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas (Berlin: Kuhn, 2008); Moo Kyoung Song, The Evolution of Sonata-form Design in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: The Evolution of Sonata-form Design in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Early Piano Sonatas, WoO 47 to Opus 22 (Saarbrücken: VDM, 2009). 3 Pieter Bergé, ed., Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata: Perspectives of Analysis and Performance (Leuven: Peeters, 2009); Martha Frohlich, Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ Sonata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991); Nicholas Marston, Heinrich Schenker and Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); Nicholas Marston, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); William Drabkin, ‘A Study of Beethoven’s Opus 111 and Its Sources’, PhD diss. (Princeton University, 1977). 4 Barry Cooper, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas, 3 vols (London: ABRSM, 2007). All music examples given below that are from the nal versions of these sonatas are based on this edition. 5 BB-393, BB-474, BB-545; A-220, A-281, A-345. All letters are cited f rom the German edition of Beethoven’s correspondence (referred to as BB- plus the letter number): Sieghard Brandenburg, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, 7 vols (Munich: Henle, 1996–98). The letter number used in the English translations, in Emily Anderson, tr. and ed., The Letters of Beethoven, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1961), or Theodore Albrecht, tr. and ed., Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence, 3 vols (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), is also given (referred to as A- and Alb- respectively), for the benet of readers who have access only to these; but the translations given here generally differ from those. Other t ranslations in the present study are also my own except where indicated. 6 See Barry Cooper, ‘Beethoven’s Copy of J.C. Bach’s Six Sonates, Opus 17’, The Beethoven Journal , 19 (2004), 17–21. 7 KC, vol. 2, p. 909. 8 See Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, trans. and ed. William J. Mitchell (London: Cassell, 1949) [ originally published in 1753–62]. 9 See Richard Kramer, ‘Notes to Beethoven’s Education’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 28 (1975), 72–101. 10 See Nancy Kovaleff Baker and Thomas Christensen, t rans. and ed., Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 14; the article is on pp. 103–5. 11 Baker and Christensen, ed., Aesthetics, pp. 160–2. See also Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3 vols (Leipzig: Friedrich Böhme, 1782–93; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969). 12 Daniel Gottlob Türk, Klavierschule, oder Anweisung zum Klavierspielen für Lehrer und Lernende (Leipzig: Schwickert, 1789), p. 390; translated as School of Clavier Playing, or, Instructions in Playing the Clavier for Teachers and Students, trans. and ed. Raymond H. Haggh (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), p. 382.


13

13 For a modern survey of the possibilities open to him, see James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theor y: Norms, Types and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). How Beethoven applied these possibilities in his early piano sonatas is discussed in Song, Evolution. 14 BB-1562 and BB-2003; A-1136 and A-1405. 15 BB-281; A-143. For further discussion of Beethoven’s artistic aims, see Bar ry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 19–27. 16 BB-113; Alb-49. 17 BB-400; A-226. 18 BB-1259, BB-1295; A-903, A-939. 19 BB-1445; A-1059. 20 What might be a thirty-sixth sonata is listed as Hess 52. Its incipit in C major was noted by Thayer but there is now no trace of the work: see James F. Green, The New Hess Catalog of Beethoven’s Works (West Newbury: Vance Brook Publishing, 2003), p. 39. 21 BB-902; A-610; for Czerny’s account, see TF, pp. 640–1. 22 WR, p. 94. 23 See Cooper, Creative Process, p. 303. 24 Baker and Christensen, ed., Aesthetics, pp. 64–6; the article is entitled ‘Entwurf’, i.e. sketch or draft. 25 A nearly complete inventory of all Beethoven’s sketch sources is in Hans Schmidt, ‘Verzeichnis der Skizzen Beethovens’, Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 6 (1965–68 [1969]), 7–128. His actual sketchbooks, plus some but not all of the loose leaves, are describe d in JTW. 26 BB-1686; A-1203. 27 See JTW, pp. 4–6. 28 Lbl, Add. 29801, ff. 39–162 (see Joseph Kerman, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Auto graph Miscellany from 1786 to 1799, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1970); Bsb, Autograph 28 (see Douglas Johnson, Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the ‘Fischhof ’ Miscellany: Berlin Autograph 28, 2 vols (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1980). 29 JTW. 30 The majority of Beethoven’s sketches are now (February 2016) digitized and avail able online. Those in Pn can be accessed at: http://catalogue.bnf.fr/index.do; those in Bsb at: http://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de; those in BNba at http://www.beethovenhaus-bonn.de/sixcms/detail.php?template=startseite_digitales_archiv_en/. 31 See JTW, pp. 266 and 103. 32 See Cooper, Creative Process, pp. 104–19, for a fuller account of Beethoven’s sketch types. 33 Sieghard Brandenburg, ‘Die Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Beethovens Strei chquartett Es-dur Op. 127’, Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 10 (1978–81 [1983]), 221–76, at 226. 34 The rst editions, or in some cases t wo early authentic editions, of all Beethoven’s last 32 sonatas are available in facsimile in Brian Jeffery, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 32 Piano Sonatas in Reprints of the First and Early Editions , 5 vols (London: Tecla, 1989). The facsimiles, however, are slightly defective and omit a few sy mbols such as the occasional staccato mark. 35 KC, vol. 1, p. 203; O.G. Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporarie s (New York: Dover, 1967), p. 25. 36 WR, p. 32. 37 WR, pp. 81–2. 38 KC, vol. 1, pp. 218, 226 and 214. 39 KC, vol. 1, p. 473. 40 N-II, p. 357.

14


41 For example, Karl Bursy records that she played Op. 90 and Op. 27 No. 2 for him on 17 June 1816; see KC, vol. 1, p. 169. 42 KC, vol. 2, p. 987. 43 AMZ, 3 (1800–01), col. 366. 44 TF, p. 641. 45 For a further discussion of performance conditions for Beethoven’s sonatas, see Kenneth Hamilton, ‘Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata in Performance’, in Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata: Perspectives of Analysis and Performance, ed. Pieter Bergé, (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), pp. 127–62, at 128. 46 See especially Tilman Skowroneck, Beethoven the Pianist: Biographical, Organological and Performance-Practical Aspects of His Years as a Public Performer (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 2007); William S. Newman, Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way (New York: Norton, 1988), pp. 45–67. 47 See William Meredith, ‘The Westerby–Meredith Hypothesis: The History of the Eroica Variations and Daniel Steibelt’s Fortepiano Quintet, Opus 28, no. 2’, The Beethoven Journal , 27/1 (2012), 26–44, at 28.

2

The Bonn sonatas

WoO 47 No. 1 in E at: Allegro cantabile. Andante. Rondo vivace. WoO 47 No. 2 in F minor: Larghetto maestoso [alternating with:] Allegro assai. Andante. Presto. WoO 47 No. 3 in D: Allegro. Menuetto: Sostenuto. Scherzando: Allegro ma non troppo.

The dedication of the rst three sonatas Beethoven’s early life was spent in Bonn, where there was a ourishing musical establishment under the patronage of Maximilian Friedrich, the Elector of Cologne.1 At the time of Beethoven’s birth on 16 December 1770, his grandfather Louis (or Ludwig) was the musical director or kapellmeister at Maximilian’s court, while his father Johann was a professional singer who could also play the keyboard. Thus Beethoven grew up surrounded by music, and quickly showed a talent for it. It would therefore have seemed likely that he would follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, perhaps ulti mately becoming a kapellmeister like Louis, whom he remembered well and particularly admired, even though Louis died when Beethoven was only three. Neither of his forebears, however, had been a composer, and thus there was no expectation that Beethoven should become one. Yet reports indicate that he showed an inclination for extemporization shortly after he started learning the keyboard from his father. From such extemporizations it was a short step to writing down newly invented music, once the intricacies of notation had been understood; extemporization and composition were much more closely linked then than they are today. Thus Beethoven began composing while still a child and, like almost all child composers, the initial impetus to compose came not from any environmental or parental pressure but from within. 2 His rst known composition is a set of Variations in C minor (WoO 63), which his teacher Christian Gottlob Neefe arranged to have published around 1782. Neefe mentions this work in a report on Bonn musicians, dated 2 March 1783, that he sent to Carl Friedrich Cramer’s Magazin der Musik .3 There is no mention there of any sonatas, however, and one can presume that Beethoven had not yet completed any. Thus he probably composed his rst three sonatas (WoO 47)

16

The Bonn sonatas

during the spring and summer that year. They were published in Speyer that autumn by Heinrich Bossler, who announced in Cramer’s Magazin der Musik on 14 October 1783 that they were newly available, describing them as ‘an excellent composition by a young genius of 11 years’.4 Whereas the C minor Variations had been dedicated to Countess Antonie Wolf-Metternich, 5 a music-loving aristocrat in Bonn, the set of three sonatas was dedicated to no less a person than Elector Maximilian Friedrich himself. Consequently, they are sometimes known as the ‘Kurfürsten’ (or Electoral) Sonatas. Beethoven no doubt realised that sonatas were perceived as a much more elevated and challenging genre than variations, and that his set should therefore be offered to the highest authority at the court. A dedicatory letter was pr inted at the beginning of the publication, and deserves quoting in f ull. Most Exalted! From my fourth year, music started to become the rst of my youthful preoccupations. So early acquainted with the gracious Muse, who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I won her and, as it often seemed to me, she loved me in return. I have now reached my eleventh year; and since then my Muse in hours of inspiration has often whispered to me: ‘Try it, and write down for once the harmonies of your soul!’ Eleven years – I thought – and how would I look as a composer? And what would men experienced in the a rt say about it? I was almost shy. But my Muse wished it – I obeyed, and wrote. And now may I indeed dare, Most Excellent Lordship, to lay the rstfr uits of my youthful work on the steps of your throne? And may I hope that you will indeed give them the mild fatherly look of your encouraging approval? – Oh yes! For the arts and sciences from the beginning found in you their wise protector, their magnanimous promoter, and budding talent thrived under your gracious fatherly care. Full of this encouraging conviction, I dare to approach you with these youthful attempts. Accept them as a pure offering of childlike awe, and look down with favour, Most Exalted, on them and their young author Ludwig van Beethoven It is worth examining this dedication in some detail, for although such syco phantic writings can rarely be taken at face value, they often provide valuable insights. Beethoven may have been given some assistance in drafting the text, as some have assumed, but there is no evidence that he was; moreover, there is a certain honesty and directness about the text that suggest that the ideas are largely if not entirely his own, and at the age of 12 he was certainly capable of writing it. Features such as the reference to his ‘gracious Muse’, which may seem oddly quaint today, are very much in line with comments he made in later life. Similarly, references to a ‘wise protector’ are typical of dedicatory messages of that time, which he would surely have seen. For much of his life Beethoven was unsure of his age, and the reference to his ‘eleven’ years, when he was actually 12, is unsurprising. Similarly his

The Bonn sonatas

17

‘fourth year’ may mean the age of four or ve, and the start of his musical ini tiation probably began earlier still, through observing his father (and for a short time his grandfather), and then trying to imitate their efforts on the keyboard. Music quickly became his prime interest and absorbing passion (‘the rst of my preoccupations’), and the phrase ‘I won her’ implies a sense of courtship and eagerness to become acquainted with music. In turn he became aware that ‘she loved’ him, since he discovered he had exceptional musical gifts (‘given’ by his Muse) – not just a good ear but also a capacity for invention. The poetic conceit that his Muse commanded him to compose – and to wr ite down his ideas rather than just extemporize – conrms that he felt an inner compulsion. He seems to have retained this attitude throughout his life. In his Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802, he mentions that he would have committed suicide on account of his deafness, had he not felt the necessity to produce ‘all that I felt was within me’ before his death.6 A similar sense of obligation to compose is evident in a comment he made to his pupil Carl Czerny: ‘I never thought of writing for fame or honour. What is in my heart must come out, and that is why I write.’ 7 Although the ma jority of Beethoven’s later sonatas were composed partly as a result of specic requests or commissions, his earliest ones were seemingly motivated entirely by this desire to write down ‘the harmonies of your soul’. Beethoven was often surprisingly modest about his achievements, even in later life, and in 1783 he had good cause to hope that he would be able to compose much better works in due course. Thus he made no great claims about these sonatas, and expressed his anxiety about what ‘men experienced in the ar t’ would say about them. There was clearly a fear that they would rightly or wrongly be disparaged; and Maynard Solomon has drawn attention to a ‘devastating’ review published in 1784, allegedly referring to ‘several of Beethoven’s rst publications’, including, by implication, these sonatas. 8 The review, however, refers not to the sonatas but only to a journal that had published some songs and rondos by Beethoven alongside works by several other composers; and although the review criticized ve composers by name, Beethoven was not one of them.9 Thus there is no evidence that musicians regarded these sonatas with anything other than admiration. Meanwhile Maximilian Friedrich was surely much impressed by the sonatas and appreciated the tone and sentiments of the dedicatory letter. At any rate, within a few months he had appointed Beethoven as assistant organist at the court, and the sonatas had probably helped to conr m his opinion of Beethoven as already an outstanding musician.

Status as ‘Beethoven piano sonatas’ Each of the three sonatas is a fully edged, three-movement work capable of standing beside his later sonatas, and there is no justication for excluding them from consideration, as has been done almost without exception during the twentieth century.10 Many reference books incorrectly state that Beethoven composed 32 piano sonatas, rather than 35. Occasionally, too, these three sonatas have been detached from the other 32 on the grounds that they are merely

18

The Bonn sonatas

sonatinas. Yet their length invalidates such a ter m: the three consist respectively of 245, 294 and 389 bars. Thus each is longer than Beethoven’s shortest sonata (Op. 49 No. 2, which contains 242 bars), and No. 3 is longer than several of his later sonatas, including the ‘Moonlight’. Moreover, each was actually headed ‘Sonata’, not ‘Sonatina’, by Beethoven when the set was published. The three sonatas also do not differ signicantly from later ones, or from Mozart’s, in terms of how the keyboard instrument is used. Although they could be played on clavichord or harpsichord instead of the piano, and no doubt sometimes were when rst published,11 on balance an early piano seems the most suitable instrument, and there is nothing in them that is incompatible with performance on a modern piano. The inclusion of several fortissimo markings makes the very quiet tones of the clavichord less suitable, while the presence of a crescendo in No. 2 is difcult to accomplish effectively on a harpsichord but easy on a piano (or fortepiano). In later life Beethoven frequently raised the possibility of producing a com plete edition of his works, and had lengthy discussions about the matter with his friend Tobias Haslinger. In preparation for such an edition, Haslinger arranged between 1817 and 1821 for Matthias Schwarz to make a manuscript copy of all Beethoven’s published works, including occasional works and very early compositions. This manuscript collection, preserved in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna, was authenticated by Beethoven in a document dated 17 November 1822: That the collected pieces contained in this complete collection of my compositions, prepared by Herr Tobias Haslinger, are composed by me, I conrm in accordance with the truth, in that I am signing this certication in my own hand with my name.12 Thus Beethoven clearly collaborated in the venture and wholly supported it. Shortly after his death, Haslinger began a complete edition of the piano sonatas, using the manuscript collection as a basis. He duly included the three sonatas dedicated to Maximilian, and indicated his intention to include all 35 sonatas in Series I of his edition.13 He even included the authentication from Beethoven,14 thereby proving that Beethoven was involved with plans for them to be part of a complete edition. These three works are therefore sonatas in form and length; they were published as sonatas by Beethoven himself; he continued to regard them as piano sonatas in later life; and he intended them to be included in a complete edition. Hence there is not a single reason why they should be excluded from any purportedly complete performance or recording of ‘the Beethoven piano sonatas’. How they came to be so extensively disregarded in this context is something of a mystery. Czerny demoted them to ‘sonatinas’, along with the sonatas Op. 49 and 79, in 1839,15 and Haslinger’s successors omitted them in a reissue of the complete edition in 1865,16 but these actions have no authority and should clearly not be followed today.

The Bonn sonatas

19

The creation of the musical content In planning his set of sonatas, Beethoven adopted a pattern that was to serve him in almost all his groups of three instrumental works, but was used much less consistently by either Haydn or Mozart. This was to have one of the three in a minor key, at least one in a sharp key, at least one in a at key, and no two keynotes or key signatures the same. In this case he chose E at major, F minor and D major, and he seems to have made an effort to maximise the contrast between them. If they were composed in numerical order, as seems probable, their increasing length may simply reect his growing maturity as a composer and his ambition to work on a grand scale. But it could be the result of a conscious plan to provide increasing weight in successive works, so as to build towards a climax and a sense of end-orientation such as appears in many of his later works. Various writers have made brief attempts to identify the inuences on these sonatas. It is possible to see signs of the dynamism of the Mannheim style, for instance in the opening of No. 1;17 the passion of the ‘Sturm und Drang’ movement, and the drama and unpredictability of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, in No. 2; the wit of Haydn in No. 3; and the eloquence of Mozart in the slow movements of Nos. 1 and 2. What shines through more than anything, however, is the originality that dees attempts to pin down specic inuences. Several prominent features of Beethoven’s later style are already in evidence, and presumably had been discovered by him during experiments and extemporizations at the key board during long hours of practice. This is typical of many child composers, who learn not only by imitation and instruction but by trial and error, thereby discovering by chance some original but effective ideas that then serve them well in other contexts in later works.18 One such feature is Beethoven’s irregular manipulation of sonata form to create novel designs, as is evident in all three rst movements.19 The nale of No. 3 is also highly original: it is in a bipartite form with both sections repeated, but most of the second-subject material does not return in the recapitulation, replaced instead by further development of the main theme, followed by a complete restatement of it (bars 128–44) and then a substantial coda (another typical Beethovenian characteristic). Thus the movement blends sonata form and rondo form in an apparently novel way. The rst movement of No. 2 is even more remarkable. It begins with a slow introduction – rare in sonatas of the period, though more common in symphonies, and therefore implying an intention to raise the aesthetic level above the norm for the genre.20 Material from the slow introduction then reappears during the main A llegro, just before the recapitulation. Such recall of introductory material within a sonataform allegro is virtually unprecedented: the nearest equivalent so far identied is Mozart’s Serenade in D, K. 320, of 1779, where the slow introduction returns largely intact at the start of the recapitulation, but renotated in long note values within the allegro tempo.21 Mozart’s Violin Sonata in C, K. 303, also includes a reprise of the slow introduction, but the allegro is not in sonata form. Beethoven’s innovation was so successful that he returned to the idea several times (as in his

20

The Bonn sonatas

Pathétique Sonata of 1799 and each of his three ‘Galitzin’ Quartets of 1824–25), and Haydn also used it in his ‘Drum Roll’ Symphony of 1795. Another conspicuous feature is the high level of virtuosity and the awkwardness of the guration, compared with norms of the time. In the Allegro rst movement of No. 3, for example, Beethoven stretches a standard Alberti-bass pattern in the right hand in bars 31–2 until it spans more than an octave (Example 2.1). The second movement consists of a set of variations on a minuet theme written largely in crotchets, but the variations move successively into semiquaver, tripletsemiquaver and demisemiquaver guration that almost compels the performer to adopt a slower tempo, though none is marked. A similar use of increasingly short note values occurs in the slow movement of No. 2, which proceeds from quavers to demisemiquavers and even hemidemisemiquavers within a few bars (bars 53–7: see Example 2.2). Beethoven’s characteristic use of sharply contrasting registers is also in evidence, as in the slow introduction to No. 2, where a widely spaced texture quickly gives way to thick chords in the bass clef (Example 2.3). His predilection for off-beat sforzandos is evident right at the start of No. 1 ( Example 2.4): although he had not begun using a specic sforzando sign (which was still rare in 1783), the effect of a strong-beat followed immediately by an on a weak beat gives the same effect. These sonatas contain several other passages with sudden and violent contrasts between and too. Although such effects may not be completely unknown in earlier music, Beethoven seems to have discovered them for himself and instinctively incorporated them into these works.

Example 2.1 WoO 47 No. 3.I, bars 31–2.

Example 2.2 WoO 47 No. 2.II, bars 53–7.

The Bonn sonatas

21



No sketches are known for these three sonatas, and so Beethoven’s approach to composing them cannot be established beyond anything that might be surmised from the nished works or his later sketches. A few basic conclusions may be drawn, such as the assumption that the theme in the slow movement of No. 3 was composed before the variations. One might also deduce from his later sketches that the movements within each sonata were almost certainly composed in numerical order, and that some time was spent rening transitions and minor details of guration, as well as the main themes. But any attempts at suggesting anything more complex about a work’s composition from its structure or from his later practice are hazardous. The only indication about the evolution of Beethoven’s thinking about these sonatas consists of some minor revisions that appear in his own personal copy of them, now in the British Library. 22 This copy contains numerous additions in his hand, including ngering indications, changes of articulation and a single added trill. The ngerings appear in the last movement of No. 1 and the last two movements of No. 2. They were probably added within ve years of publication, for the ornate form of the gure 1 is not found in any of Beethoven’s later ngerings from about 1790 onwards (although he continued using it for rst-time bars and for rst instruments, such as rst violins, in orchestral scores). The other changes are found only in the rst two movements of No. 1 and could date from much later; but the handwr iting of the ‘tr:’ is clearly earlier than that of Beethoven’s trill signs of the 1790s, and so this and the articulation signs were probably added about the same time as the ngerings. In the rst

22

The Bonn sonatas

movement, bars 21 and 66 contain changes or additions of articulation, while the second movement contains the added trill in bar 53 and changed articulation in bar 54, as shown in Example 2.5 (a) and (b). Two features about the revision are par ticularly noteworthy. First, the use of staccato marks at the ends of slurs, which also appears in the added articulation in the rst movement, is a feature not found in the originally printed text. It shows Beethoven putting even more energy into his writing of articulation signs, and by implication his performance of them, than previously. Second, the use of paired slurs that go across the beat and half-beat is also a novel effect (discounting one or two ambiguous cases where the printing of the original is uncertain). Beethoven had become aware that his slurring patterns were too unvarying – generally two-note slurs alternating with two staccato marks, as in the earlier version of the second half of bar 54 – and so he now introduced more unusual patterns to contrast with those of the previous two bars. (a)

(b)

Example 2.5 WoO 47 No. 1.II, bars 53–4: (a) printed version; (b) revised version .

Thus even in the 1780s he was already seeking ways of improving what he had written. In 1815 he still recalled ‘the bad habit formed from childhood of having to write down at once my rst ideas’, 23 rather than allowing them to develop inside him for longer. On the other hand, his later sketches suggest that, no matter how long his ideas were allowed to evolve, and how many alternatives he considered, it was always possible to nd fur ther improvements. Thus his rst sonatas, li ke his later ones, are not perfect in every way and were surely susceptible to improvement by a composer as talented as Beethoven. But he left them largely as they stood, and they form a unique and distinctive contribution to the piano repertoire. By the standards of the early 1780s they exhibit thoroughly competent craftsma nship in compositional technique, along with the originalit y described above and the ability to write in several dif ferent styles.

The Bonn sonatas

23

Later Bonn sonatas No further piano sonatas are known from Beethoven’s Bonn period, but he may have written or drafted some now lost. In a letter to his friend Eleonore von Breuning he refers to a set of variations and also a rondo with violin, which were being sent along with the letter; he then adds that he would also have sent her a sonata that he had promised her earlier, but he was too busy to write out a fair copy. His manuscript was ‘practically just a sketch’ that even Paraquin (Johann Paraquin, a member of the Bonn court musical establishment) would have found difcult to copy.24 The letter was formerly thought to date from 1794, but it must date from 1792, since in a letter from the end of October that year Beethoven asks for the variations and rondo to be returned from Eleonore (by then she had had a chance to copy them out for personal use). These works have been identied as the variations on Dittersdorf’s ‘Es war einmal ein alter Mann’ (WoO 66) and the Violin Rondo in G (WoO 41).25 The letter does not ask for the return of the promised sonata, however, and so it seems that Eleonore never received a copy of it. Until recently it was assumed that the sonata that had not been fully written out was one in C, WoO 51, for which the autograph score of most of the rst and sec ond movements survives;26 but the handwriting of this manuscript indicates that the work was not actually written until 1797–98. Moreover, this supposed ‘sonata’ is actually just two short pieces – not, as previously assumed, the rst two movements of a sonata from which the nale is lost; and they were written not for an ordinary piano but for a particular type of portable piano-like instrument known as an ‘orphica’, which was not invented until 1796. 27 The autograph was sent to Eleonore from Vienna, most likely through her brother Lorenz, who returned from Vienna to Bonn in late 1797 and perhaps brought an orphica with him for her (it was a Viennese invention) along with the two pieces specially written for it by Beethoven.28 Not until their posthumous publication in 1831 were they erroneously referred to as a sonata. This redating of WoO 51 leaves open the question of the Bonn sonata that remained as ‘practically just a sketch’. No such manuscript survives. Perhaps the nearest thing to a sonata from Beethoven’s late Bonn period is what is sometimes referred to as a Sonatina in F (WoO 50). This consists, however, of just two short movements of 30 and 26 bars respectively, written on a single leaf that was given to Beethoven’s friend Franz Wegeler (who later married Eleonore von Breuning) around 1791.29 The two movements were presumably intended to belong together, but they are even less substantial than the two pieces for orphica, and scarcely long enough to form a sonatina , let alone a fully-edged sonata. Neither WoO 50 nor WoO 51 was included in Haslinger’s complete edition of the sonatas. Beethoven had much more ambitious plans for a sonata during this period, but they seem not to have materialized. A bifolio from the late Bonn period contains the beginnings of two different sonatas, one i n E minor and one in E at major.30 The E minor one begins boldly with octaves for the right hand, soon accompanied by quaver triplets in the left (Example 2.6), but after reaching a half-close and pause at bar 13 it comes to a halt. Although there are various other piano

24

The Bonn sonatas

gurations on the page, they probably do not belong to the same work. The E at sketch, likewise headed ‘Sonata’, has a much gentler character, with a attened seventh introduced in bar 3 over an oscillating tonic pedal (Example 2.7). After a brief digression the opening ten bars are reprised at bars 21–30, but with the C$s replaced by C@s and a hint of the minor mode. The breadth of the theme and the slow harmonic pace suggest a large-scale movement, but the music breaks off with a double bar at the end of bar 30 and again there is no sign of any subsequent material that belongs to it. Both sonata openings contain striking and original ideas, but the textures are conspicuously thin and unvarying, and it is hard to imagine any nished sonatas starting in such a way without some more immediate contrast. The style is more appropriate for a symphony than a sonata, with broad, simple motifs that are susceptible to elaborate development, rather than short, decorative ideas that are most characteristic of the sonata genre. This is one of many exam ples of Beethoven’s tendency to think in symphonic terms in his early works, even when writing for solo piano.

Example 2.6 Bars 1–6 of sketch for abandoned sonata in E minor (Bonn, Beethoven-Haus, Wegeler Collection W 3, f. 1r).

Example 2.7 Bars 1–13 of sketch for abandoned sonata in E at (Bonn, Beethoven-Haus , Wegeler Collection, W 3, f. 2v).

The Bonn sonatas

25

Any further thoughts of developing these or other sonata ideas were evidently abandoned when Beethoven moved to Vienna in November 1792 to study with Haydn. Nevertheless, the sonatas he had published, and the ideas he had sketched for further examples, suggest that he foresaw the piano sonata as being one of the main vehicles for his compositional activity once he had completed his studies with Haydn. Th is proved to be the case, for by the end of the century he had written another 13 piano sonatas – more works than in any other instrumental genre.

Notes 1 The most detailed account of Beethoven’s childhood is in TF, pp. 41–99. For a more recent summary see, for example, Barry Cooper, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; 2nd edn, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 1–26 (2nd edn, pp. 1–28). 2 See Barry Cooper, Child Composers and Their Works: A Historical Survey (Lanham: Scarecrow, 2009), p. 56. 3 TF, pp. 65–6. 4 LvBWV, vol. 2, p. 122. 5 Not Felice Wolf-Metternich as stated in KH, p. 509: see Peter Clive, Beethoven and His World: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 401–2. 6 BB-106. 7 KC, vol. 1, p. 217. 8 Maynard Solomon, Beethoven (New York: Schirmer, 1977), p. 28. 9 Ludwig Nohl, Beethoven’s Leben , 3 vols (Leipzig: E.J. Günther, 1867–77), vol. 1, p. 371. The review appeared in Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Musikalische Almanach für Deutschland auf das Jahr 1784 (Leipzig: Schickert, 1784), p. 195, and the journal in question was Heinrich Bossler’s Blumenlese für Klavierliebhaber of 1783. The review went on to condemn current admiration for a ‘boy of 12’; but the boy was then identied as Bonifazio Asioli, not Beethoven. 10 See, for example, Donald Francis Tovey, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, rev. and ed. Barry Cooper (London: ABRSM, 1998), and Edwin Fischer, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, trans. Stanley Godman (London: Faber & Faber, 1959), both of which entirely ignore the WoO 47 sonatas. A rare exception is Jacques-Gabriel Prod’homme, Les sonates pour piano de Beethoven (1782–1823): histoire et critique (Paris: Delagrave, 1937). 11 See Chapter 1 for a discussion of instruments. 12 Sieghard Brandenburg, ‘Die Beethovenhandschriften in der Musikaliensammlung des Erzherzogs Rudolph’, in Zu Beethoven 3: Aufsätze und Dokumente, ed. Harry Goldschmidt (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1988), pp. 141–76, at 170–71. 13 See Otto Erich Deutsch, ‘Beethovens gesammelte Werke’, Zeitschrift für Musikwis senschaft , 13 (1930–31), 60–79, at 68. 14 LvBWV, vol. 2, p. 124. 15 Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, ed. Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1970), p. 58/68. 16 Deutsch, ‘Beethovens gesammelte’, p. 72. 17 For an indication of Beethoven’s familiarity with the Mannheim style, see Inge Horst, ‘3 Klaviersonaten Es-Dur, f-Moll und D-Dur “Kurfürstensonaten” WoO 47’, in Beethoven: Interpretationen seiner Werke, ed. Albrecht Riethmüller, Carl Dahlhaus and Alexander L. Ringer, 2 vols (Laaber: Laaber, 1994), pp. 420–6, at 422. 18 See Cooper, Child Composers, pp. 46–50.

26

The Bonn sonatas

19 See Cooper, ‘Beethoven’s Childhood Compositions: A Reappraisal’, The Beethoven Journal , 12/1 (1997), 2–6, at 4–5. 20 See James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 296. 21 See Hepokoski and Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory, p. 220. 22 Lbl, Add. MS 41631. 23 BB-824; A-558. 24 BB-4; the letter is translated in the rst part of A-9. 25 BB-5, A-2. See also the accompanying notes to BB-4 and BB-5. 26 BNba, Wegeler Collection, W 2. 27 See Klaus Martin Kopitz, ‘Beethoven as a Composer for the Orphica: A New Source for WoO 51’, The Beethoven Journal , 22/1 (2007), 25–30. 28 See Barry Cooper, Letter ‘To the Editor’, The Beethoven Journal , 23/1 (2008), 47. 29 BNba, Wegeler Collection, W 1. 30 BNba, Wegeler Collection, W 3.

3

The Opus 2 sonatas and Haydn

Op. 2 No. 1 in F minor: Allegro. Adagio. Menuetto: Allegretto. Prestissimo. Op. 2 No. 2 in A: Allegro vivace. Largo appassionato. Scherzo: Allegretto. Rondo: Grazioso. Op. 2 No. 3 in C: Allegro con brio. Adagio. Scherzo: Allegro. Allegro assai.

Beethoven’s aims for Opus 2 Having arrived in Vienna in November 1792, Beethoven occupied himself dur ing his rst year with composing several substantial works under Haydn’s tutelage, including an oboe concerto (Hess 12, now lost), a Wind Octet (Op. 103), and a new nale for his already existing B Flat Piano Concerto (the new nale, WoO 6, was eventually replaced by a different one, before the concerto was published as Op. 19). In addition, he produced a large batch of around 280 exercises in counterpoint as part of his formal studies with Haydn, of which nearly 250 still survive.1 Hardly any of his compositions from 1793 were published at the time, however, and it seems that he regarded them as work in progress rather than nished articles, thinking that he would be able to return to them and improve them after he had advanced further with his counterpoint studies. It has been observed with some genres – notably the string quartet, the concerto, and the symphony – that he apparently did not want to publish any contributions until he was condent he could at least emulate and preferably surpass all previous models. The same attitude probably applied to other genres in 1793. Thus when he embarked on a set of trios (for piano, violin, and cello) and a set of piano sonatas, which were to become Opp. 1 and 2 respectively, he did not intend them for immediate publication. For piano sonatas, Mozart, Haydn, and Clementi had already produced many excellent examples, and he would not have wanted his own to be considered inferior to theirs. Thus preparations would be slow and methodical, as he held back until he felt sufciently condent. As a newly arrived apprentice composer in Vienna, Beethoven was unlikely to receive commissions until he had proved himself; and if he did receive any, he was likely to keep them in abeyance, as he apparently did later with the string-quartet genre.2 His rst set of Viennese piano sonatas was therefore proba bly not commissioned but composed to full his own ambitions and to launch his

28


career (along with the Trios Op. 1) as a major composer of instrumental music. One can also sense, in these three sonatas, his lofty artistic aim to be regarded as a ‘true artist’, as mentioned in Chapter 1. Thus practical-professional aims and aesthetic-artistic ones converged to induce him to begin a set of piano sonatas as the most elevated type of piano music at the ti me, but not to publish them until he had thoroughly mastered the art of composing them. When they appeared they could function almost as a kind of manifesto, announcing his intention to be a composer of the highest class of instrumental music – sonatas, string quartets, and symphonies, rather than variations, dance music, and wind music, which would be very much a side line. This would be in direct succession to Mozart, while avoiding too close an imitation of Mozart’s style.

The rst Viennese sonata When Beethoven arrived in Vienna he had not composed any piano sonatas for over nine years (discounting any that may be lost), but within a year of arrival he had sketched both a sonata-like fanta sia that was eventually abandoned (Unv 12) and the rst movement of what became his rst Viennese sonata, O p. 2 No. 1. The former, probably begun rst, is a very substantial but unnished work that would last around 20 minutes in performance and is found on folios 90–95 of the Kafka Miscellany. 3 It has been described variously as ‘Composition (fantasia?) in D major/minor’, ‘Piano Sonata “quasi una fantasia” in D’, and ‘Fantasia Sonata in D’.4 It is a long, rambling effort of well over a thousand bars in three linked movements, the rst of which is in D major with a central minore section – thus not in sonata form. The following slow movement in G leads to a brief reprise of material from the opening movement, before a third movement in D minor, which becomes very sketchy towards the end. Taken as a whole, the piece contains many interesting and effective ideas, while its key structure, moving from major to tonic minor, is highly unorthodox; but it seems to lack proper coherence, with little sense of formal shape beyond a broad three-section structure. Thus, although the structure recalls that of a sonata, the diffuse musical argument is more akin to that of a fantasia. It would have needed a great deal of work to create satisfactory forms and to enrich the textures sufciently to raise the composition even to the same level as Beethoven’s earlier sonatas, and this may be the reason he abandoned it. If his aim was to compose a new type of sonata, he seems to have lacked sufcient spark at this stage to bring it off. Nevertheless, its structure of linked movements pregures that of the Op. 27 sonatas, while the recall of the opening material before the nale anticipates a similar procedure in the sonata Op. 101 of 1816. It is not unusual to nd ideas appearing in Beethoven’s sketches several years before similar ideas app ear in a nished work, as here. The earliest known sketch for Op. 2 No. 1, like the abandoned work in D, can be dated to 1793 on the basis of a combination of handwriting, paper type and other evidence.5 Beethoven probably intended from the outset that this should be the rst of a set of three sonatas, and his d raft is much more focused than that for


29

the abandoned work. It contains a complete and more or less regular sonata-form exposition in F minor, written in score (two staves) throughout; and in several places, including the opening theme, it already cor responds closely with the ex position of Op. 2 No. 1. Since it is substantial and continuous, Beethoven had almost certainly made some preliminary sketches that are now lost, as well as improvising many more at the piano. The draft as a whole is 42 bars long, only a little shorter than the 48-bar exposition of the nal version. The opening and closing themes of the exposition are in place, corresponding to bars 1–8 and 41–8 of the nal version, with only minor differences of texture and guration. At the transition, however, there are bravura triplets (bars 13–19), followed by a lyrical second subject in A@, though without accompaniment at this point (bars 20–26: see Example 3.1). Apart from the signicant absence of F @s, its descending arpeggio contours are basically similar to those of the nal version, as if Beethoven wanted a direct contrast to the rising arpeggios of the opening. Bars 27–34, immediately before the closing theme, correspond harmonically to the passage before the closing theme in the nal version, but the motifs and guration are different.

Example 3.1 Sketch for Op. 2 No. 1.I (from N-II, p. 565).

One feature already evident in this sketch is the resemblance between the opening theme of Op. 2 No. 1 and that of the F major slow movement of his Piano Quartet in C, WoO 36 No. 3, composed around 1785. This work had never been published and had effectively been discarded; thus after moving to Vienna in 1792 Beethoven tried to salvage some of its best ideas. In particular, its slowmovement theme was to be adapted for the second movement of the new piano sonata. Its key was the subdominant of the rst movement in the quartet, but it could easily become the tonic major of an F minor sonata. This theme and the opening theme of the 1793 sketch for Op. 2 No. 1 are shown in Examples 3.2(a) and 3.2(b). Their melodic contours are conspicuously similar – although the sonata sketch is an octave higher – for both rise up to the thi rd of the scale and ultimately the fth (C) before falling back in a gradual descent to E. Thus Beethoven’s starting point for Op. 2 No. 1 seems to have been the decision to transform the slow movement of his Piano Quartet in C into the slow movement of the sonata,

30


and build the rest of the work around it, deriving the rst-movement theme from it. Curiously, however, the similarity of the quartet theme to that of the F minor sonata is much more apparent in the nal version of the sonata, by which time an upbeat on the dominant had been added, and also an expressive F–E appoggiatura in bar 8. Both features are absent in the 1793 sketch despite being present in the quartet theme. Thus, if Beethoven did use the quartet theme as the starting point for his sonata, it was only at a later stage that he reinforced the thematic connection by adjusting the rst-movement theme.

(a)

(b)

Example 3.2 (a) WoO 36 No. 3.II, bars 1–2; (b) Sketch for Op. 2 No. 1.I (from N-II, p. 564).

During 1794 this F minor exposition draft seems to have been temporarily laid aside. Beethoven actually completed very few works that year, concentrating instead on his counterpoint studies. Haydn left for England in January, and Beethoven began studying with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, widely regarded then as the leading counterpoint specialist in Vienna, if not the whole of Europe. Albrechtsberger’s teaching seems to have been far more systematic than Haydn’s, and Beethoven worked through many much longer and more difcult exercises than he had done the previous year. Once his course of st udy was nished, however, in early 1795, he was ready to launch himself on the Viennese public as a composer. He composed and performed a new piano concerto (No. 1 in C major) that year, and set about publishing his Trios Opus 1 which he had been working on. The set of piano sonatas emerged a little later as Opus 2. Sometime in 1795, therefore, he began working intensively on this set. He returned to his F minor sonata and drafted a revised version of the exposition in another extended sketch,6 which is similar in many ways to the 1793 draft. Again it is in score at a time when most of his sketches were single-stave drafts showing just the melodic line, but the exposition is slightly shorter than before, at only 39 bars. Yet it corresponds closely to the nal version throughout. When he came to write out the nal version later that year, the only changes of phrase structure that he made were these: four bars were added after bar 14 of the sketch, repeating and extending the tra nsitional material; two bars were repeated in the second


31

subject (bars 17–18 of the sketch); and the material immediately following the second subject (bars 20–3 of the sketch) was expanded from four to seven bars. The three versions of the exposition can be placed side by side in tabular form to show the relationships between them (see Table 3.1). Passages in the 1795 draft that differ entirely from the 1793 draft are marked ‘new’ in Table 3.1; the passage that resembles its predecessor harmonically and st ructurally but differs in guration is marked ‘similar’; where two passages are the same (and the same length) apart from relatively minor details, the equals sign has been used. The table shows clearly how certain sections were in place at an early stage, while others were added or replaced for the 1795 draft, which contains substantial new material. The nal version then added no signicant new material but extended or repeated certain passages to give a more expanded version of essentially the same exposition. This kind of expansion, in which a movement is extended in later sketches, is common in Beethoven’s sketching process.7 The 1795 draft does not terminate at the end of the exposition but continues into a complete 36-bar development section (bars 39–75 of the sketch). Again it matches the nal version in many places: two bars (52–3) were still to be inserted after sketch-bar 42; sketch-bars 45–6 were to be repeated (as in bars 17–18 of the exposition); bar 65 was to be expanded into two bars (78–9), and bars 67–75 were to be rewritten and expanded from 9 to 20 bars. A cross-reference sign in the sketch at the start of bar 67 indicates Beethoven’s dissatisfaction with what followed, and he later drafted a different continuation, presumably matching the nal version, on a separate leaf now lost. Thus the development section was expanded from 36 bars to 52 (bars 48–100), through the insertion of 2 + 2 + 1 + 11 bars. Already in this early sonata, the development in the sketch is proportionately longer than usual, and was extended at a late stage to become even longer than the exposition. The recapitulation in the nal version is regular and the coda is very short; thus sketches for the rest of the movement (bars 101–52) were not needed when Beethoven was writing out his 1795 draft. Instead, on the verso of the sketch leaf he noted various short and unused concepts, mostly on t wo staves and designed for piano. One is in F mi nor and might be an idea for a possible nale or even a slow movement;8 but its closed form with internal repeats and phrase structure of 4 + 8 bars is not very characteristic of Beethoven’s sonata movements, and

Table 3.1 Comparison of two drafts and nal version of exposition of Op. 2 No. 1 1793 draft 1–8 9–19

1795 draft =

20–26

27–34 35–42

=

1–8 new 9–15

= =

new 16–19

=

new 20–23

=

similar 24–31 32–39

= =

Op. 2/1

Section

1–8 9–15 16–19 20–23 24–25 26–29 30–32 33–40 41–48

rst subject transition extension of transition second subject repeat of 22–23 guration extension of guration bravura scales closing theme

32


so it may well have been intended for some other purpose, or just as a record of an idea worth noting down. No more sketches for the F minor sonata are known except a short exposition draft for the nale on a leaf now lost. 9 The second movement, though based on a pre-existing piano-quartet movement, would have required a substantial amount of sketching. Moreover, Beethoven decided at some stage to introduce an ext ra movement, the Menuetto, before the nale, creating a four-movement structure (fast – slow – minuet – fast) associated with t he more challenging genres of symphony and string quar tet, which were already regarded as the leading types of instr umental music. Such a structure had not been used in any of Haydn’s or Mozart’s keyboard sonatas, 10 and was a bold idea that seems to signal Beethoven’s intent to rise above the norm, raising the level of the sonata almost to that of the symphony and string quartet. He had already used a four-movement structure in each of his three new piano trios, another genre where the norm was three movements or occasionally just two. It was therefore logical to persist with such a structure, not just in the F minor sonata but in all three of Opus 2, and the structure could be regarded as an integral part of his ‘manifesto’. The absence of relevant sketches, however, makes it impossible to tell whether this development was planned from the outset or whether one or more of the minuet or scherzo movements were added at a late stage.

The completion of Opus 2 Beethoven’s choice of F minor for the rst sonata is noteworthy, for this was an unusually sombre key, and suggests that he was t rying to convey the message that here was a composer with serious intent. T he key had not been used for any piano sonata by Haydn or Mozart, although there is a striking example by Clementi (Op. 13 No. 6) from 1785, which Beethoven may have known, and the key recalls that of Haydn’s Symphony No. 49, appropriately nicknamed ‘La passione’. His choice for his other two sonatas in the set, A major and C major, followed his normal preference for creating diversity within th ree-work sets as outlined in the previous chapter. He also normally composed his multi-work sets in numerical order (though there are exceptions – notably the string quartets Op. 18); and the increasing sophistication and length in the three sonatas of Op. 2 suggest that it followed this patter n. The individual movements of a work, too, were invariably composed in numerical order (with slight overlaps) unless there were exceptional circumstances.11 Thus one may assume that the 12 movements of Op. 2 were composed in order, unless one or more of the third movements were inserted as an afterthought. The main sketches for No. 2 in A major should therefore date from 1795, but unfortunately all such sketches are lost. The only sur viving sketches that can be related to this sonata are early ideas apparently dating from before the 1795 draft for Op. 2 No. 1, and they appear as very short fragments that are not obviously intended for this sonata, although something resembling them came to be used in the rst movement. 12 For each fragment, two main scenarios are possible. Either the idea was jotted down as an i nteresting thought, and was later rediscovered and incorporated into the A major sonata; or alternatively Beethoven was already in 1794 (or early 1795) beginning to think about


33

the second sonata in the set, but had only reached t he stage of noting short fragments or motifs that might somehow be incorporated into it. The sketch that is closest to the sonata, and therefore most likely to have been written spe cically for it, is that on folio 25r of the Fischhof Miscellany (see Example 3.3).13 The beginning resembles bars 187–9 and then 183–5 of the rst movement, although the continuation is different. The similarity is sufcient to suggest that this was an early idea specically intended for the development section, with the remote key of F major already xed as a tonal goal for this section. The other two fragments, however, show less similarity to the sonata, and are more likely to have been passing thoughts not designed for a particular work. Many other shor t keyboard fragments noted down around this period could have been incorporated into an Opus 2 sonata but were not, for Beethoven was already in the habit of writing down any interesting idea that might otherwise be forgotten.

Example 3.3 Sketch for Op. 2 No. 2 (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 25r).

The C major sonata, Op. 2 No. 3, like the F minor sonata, incorporates a passage from his discarded Piano Quar tet in C (WoO 36 No. 3), although it is otherwise little better off for preliminary material than No. 2 in A. The passage in question appears in ba rs 27–44, beginn ing in G m inor (Example 3.4), and is an expanded and developed version of bars 37–47 of the quartet; but whereas in the quar tet the passage comes between the second subject and the closing theme, in the sonata it is placed before the second subject (bar 47) in a much more expansive exposition, which takes fa r longer to reach the second subject. It sounds curiously unrelated to what precedes it in the sonata, but this may be due to Beethoven’s desire to create a sudden contrast, rather than because it had been lifted from a different work. Another connection between the two movements occurs in part of the transition in the sonata (bars 21–6), which is loosely based on the transition in the quartet (bars 18–23); this sounds much more integral to the surrounding music than does the other bor rowed passage.

Example 3.4 Op. 2 No. 3.I, bars 27–31.

34


During the initial stages of composition of the movement, Beethoven also planned to borrow the main theme from the piano quartet. The only known sketches for the rst movement of the sonata appear on a leaf in the Fischhof Miscellany (folio 21), and the opening bars, which are shown in Example 3.5, are clearly derived from the opening of the quartet (Example 3.6), which in turn is rather close to the rst theme of his rst piano sonata, WoO 47 No. 1 in E at. The handwriting in these sketches, in particular the absence of most barlines, indicates a date of late 1794 or early 1795 – thus before Beethoven had nished his main work on the rst movement of Op. 2 No. 1. There was, therefore, an early plan to salvage something from the C major quartet, and incorporate it into a C major sonata that was being considered for a companion to the incipient one in F minor. At this stage, however, the G minor passage was not present, and the rest of the sketches on this page show no further connection with the piano quartet. The main draft, written on single staves rather than in score, breaks off towards the end of the exposition, and fur ther sketches on the same page appear to be for the retransition and start of the recapitulation, and perhaps other sections.14 All these sketches, however, show so little resemblance to Op. 2 No. 3 that one might question whether they can be described as being for this sonata at all, but for the fact that both they and the sonata contain material derived from the same piano quartet. The start of the nal version of Op. 2 No. 3 (Example 3.7) is very different from that in the sketch (Example 3.5). The key and metre are the same, but other than that the only direct connection is the sudden silences in bars 2 and 4, which had not been present in the piano quartet but emerged in the Fischhof sketch. The remainder of the draft shows no more resemblance to the nal version of Op. 2 No. 3 than it did to the piano quartet.

Example 3.5 Early sketch for Op. 2 No. 3.I (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 21r).

Example 3.6 WoO 36 No. 3.I, open ing.

Example 3.7 Op. 2 No. 3.I, opening.


35

What can be seen, therefore, is that in 1794 Beethoven had an intention to write a sonata in C as a companion to the one in F minor already drafted, and that he thought he could use something from his abandoned piano quartet. He had almost no idea how the rst movement would turn out, however, and was prepared to discard completely an exposition draft which gives every impression of having the makings of a sonata movement, and which many composers would surely have been more than happy to use as the basis for one. Such thorough self-criticism illustrates his determi nation, even at this early stage, to rise above the commonplace to create something striking and exceptional. Borrowing the G minor passage in bars 27–44, instead of the opening theme, was part of this process, for the passage offers a sharp and striking contrast to the preceding music. It was therefore salvaged not because Beethoven was short of ideas but because it could play an unexpected role in the new work. The original opening theme, on the other hand, was relatively pedestrian, even after the sudden rests had been incorporated as in the Fischhof sketch, and a new and more arresting idea was substituted for the nal version. No sketches are k nown for the second movement of Op. 2 No. 3, but there are a few that show some connection with the third. One that again shows Beethoven to have been thinking about a C major sonata at an early stage is a draft of a complete bagatelle-like movement in piano score. The main part is on folio 161v of the Kaf ka Miscellany, and it continues and concludes on the Vienna leaf that he had used in 1793 for his early draft for Op. 2 No. 1. 15 The C major draft was probably added not long after that for the rst sonata, thus still in 1793.16 In  metre, its form resembles a minuet and trio, with the rst section in C major and a central minore section before a varied reprise and development of the opening section. The prevailing arpeggiated triplets show some similarity to those in the A minor Trio section of the third movement of Op. 2 No. 3. But, as with the rst-movement sketch, the resemblance is not very close, and one cannot be condent that it was intended for the third movement of a four-movement sonata when the draft was written. Another tenuous connection to the third movement of Op. 2 No. 3 is a sketch that was added to the same Vienna leaf and somewhat resembles the last seven bars of that movement.17 Beethoven may have revisited this leaf to exploit the C major material but been distracted by the draft for No. 1 and then developed that on the Moscow leaf, as mentioned earlier; alternatively he may have felt a need to consult the F minor draft again while working on No. 3, and then noticed material useful for the latter.18 Neither of these suggestions is very convincing, since it is unli kely that he would return to an early sketch for No. 1 when he had already completed this sonata and was working on No. 3. A third hypothesis, arg uably more probable, is as follows. After drafting the bagatelle-like movement in C and also the F minor draft for No. 1 on the Vienna leaf in 1793, he returned to the leaf in 1795 to resume work on No. 1. During this process he noticed the C major sketches, which re mained in his mind. They could thus resurface a few weeks or months later when, having nished Nos. 1 and 2, he was working on the third movement of No. 3; and he used ideas from them in both the Scherzo and the Trio of No. 3.

36


Thus Beethoven’s known work on Op. 2 apparently proceeded as follows: an early exposition draft for No. 1 was made in 1793, along with a draft of a possible minuet-like movement for a C major sonata, and a possible conclusion for a different minuet or scherzo movement; possible ideas for an A major sonata and for the rst movement of a C major sonata were noted down in 1794; and extended work on the rst movement of No. 1 was resumed early in 1795, the date of the Moscow leaf. At this stage it is unlikely that he had made much progress with any of the other 11 movements. In the rst few months of 1795 he was busy compos ing and preparing a new concerto (probably Op. 15 in C major 19) that launched his public career as a pianist at a concert on 29 March. He was also busy nishing his Piano Trios Op. 1, which were advertised for subscription on 9 May 1795, 20 by which time they must have been ready for the press. Thus the main sketching for all three sonatas Op. 2, except for part of the rst movement of No. 1, was probably done during the late spring and summer of 1795, once the concerto and trios were out of the way. It was probably at this stage, when he reached the third movement of No. 3, that he adapted ideas from the Vienna leaf that he had noticed slightly earlier during work on the rst movement of No. 1.

First performance and publication The three sonatas were eventually nished in summer or autumn that year, al though the autograph scores are now lost. Beethoven’s friend Franz Wegeler reports that music performances took place at the house of Prince Karl von Lichnowsky, then Beethoven’s principal patron, every Friday morning, and that on one such occasion, ‘Beethoven rst played for old Haydn the three sonatas which he dedicated to him.’21 This performance must have taken place between Haydn’s return to Vienna from London, in September 1795, and Beethoven’s de parture for Prague and Berlin in January or early February 1796, for by the time Beethoven returned from Berlin around July that year, Wegeler had returned to his native Bonn. The sonatas were hea rd by Haydn and other g uests of Prince Lichnowsky well before they were published by Artaria & Co. in Vienna, for the publishers did not announce them in the Wiener Zeitung until 9 March 1796, which is approximately their date of publication. Artaria was at the time the leading music publisher in Vienna, and published all of Beethoven’s Opp. 1–8. Preparations for publication of Op. 2 must have begun long before March, not least because Beethoven had left Vienna at least a month earlier. The lengthy period of preparation is also borne out by an u nusually large number of proof copies, which indicate the efforts that Artaria and Beethoven took to produce a ne edition. Recent investigation of the edition has shown that it must have been printed i n at least eight successive states – thus amended on seven separate occasions.22 The version originally engraved does not survive, but an early pr inting, of recent discovery a nd now owned by Matthew Malerich, shows a text that already contains traces of engraving corrections. More signicantly, it contains numerous handwritten alterations, most of which


37

were later incorporated into the plates and therefore show up in subsequent printings.23 Among the most important are t he ngerings in bars 59– 62 of the third movement (Menuetto) of the F minor sonata, which appear in manuscr ipt in the Malerich exemplar but are printed in all subsequent exemplars. In the process of adding the ngerings, however, the engraver wrongly shortened the right-hand slur in bar 59 to cover only the second half of the bar instead of the whole bar. The ngerings may not be in Beethoven’s hand – the gure 2s are not pointed and the 4s lack any hint of a loop at the bottom left 24 – but they surely stem from his inst ructions and therefore seem to indicate his close involvement in producing t he edition. The other proof markings in the Malerich exemplar are corrections rather than last-minute additions. Several of them relate to staccato marks. In Beethoven’s autographs he normally used strokes (short vertical dashes) for staccato, but sometimes these look more like dots; and occasionally he seems deliberately to have used a dot to indicate a lighter staccato.25 On other occasions he used a really long stroke, often where extra emphasis might be expected. Artaria’s engraver for Op. 2 engraved nearly all of the staccato marks as dots, but a few in the original (lost) manuscript must have been so obviously strokes that they were engraved as such. The rst place where this happened was the last two chords of the second movement of No. 1. The proofreader for the Malerich exemplar let the earlier dots pass; but it seems that, having noticed the strokes at the end of the second movement and become aware of the issue, he began correcting a few of the subsequent dots to strokes by hand, begin ning with the third movement of this sonata (bar 10). Since most subsequent dots remained uncorrected, the proofreader probably corrected only those that were most obviously strokes in the manuscript. This would account for the illogical mixture of dots and strokes that remained uncorrected in all subsequent states of the original edition (although they have been standardized in modern editions). One group of staccato marks caused particular problems, however, in the Trio of Op. 2 No. 3 (bars 73–98). Here the proofreader inserted strokes (except in bars 93–4, which he overlooked), but these were consistently misread by the eng raver as the gure 1 in a ngering indication, and this anomaly can be found in the third state of the edition. Most of the other corrections in the second state, however, were incorporated without mishap into this third state, which was also discovered only relatively recently and is now in the Beethoven Center in San Jose, California. The faulty ngering indications in the third state were soon put right, along with a few other minor errors, and the fourth state correctly shows staccato strokes. This fourth state, of which two exemplars are known, was used as Beethoven’s own proof copy, which is now in Berlin, 26 and he made 29 corrections. These appear only in the second and third sonatas, and their absence in No. 1 might suggest that he may already have corrected a proof of this; but com parison of the earlier states with Beethoven’s proof copy does not bear this out, and it seems that the engraver was simply more careful with this sonata, which is also shorter and less complex than the others. Unlike the earlier set of proof corrections, Beethoven altered only matters of substance or signicantly poor

38


vertical alignment of symbols; staccato signs and the precise length of slurs were insufciently important for him to spend time correcting. His corrections must surely have been made before he left for Prague around the end of January 1796. Thus the extensive earlier proof corrections indicate that the original engraving probably took place in November to December 1795, if not earlier still. A few further changes not marked by Beethoven in the proof copy were also made – notably bar 43 of the second movement of No. 2, where the fourth alto quaver was changed from A (matching bar 12) to B, which is less dissonant – before the edition was nally put on sale. The title page of the published version reads as follows: ‘TROIS SONATES Pour le Clavecin ou Piano-Forte Composées et Dediées a Mr. Joseph Haydn Maitre de Chapelle de S. A. Monseigneur le Prince Esterhazy &c. par LOUIS van BEETHOVEN Oeuvre II.’ Like many title pages of the time, this was pri nted in French, since this language was familiar to most cultured Germans and was also more readily understood outside German-speaking countries as both literally and metaphorically a lingua franca of the time. The dedication to Haydn conrms the warmth and respect that Beethoven held for his former teacher, and gives the lie to suggestions of animosity between them, although Beethoven did not go as far as describing himself as ‘pupil of Haydn’ as Haydn wished, according to Ferdinand Ries.27 Ries also reports that Beethoven claimed never to have learned anything from Haydn, but again the dedication seems to undermine this statement. Beethoven had absorbed many features of Haydn’s style, even though the three sonatas of Op. 2 sound quite different from anything wr itten by Haydn, and Beethoven’s friend Nikolaus Zmeskall later asserted that the dedication was made in gratitude to Haydn.28 Nevertheless, the dedication may have been made more in gratitude for Haydn’s practical help – inviting Beethoven to Vienna in the rst place, caring for him in a fatherly way on arrival, and lending him money when needed – than for the instruction he had received. The new edition had reached its fth state by the time of publication, with at least two major sets of proof corrections completed, plus three minor sets of adjustments, and Artaria was therefore able to claim ‘the greatest possible attention … to the beauty and accuracy’ of it in its advertisement of 9 March 1796. 29 It was still far from perfect, however, especially with regard to missing accidentals, of which there are quite a number, even allowing for the different conventions of the day, where an accidental was sometimes considered to persist beyond a barline. 30 Although it was to undergo three more sets of changes, there were no more attempts at proof correction. In the sixth state the dedicat ion to Haydn describe d him as ‘Docteu r en musique’, instea d of the ‘Maitre de chapelle’ (music director) of Prince Esterházy. This change may well have been requested by Haydn himself, for he was evidently proud of the honorary doctorate he had received from Oxford University in 1791. The nal two states were needed when a few of the original plates wore out after numerous copies had been printed, and t he music had had to be re-engraved for these pages (pp. 2, 3, and 51). This resulted in a few minor errors being introduced.


39

The impact of Opus 2 Beethoven’s artistic aims as outlined above – to ‘master the art of music’ and to have his works ‘welcomed by the noblest and most cultured people’ – and his apparent aim to make an impact as a major composer in Vienna, were surely achieved with Op. 2. His success in mastering his ar t is evident in the ingenuity and sophistication of the sonatas – the intricate part-writing, the subtle motivic and tonal connections between movements, and the originality of the ideas. The textures of all the movements are strikingly rich and complex, perhaps partly as a result of his study of counterpoint, and every movement has a strong and individual character that contrasts with and balances the others in the set. Even when a traditional device appears, such as the so-called Mann heim rocket at the start of No. 1, the result is far from conventional. The set was soon recognized as masterly and no mere apprentice work, and was appreciated by the connoisseurs who sought elevation rather than mere entertainment from the music they encountered. It quickly achieved considerable popularity, as is indicated by frequent reprints of Artaria’s edition (causing some of the plates to wear out, as mentioned above), and by other editions published in Bonn by Simrock and in Paris by Pleyel as early as 1798.31 No actual reviews of Op. 2 were published (the main music periodicals of the early nineteenth century had not yet been set up in 1796), but there was an enthusiastic endorsement of the set by Johann von Schönfeld. In his Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag , published in 1796, he mentioned that Beethoven had already written several ‘beautiful’ sonatas (this would include his trios, which were sometimes thought of as sonatas for three instruments), of which his latest ones were ‘particularly outstanding’.32 This must refer to the Op. 2 set, although the comment was probably written in 1795, before Artaria’s edition had appeared, as is suggested by Schönfeld’s remark that Beethoven had been living in Vienna for only two years. Schönfeld himself may therefore have been present at Beethoven’s performance at Lichnowsky’s palace, for it would have been hard to encounter them otherwise, since Beethoven would have taken care to ensure that the works were not circulated in manuscript before publication, to prevent piracy. Alternatively Schönfeld may have consulted one or more of those who were present. Although Schönfeld was by that time in his mid-40s, the sonatas seem to have been generally more popular with the younger generation, including children: Elisabeth Bernhard and Carl Czerny, who were born in 1784 and 1791 respectively, both report having been greatly attracted by Op. 2 soon after its publication.33 The technical and expressive difculties evidently discouraged some, however. Bernhard recalled that when her teacher (Johann Andreas) Streicher placed them in front of her he remarked that the ladies did not wish to play them as they were ‘too incomprehensible and too difcult’.34 Nevertheless, those who tackled them were well rewarded, for the intensive practice required to play them accurately allows time for pianists to absorb their intricacies much more thoroughly, and therefore to appreciate them at a much deeper level, than might be the case with works more easily mastered.

40


Notes 1 Hess 233. The exercises are transcribed in full in Julia Ronge, ed., Beethoven Kompo sitionsstudien bei Joseph Haydn, Johann Georg Albrechtsberge r und Antonio Salieri, 3 vols, Beethoven Werke Gesamtausgabe, XIII/1 (Munich: Henle, 2014). See also Julia Ronge, Beethovens Lehrzeit: Kompositionsstudien bei Joseph Haydn, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger und Antonio Salieri (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2011). 2 WR, p. 33. 3 Lbl, Add. 29801; transcribed in Joseph Kerman, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Auto graph Miscellany from 1786 to 1799, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 110–25. The paper can be dated to 1793: see Douglas Johnson, Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the ‘Fischhof’ Miscellany: Berlin: Autograph 28 , 2 vols (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1980), vol. 1, p. 446, where there is a brief discussion of the work. 4 The rst known attempt at completing it was by Willem Holsbergen, whose completion can currently be heard on The Unheard Beethoven website: http://unheardbeethoven. org (accessed 24 February 2016), where it is listed as Biamonti 213. 5 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, p. 319. The draft is in Wgm, A 31, and is quoted in full in N-II, pp. 564–6, from which Examples 3.1 and 3.2(b) are taken. 6 The sketch is preserved on a leaf in Moscow (Mcm, F. 155 no. 4); it is published in facsimile and transcription in Boris Schwarz, ‘A Little-Known Beethoven Sketch in Moscow’, The Musical Quarterly, 54 (1970), 539–50, at 543–5. 7 See Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 127. 8 Transcribed in Schwarz, ‘Little-Known’, p. 549; the facsimile is on p. 548. 9 See Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, pp. 318 and 494. 10 One of Haydn’s has four movements, but not in this order. 11 See Cooper, Creative Process, pp. 114–15. 12 See Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, pp. 313, 318–19. 13 See Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 2, p. 12, taken from the Fischhof Miscellany, Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 25r. 14 See Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, pp. 425–30, and vol. 2, pp. 13–14, where all the sketches for this movement are transcribed. 15 Wgm, A 31. The Kaf ka section is transcribed in Kerman, ed., Miscellany, ii. 104; the Vienna section is in Johnson, Fischhof , ii. 15–16. The whole movement, with editorial completion of the texture, appears in Adolf Fecker, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Unbekannte Klavierstücke (Wolfenbüttel and Zurich: Möseler Verlag, 1972), pp. 17–22. 16 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, p. 319. 17 Transcribed in Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 2, p. 15. 18 These two scenarios are proposed in Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, p. 320. 19 The arguments in favour of Op. 15 being played on this occasion, despite some theories to the contrary, are summari zed in Cooper, Creative Process, pp. 294–5. 20 LvBWV, vol. 1, p. 6. 21 WR, p. 32. 22 For full details, see Patricia Stroh, ‘Evolution of an Edition: The Case of Beethoven’s Opus 2’, Notes, 57/2 (2000), 289–329, and Patricia Stroh, ‘Evolution of an Edition, Part 3: A Missing Link in the Case of Beethoven’s Opus 2’, Notes, 68/3 (2012), 489–525, on which the following discussion is largely based. 23 A digitized reproduction of the Malerich exemplar can currently be viewed online at The Beethoven Gateway website: http://mill1.sjlibrary.org:83/record=b1023138~S0 (accessed 24 February 2016). 24 Pointed 2s and looped 4s are characteristic of almost all Beethoven’s 2s and 4s of this period. William Kinderman’s claim that the ngerings are ‘certainly in Beethoven’s hand’ (see Stroh, ‘Evolution of an Edition, Part 3’, p. 503) is clearly untenable.


41

25 The issue has been much discussed in recent years and is still not fully resolved. See, for example, discussions in William S. Newman, Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way (New York: Norton, 1988), pp. 139–46; Sandra P. Rosenblum, Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); and Barry Cooper, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas, 3 vols (London: ABRSM, 2007), vol. 1, p. 12. 26 Bsb, N. Mus. ms. 304. 27 WR, p. 75. 28 KC, vol. 2, p. 1121. 29 Cited from Stroh, ‘Evolution of an Edition, Part 3’, p. 495. 30 The main oversights in proofreading are listed in Stroh, ‘Evolution of an Edition’, pp. 328–9. 31 LvBWV, vol. 1, pp. 14–15. 32 See Elaine Sisman, ed., Haydn and His World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 294. The translation of Schönfeld’s text is by Kathrine Talbot. 33 KC, vol. 1, pp. 59 and 201. 34 KC, vol. 1, p. 59.

4

The sonatas of 1796–97

Op. 7 in E at: Allegro molto e con brio. Largo con gran espressione. Allegro. Rondo: Poco allegretto e grazioso. Op. 10 No. 1 in C minor: Allegro molto e con brio. Adagio molto. Finale: Prestissimo. Op. 10 No. 2 in F: Allegro. Allegretto. Presto. Op. 10 No. 3 in D: Presto. Largo e mesto. Menuetto: Allegro. Rondo: Allegro. Op. 49 No. 1 in G minor: Andante. Rondo: Allegro. Op. 49 No. 2 in G: Allegro ma non troppo. Tempo di menuetto.

Patrons and commissions By the end of 1795 Beethoven was widely recognized in Vienna as a promising and already successful composer, as is made clear in Johann von Schönfeld’s Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag , which describes him as a ‘genius’ who has now ‘entered deeper into the inner sanctum of music’.1 Beethoven was also known at least by reputation to all the aristocratic connoisseurs, many of whom had subscribed to his Trios Op. 1. He had given a private performance of his sonatas Op. 2 (see previous chapter), and public performances of his rst two Viennese piano concertos. It was around this time, therefore, that commissions for sonatas and other instrumental music began coming in thick and fast. They came mainly from wealthy music-loving aristocrats, of whom there were a great many in Vienna at the time. One of the earliest commissions known, mentioned by Franz Wegeler, is from Count Apponyi in 1795 for some quartets – a commission that Beethoven did not full.2 By 1801 Beethoven was able to write to Wegeler: ‘I am offered more commissions than it is almost possible that I can carry out,’ adding that he was composing so intensively that he often wrote three or four works at the same time.3 The following year his brother Carl stated that most of the rst 34 pub lished opus numbers and about 18 smaller works were commissioned by various music-lovers. Carl went on to describe the system:

He who wants to have a piece pays a specied sum for its exclusive possession for a half or whole year, or even longer, and binds himself to give the manuscript to nobody; after this period the author is free to do what he wishes with it.4


43

These arrangements probably applied to all the piano sonatas composed by Beethoven during the period 1796–1802, since he was unlikely to compose a sonata without a fee when there were so many offers of commissions. Thus the number and chronological distribution of his piano sonatas during this period was determined largely by the preferences of the Viennese aristocracy rather than by his own personal choice. Moreover, he must have normally completed each sonata at least 6 or 12 months before it was published, since he was ‘free to do what he wishes with it’ (which means, to publish it) only after the specied period had elapsed. During that period the owner of the manuscript copy could either play it (if capable, as several aristocrats were), pass it to a student (usually a daughter) within the family to learn, or lend it to another pianist to play at some private music gathering. The identity of those who commissioned Beethoven’s works is rarely known, and it cannot be assumed that the dedicatee of a work was the same person. Sometimes it was: known cases are the String Qua rtets Op. 18 written for Prince Lobkowitz, the String Quintet Op. 29 written for Count Fries, the Fourth Sym phony written for Count Oppersdorff, and three late string quartets written for Prince Galitzin. But in other cases a work was commissioned by one person yet dedicated to someone else. This is true of the Fifth Symphony, the Mass in C and several works commissioned by publishers, who never received dedications from Beethoven. During the period from early 1796 to early 1798, Beethoven composed six piano sonatas as listed above (plus a short two-movement Sonata for Piano Duet, Op. 6). Of these, the ‘Grand’ Sonata Op. 7 was dedicated to Countess Babette von Keglevics (1780–1813), who was a close acquaintance and an able pianist. 5 According to a later report by a nephew of hers, the sonata was composed specically for her, at a time when Beethoven was her teacher and lived opposite her (allegedly presenting himself for lessons still in his dressing-gown). 6 Beethoven remained in contact with her until after her marriage to Prince Odescalchi in 1801, and dedicated two more works to her during that time. It seems likely that the sonata was commissioned by her family for her, to help her develop her pianistic skills under the composer’s direction. They may even have asked speci cally for a particularly challenging work. At any rate, Beethoven wrote a ‘grand sonata’, longer and more elaborate than any previous piano sonata, by him or anyone else. In some ways it foreshadows the Eroica Symphony of 1803, being in the same key and written on an unprecedented scale; in both cases the rst movement is particularly long and powerful, with the main secondary theme in the dominant (bar 59 in the sonata, bar 83 in the symphony) not being heard until after a preliminary ‘second subject’ somewhat earlier (bars 41 and 45 respectively), resulting in a greatly extended exposition. The three sonatas Op. 10 were dedicated on publication to Countess Anna Margaretha Browne (whose husband was of Irish extraction). The Brownes were very generous supporters of Beethoven, and had even presented him with a horse after his rst dedication of a work to the countess.7 This was a set of variations on a theme by Paul Wranitzky (WoO 71), but there is no indication that the Brownes

44


had commissioned this work. Thus they may not have directly com missioned the sonatas Op. 10 either. Ironically the one work that is known to have been commissioned by Count Browne, a set of marches (Op. 45),8 was dedicated not to him but to Princess Maria Esterházy. Whoever did com mission Op. 10 – if there was someone – was clearly in no hur ry to receive the set, however, for its composition took a long time and was inter rupted by several other works, including Op. 7 and Op. 49 (see below). This supports Beethoven’s aforementioned claim that he was sometimes composing several works at the same time during this period. For the commissioning of the two sonatas Op. 49 we are even more in the dark, for they received no dedication. They are much shorter and simpler than the other sonatas of this period, and so any printed dedication might have seemed a rather meagre compliment. It seems almost certain, however, that both resulted from commissions, for Beethoven would surely not have reverted to writing such short and technically simple works while trying to establish himself as a leading com poser and piano virtuoso. Whoever commissioned the works must have alerted Beethoven to the fact that the intended recipient was a player of only limited ability. No. 2, which is slightly shorter and easier technically, was written rst, and No. 1 may have been commissioned as a successor for the same pianist as she (presumably she) made progress on the instrument. Another possibility is that No. 2 was commissioned for the newly invented orphica, a portable piano (see Chapter 2), for its compass is strikingly limited and ts the orphica almost throughout.9 This is not true for No. 1, however.

Chronology The chronology of these six sonatas is complicated and cannot be fully established. None of their autograph scores sur vive, and publication dates are of limited help since the two sonatas Op. 49 were left unpublished for several years. Nevertheless, small amounts of manuscript material, mainly sketches, have been preserved for each of the six, and these provide some clues. Beethoven generally used up fairly quickly any manuscript paper he had and often replaced it with a slightly different type, with different watermark and/or stave ruling. Classica tion of different paper ty pes therefore provides useful clues to dating. So too does Beethoven’s rapidly changing handwriting: certain symbols, notably treble clefs and system braces, changed conspicuously during the 1790s, providing an even more reliable guide to chronology than paper types. Detailed study of all these features by Douglas Johnson has provided at least a tentative chronology for all six sonatas.10 To some extent the chronology can be related to Beethoven’s travels during 1796. He set off for Prague around early February, and there is evidence that he had reached the city by 11 February. He then wrote to his brother from there on 19 February, indicating he would remain for a few weeks before travelling on to Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin. He was still in Prague on 11 March and probably stayed there a little longer before arriving in Dresden on 23 April.11 It is generally assumed that he travelled direct from Prague to Dresden, which is furt her north,


45

but some little-known evidence indicates that he rst returned south to Vienna for a few days at the beginning of April, for Carl Friedrich Kübeck records hav ing met him there on 4, 5, and 8 April. 12 Nevertheless, this was a eeting visit back home, and Beethoven was then away in nor thern cities, probably until July. During his absence he tended to use locally acquired manuscript paper that is easily distinguishable from that acquired in Vienna; and most of the paper he used after his return can be distinguished from what he had used there at least six months earlier. Thus these contrasting paper t ypes provide additional chronological reference points. The earliest sketches for any of these six sonatas appear to date from before the start of Beethoven’s travels of 1796, and are for the rst two movements of Op. 10 No. 1. Thus, even before Op. 2 had been published, Beethoven was already planning his next set of sonatas. The next sonata to be sketched was Op. 49 No. 2, which appears on non-Viennese paper among sketches for works known to have been composed in Prague. It seems likely, therefore, that the pianist for whom this sonata was written was based in Prague rather than Vienna. Apart from some brief ideas for Op. 10 No. 1 on Berlin paper, Beethoven may not have worked on these sonatas again until he had returned to Vienna. The approximate sequence for the remaining work on them appears t o have been:

Op. 7: Op. 10 No. 1.III: Op. 10 No. 2: Op. 49 No. 1: Op. 10 No. 3:

late 1796 to early 1797 early 1797 early to middle 1797 mid-1797 middle to late 1797

Initial ideas and late renements for these sonatas probably fell outside these time spans, at least in some cases. For Op. 7 and Op. 10 these dates t well enough with the publication dates, after allowing for the customary delay of at least six months between completion and publication: Op. 7 was announced by Artaria as available on 7 October 1797, implying a completion date no later than March that year. Op. 10 was published by Joseph Eder, who announced it on 20 June 1798 as forth coming within eight weeks, with subscriptions being invited; it was reported as ready on 26 September.13 Since eight weeks after 20 June is mid-August, the last of the Op. 10 sonatas must have been nished no later than mid-February 1798. During this whole period, Beethoven was also busy with seve ral other works, such as the Sonata for Piano Duet (Op. 6), string trios (Opp. 8 and 9), the Quintet for Piano and Wind (Op. 16), and a symphony in C that he was shortly to abandon. Thus the sonatas were being composed intermittently rather than in a burst of concentrated effort. Hence it is not surprising that the sketches are scattered in several different sources, with a large proportion now lost. The delay of the publication of Op. 49 was presumably due to their lack of ambition compared with Beethoven’s other sonatas of the period, which meant that publication might have done his reputation more har m than good. Although

46


he was not averse to publishing works in other genres that were even shorter and simpler (such as songs), these sonatas would have doubtless appeared retrogressive, and would perhaps have been interpreted as a weakening of his compositional powers. Thus it seems that at this stage he did not intend ever to publish them. He eventually reused the theme from the second movement of No. 2, suitably modied and elaborated, in his Septet of 1799. Such plundering of material from an earlier work is a clear sign that he now regarded the earlier one as discarded and abandoned, just as he had plundered material from his early piano quartets for use in Op. 2 (see previous chapter). Around 1802, however, his brother Carl began providing extensive secretarial assistance in Beethoven’s dealings with publishers, and one idea he proposed for increasing Beethoven’s meagre income was to unearth various old compositions that had still not been published. Ries reported later: ‘All his little compositions and many things he never wanted published, since he did not consider them worthy of his name, were secretly brought out by his brothers.’ 14 Beethoven must surely have collaborated with this scheme, for Carl would have had difculty executing it on his own, but Beethoven probably gave his help reluctantly, and he would have readily left Ries with the impression that his brothers sent works to publishers without his knowledge or approval. Carl offered the two sonatas to the publisher Johann Anton André of Offenbach on 23 November 1802, in response to an enquiry about what works Beethoven might be able to send them for publication. The sonatas were mentioned along with various other works, and were described as ‘two little easy sonatas each having only two movements’;15 it is therefore clear which works these were. Nothing came of this offer, however, and a similar offer was made to Breitkopf & Härtel of Leipzig on 27 August 1803. This time it is less clear which works were indicated, for Carl described them a s ‘three little sonatas for piano’.16 Perhaps Carl or Beethoven had unearthed a third sonata – either the two pieces for orphica (WoO 51) or a work now lost; or possi bly Beethoven intended to write a third short sonata if the offer were accepted. In their reply of 20 September, however, Breitkopf & Härtel regretted that they were unable to accept these or the other works offered at that ti me. The sonatas were eventually published locally in Vienna, by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir (or Bureau d’Arts et d’Industrie), who announced them on 23 January 1805.17 Thus it had taken over two years to nd a publisher for them, and it was more than seven years since they were completed.

Sketches and drafts Although the sketches for the rst two movements of Op. 10 No. 1 were once thought to date from late 1796, it now seems clear, judging by the paper types and surrounding material, that they were made around late 1795, and certainly before the trip to Prague.18 These sketches appear on two folios in the Fischhof Miscellany – folios 7 and 24. Assuming that Beethoven composed the movements in numerical order as was his wont, folio 7 was written rst, for it contains a 24-bar draft for part of the recapitulation of the rst movement (bars 209–32).


47

Including a slight revision, this draft matches the nal version more or less exactly, and the other sketches for the movement are lost. The remainder of the bifolio (folios 7–8) contains ideas for other works f rom the same period. Folio 24 of the Fischhof Miscellany is rather more interesting, throwing fascinating light on the genesis of the sonata. The rst part of the recto is occupied by a 31-bar draft for the exposition of the Adagio of Op. 10 No. 1 (which was expanded in the nal version to an exposition of 44 bars). The main theme is readily recog nizable but the second subject was soon abandoned (‘Fischhof’, folio 24r, stave 4: Example 4.1; the indication ‘bis’ signies that the rst bar is to be repeated). As in many sketches, some note values are inaccurate, a nd bars 3– 4 should probably move at twice the speed, matching bar 6. The ‘d.c.’ at the end signies that there was to be no development section but an immediate recapitulation – as in the nal version. A second attempt at this passage appears further down the page (stave 8: Example 4.2), leading eventually to a ‘d.c.’ indication as before, but this too was quickly set aside, and an idea approaching the nal version appears on stave 11. The more advanced sketches for this movement are lost.

Example 4.1 Early sketch for Op. 10 No. 1.II (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 24r).

Example 4.2 Alternative to Example 4.1 (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 24r).

On the same page, at times even interspersed with this Adagio, are sketches for a  movement in C minor (WoO 52), and it is quite clear from the layout that this was initially intended as the minuet movement for the sonata, as was deduced long ago by Gustav Nottebohm.19 The sketches are some way from the nal version, but the main theme has been xed (‘Fischhof’, folio 24r, stave 5: Example 4.3). The indication ‘usw’ (und so weiter = etc.) implies that the next part of the theme had already been conceived and perhaps noted elsewhere but did not need writing out here. At this stage Beethoven had just completed but not yet published his three sonatas Op. 2, each of which has four movements, and he obviously intended to continue with this structure in his next sonata. Not long afterwards he wrote out the complete movement as a Presto and Trio, consisting of 137 bars plus repeats and the customary da capo of the rst part. 20 The handwriting is still that of 1795–96. It is therefore highly probable that he had also by that time written out the autograph of the rst two movements, although this is now lost.

48


Example 4.3 Sketch for theme of WoO 52 (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 24r).

A few months later, Beethoven noted down: ‘Zu den neuen Sonaten ganze kurze Menuetten. Zu der aus dem C moll bleibt das presto weg’ [For the new sonatas whole short minuets. For the one in C minor the presto stays out]. 21 This was noted on some paper obtained in Berlin and was presumably written out while he was there, around mid-1796. It indicates that he was planning a set of sonatas, not just a single one, including one in C minor (Op. 10 No. 1), and that the minuet movement, which was presumably to be headed ‘Presto’, although this is not in the manuscript, was to be withdrawn from the sonata. The other two sonatas were to have just short minuets. As it turned out, both minuets were shorter than the rejected one in C minor. Thus he was having second thoughts about the structure of Op. 10 No. 1. The Presto itself, however, was not at fault, and he more than once tried to rescue it. About 1798 he redrafted it in , possibly intended as a nale for some other work (the Pathétique Sonata?). Then in 1822 he considered including it in a collection of bagatelles, some of which duly appea red in Op. 119, and he restored it to its original  time. But again it did not t well, and it remained unpublished during his lifetime. The rst 42 bars of the or iginal 1795–96 draft were written on a leaf now missing, but f ortunately the section survives among the later attempts to salvage the work. 22 Although the nale of Op. 10 No. 1 was composed at least a year later than the rst two movements and the discarded minuet, it would have been wholly abnor mal for Beethoven to set aside a work for so long after sketching three of its four movements. He nearly always composed all the movements of a multi-movement work in quick succession. The most notable exceptions are perhaps the Ninth Symphony, where he set aside the rst movement for a few years before retu rning to it and the rest of the work; and the Diabelli Variations, where he composed about two thirds of the set in 1819 and the rest four years later. But in neither case did he leave a work after the third of four movements. In Op. 10 No. 1, therefore, one must suspect that he did actually compose a nale soon after the rst three movements. A draft for such a movement can indeed be found on the other side of the leaf containing the Adagio and  Presto (folio 24 of the Fischhof Miscellany),23 extending to 48 bars and representing a nearly complete exposition. It is quite different from the actual nale that replaced it, showing no real thematic connection; and its opening theme (Example 4.4), using short bursts of semiquavers and sudden rests, is more reminiscent of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in C minor (Op. 30 No. 2). The rest of the draft has rather bland guration, as is common in his rst ideas for a movement, and it certainly lacks the verve and originality of the movement that eventually supplanted it.


49

Example 4.4 Sketch probably for early nale for Op. 10 No. 1 (Bsb, Autograph 28, f. 24v).

Beethoven may well have completed this movement by early 1796, although nothing more of it survives. But it seems he was becoming increasingly aware of what might be called his ‘nale problem’ – how to create a nale that was simultaneously a lighter or more straightforward movement than the previous ones while functioning as a tting culmination of the whole work. This problem was to resurface in several later works, not least his late quartets, but it had already emerged in his Second Piano Concerto, for which he had substituted a new nale for the original one in 1795. And he was already working on a symphony in C where the nale proved such a problem that he eventually abandoned the work as it stood, using its rst-movement theme as a nale theme to create his First Symphony.24 The nale for Op. 10 No. 1 sits well in this context, for it is concise, intense, and dramatic and it probably replaced the previous attempt at a nale mentioned above. At the same time Beethoven evidently revived the plan to include a minuet movement, composing a new  movement in C minor (WoO 53) that was almost certainly intended for this purpose. Sketches for both movements appear together, and were apparently not made until after he had completed or nearly completed the Sonata Op. 7, after his retur n to Vienna from Berlin.25 The new minuet was shorter than the previous one, though it appears longer on paper since it has a written-out varied reprise of the main section, plus coda, after the maggiore section. This reduction in length is in line with Beethoven’s earlier plan for ‘short minuets’, though with a total of 88 bars for the minore and maggiore sections the movement is not nearly as compressed as proposed in a new plan noted alongside some sketches for it: ‘Die Menuetten zu den Sonaten inskünftige nicht länger als von höch 16 bis 24 T’ [The minuets for the sonatas in future no longer than 16 to 24 bars at most].26 In practice, however, Beethoven never found he could write such compressed minuets, although a few trio sections come within these limits (Opp. 2/2, 22, 26, 27/2, and the Violin Sonata Op. 24). The new minuet was, however, eventually omitted from Op. 10 No. 1, and another pair of inscriptions on the same page as the other one provides a clue to the reason. The rst reads: ‘der Menuet ist gut’. Then, squeezed in underneath, Beethoven added: ‘nicht eher das allegro gezeigt es werde dann ein Misfallen bemerkt am Menuet’. This rather cryptic and convoluted sentence seems to indicate that, although ‘the minuet is good’, it would not be very effective before the ensuing allegro. The nale was eventually marked ‘Prestissimo’, but Beethoven was probably using the word ‘allegro’ generically to indicate a fast movement, rather than referring back to the opening Allegro molto. The minuet might also not have sounded very effective after an opening movement in  time – few Beethoven works have two fast movements in .

50


The surviving sketches for the nale of Op. 10 No. 1 are not very extensive, and the two main drafts both show the development section.27 If the 46-bar ex position was by this time already in place, as seems likely, then these two drafts show something like normal proportions for the movement, consisting of 41 and 31 bars. One, probably the earlier one, incor porates a statement of the second sub ject in F major, while the other has it in G major. In the end, however, Beethoven opted for an extremely compressed development section of only 11 bars, thus intensifying the effect of an already compressed and extremely fast exposition. In this context, a relatively sedate minuet (WoO 53 is marked ‘Allegretto’) would surely not have sounded well, and Beethoven evidently decided that the sonata would be better without it. Thus the sonata emerged as his rst three-movement chamber work written in Vienna. By the time Op. 10 No. 1 was nished Beethoven had apparently completed two other piano sonatas – Op. 49 No. 2 and Op. 7. Both movements of the former were sketched extensively on a leaf now in the Kafka Miscellany (folio 106). In these sketches the rst subject has been established (except for containing semiquavers rather than quaver triplets in bar 1), but the original idea for a second subject focuses on repeated crotchets (‘Kaf ka’, folio 106r, stave 6: Example 4.5). These crotchets were replaced furt her down the page by the present second sub ject, but evidence of them still remains in the nal version towards the end of the exposition (bars 37–41). The development section was rst planned to go to B minor, but in the relevant sketch the retransition to G major is rather abrupt, and overleaf (folio 106v) Beethoven drafted a new development section similar to that in the nal version. By the time he came to draft the recapitulation everything was virtually in place, and the sketch matches the nal version apart from minor details (notably bar 86, which still needed to be inserted).

Example 4.5 Sketch for Op. 49 No. 2.I. (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 106r).

From these sketches Beethoven would have been able to write out the autograph score without any difculty, and he probably did so very quickly. The sketches for the second movement are equally close to the nal version, with only minor deviations throughout an extended draft that represents the entire movement apart from the coda (bars 107–20), which was probably sketched elsewhere. Judging by the uency of the sketches, neither movement took long to compose, and the whole sonata could easily have been nished within a week. The same may well be true of the companion sonata, Op. 49 No. 1, although no manuscript material survives except an abandoned draft of the rst few bars, 28 which provides an approximate date but sheds no light on its composition. The second movement is based on a theme that rst appeared on a leaf that Beethoven used during his visit to Berlin in 1796 (Fischhof Miscellany, folio 16v). The theme was


51

sketched as a possible idea for the nale of the symphony in C that he was work ing on at the time, and is marked ‘presto’, 29 but he tempered this to allegro when he modied it and transferred it to t he sonata a year or so later. By this time the symphony had probably been set aside. The ‘Grand’ Sonata in E at, Op. 7, was much more of a challenge. Sonatas of the period came in several distinct types, of which the largest and most demanding was the ‘grand’ sonata. Op. 7 was the rst of several by Beethoven with this designation, but its only movement for which substantial sketches survive is the third. This is in minuet-and-trio form, although it is headed simply ‘Allegro’ and the Trio ‘Minore’. As bets a grand sonata, it is a very substantial movement, with the minuet alone occupying 95 bars, which is longer than the combined minuet and trio of each of the rst two sonatas of Op. 2 (although the corresponding movement of the Piano Trio Op. 1 No. 1 is longer still). Thus there is no sign here of the ‘short minuets’ that Beethoven was envisaging earlier. It must be remembered also that it was customary at that time to perform all repeats, including those during the reprise of the minuet, unless otherwise marked.30 This therefore applies to the movement in minuet-and-trio form in the following piano sonatas: Op. 2 Nos. 1–3, Op. 7, and Op. 27 No. 2. In a few other cases the reprise is written out in full and repeats are clearly shown, either by being written out themselves (sometimes varied) or by the reappearance of the repeat sign in the reprise. This occurs in Op. 10 No. 2 (rst repeat only), Op. 27 No. 1 (rst repeat only), Op. 31 No. 3 (both repeats), Op. 106 (both repeats), and Op. 110 (both repeats). Only in four cases does Beethoven specify a reprise without repeats: Op. 10 No. 3, Op. 22, Op. 26 (which has a written-out repeat of the rst part anyway), and Op. 101. The minuet-type movement in Op. 14 No. 1 has no internal repeats (though it did in an early sketch), and so the question does not arise. Including all the repeats in Op. 7, the total length of the minuet movement is 450 bars – tr uly symphonic proportions, and indeed longer than the corresponding movement in either of his rst two symphonies, even though these were later works. Extensive sketches for this movement can be found on folio 58 of the Kafka Miscellany. They show a version potentially even longer than the nal one, for in the section between the double bar and the reprise of the main theme (bars 25–42) the earliest idea shown in the sketches begins in C minor instead of F minor; it then moves to F minor, and the resulting expansion creates ten additional bars. On the other hand, at this stage the interesting digression to C at major in the recapitulation had not been devised. It was, however, sketched shortly afterwards on the same leaf, and its remote key helps to emphasize the distance travelled in the course of the movement, as well as subtly preparing for the minore section. An early draft for the minore (in E at minor) shows the music modulating to a central cadence in D at major. It shows a clear melodic line and accompanying bass (‘Kafka’, folio 58v, staves 4–5: Example 4.6; all the Gs are intended to be at), but whether any triplets were intended, as in the nal version, is not indicated. A later sketch contains a much plainer melodic outline with numerous

52


repeated notes, similar to that of the nal version of this part of the movement, but there is still no indication of triplets. Thus it is not clear whether these were a late idea or whether Beethoven intended them all along but did not feel it necessary to expend energy writing them down. As usual, the sketches for this movement indicate that he was far f rom short of ideas, and many of those jotted down for this movement were ultimately rejected.

Example 4.6 Sketch for Op. 7.III (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 58v).

Once Beethoven had nished his ‘Keglevics’ Sonata, if we may call it such, he returned to the group of three that he had begun in 1795. For the last two sonatas in the group, again most of the sketches are missing. For No. 2 in F, the only surviving sketches are on folio 101 of the Kafka Miscellany, and are mainly for the rst movement. They concentrate on the development section, thus indicating that the exposition must have already been sketched elsewhere. The main melodic content in the development had also been established, including the introduction of a new theme near the start of it (bar 77 in the nal version), but the question of tonal direction and precise length had still to be determined. The rst draft on the page shows bars 77–88 in place, but the music then modulates direct from C minor to F minor without a passage in B at, before proceeding to a half-close in D minor as in the nal version (see Table 4.1 for summaries of the four main drafts). The second draft diverges from the rst at bar 89 and includes the B at passage, but this time there is no modulation to F minor and the ending is different, though once again in D minor. In the third draft Beethoven went back to bar 69, almost at the start of the development, and diverged as early as bar 71, with bar 77 in B at major instead of D minor; thereafter the music again works round to a half-close in D minor, but the section is much shorter altogether. Only in the fourth draft is the nal version evident (apart from minor details), with modulations to B at major and minor, thence to F minor and again to the half-close in D minor. Table 4.1 Drafts for bars 77–117 of Op. 10/2.I on f. 101r of ‘Kafka’ Draft

Staves

Length

Keys

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

1–3 1, 5–6 7–9 1, 5, 9

38 bars (including 77–88, 107–17) 35 bars (including 77–100) 25 bars (plus 8 preceding) 41 bars (as nal)

d–g–c–f–d d – g – c – B@ – d B@ – c – d d – g – c – B @ – b@ – f – d


53

Thus the nal version is more expansive than earlier d rafts, as is common. It also incorporates elements from both rst and second drafts, using the whole of bars 77–100 plus a modied version of bars 101–6 from the second draft so that they join on to the last 11 bars of the rst draft. The third draft, however, was discarded completely. This is a noteworthy example of Beethoven being only partially satised and trying something very different before returning to his earlier ideas and rening them; and in this case he succeeded in combining the modulation to B at in the second draft and that to F minor in the rst, linking these two keys through B at minor, to create a smooth sequence of harmonies that eventually lands on a half-close in D minor. The consistency of this nal cadence implies that the following bars, which present a false recapitulation in the unlikely key of D major, were already in place and formed one of the fundamental ideas for the movement. Since the exposition would have been sketched already, and the recapitulation follows it closely with no coda, this stretch of the development section was probably the last major hurdle for Beethoven before he wrote out the autograph score for the movement. The rest of folio 101 of the Kafka Miscellany includes a few sketches for the second movement and some very preliminary ones for the nale of this sonata. Their disjunctive appearance seems to suggest that Beethoven was starting to compose these movements at the piano, merely noting down a few choice ideas that might be forgotten, before working on the movements more intensively on pages now lost. For the following sonata, No. 3 in D major, there are rather more sketches. Indeed this is the rst piano sonata for which there are really substantial num bers of sketches, and all four movements are represented. They cover nearly all main stages of evolution of the work, although none of them show quite the nal form of any movement.31 From the earliest stage is an initial idea or concept sketch, presumably for the opening, headed ‘Sonata terza’ (‘Kafka’, folio 102v: Example 4.7), and conspicuously different from the nal version. There is al ready a foretaste of the sudden pause in bar 4 of the nal version, however, and this is followed by a B minor version of what became the main theme, which soon became established in D major as the head-motif for the movement. One noteworthy feature about the later sketches for this movement is that quaver gracenotes appear to be treated interchangeably with full-sized quavers – thus as long appoggiaturas. This concurs with Czerny’s advice that all such grace-notes in this movement (which are quavers in the original edition, although Czerny transmits them as semiquavers) should be played as full quavers. 32

Example 4.7 Sketch for Op. 10 No. 3.I (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 102v).

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The second movement, Largo e mesto, is generally the most admired in this sonata, and it is perhaps signicant that the sketches for it are particularly extensive. The term ‘mesto’ means ‘sad’ or ‘mournful’, but it must be remembered that it is not used here as a descriptive title but as a performance instruction. 33 Beethoven’s task was to create a movement that could most easily and effectively be played ‘sadly’, and the sketches show some attempt to intensify this effect. The rst surviving draft (‘Fischhof’, folio 45r) is a telescoped version of the entire movement, showing a modulation to F at the mid-point, followed by a B @ chord and a bass line that rises chromatically back to D for an implied recapitulation. The statement of the main theme low in the bass at the start of the coda (bar 65) is, remarkably, already in place, though not in its nal form, and can therefore be interpreted as one of the most funda mental building-blocks of the movement. The use of a mournful attened second (E@) early in the movement is evident in this and a later draft, but in the nal version this tonal deviation is held back until the recapitulation (bar 49), so that the opening emotional content can be strengthened later on. A second draft (‘Fischhof’, folio 44r) shows the rst part cadencing in C rather than F, and the nal version does indeed modulate to C, but it then proceeds to A minor before reaching the cadence, so that the mid-point seems much more bleak in effect. Surprisingly, this draft shows an extended coda that is fairly similar to the nal version, whereas the development section is com pletely different. Thus the coda was no mere afterthought as might be expected, but an important part of the movement to which the previous passages build up. A third draft for the movement (‘Kafka’, folios 156–7) is still quite a long way from the nal version, but one important idea that does appear for the rst time here is the retransition, where an off-beat demisemiquaver gure occurs repeatedly at different pitches. This is less rema rkable where there is on-beat accompaniment, as in the coda (already sketched), but Beethoven noted an idea of removing the accompaniment at the retransition, marking it ‘ohne Bass’ [without bass], so that the on-beat rests stand out as complete silences, creat ing a gasping, dying effect marked ‘calando’ in the sketches (‘Kafka’, folio 157r: Example 4.8). He retained this idea in the nal version, but added prolonged rests as well, with the rubric ‘smorzando’ (bars 41–2: Example 4.9). Thus the silences became gradually more pronounced during the course of sketching this movement.

Example 4.8 Sketch for Op. 10 No. 3.II (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 157r).

Example 4.9 Op. 10 No. 3.II, bars 41–2.


55

Despite the extensive sketching that survives, substantial sections of the movement were worked out only later on pages now lost. These include the end of rst subject and ensuing transition (bars 6–17), the codetta (bars 26–9), and much of the development (bars 30–9), including the warm new theme in F that appears after the central cadence. The second subject is outlined only in a sketch for the recapitulation, but the latest sketches for the coda needed little further adjustment. It is unusual to nd the coda so well developed when so much of the earlier material had not been worked out. It is tempting to assume, therefore, that the coda of this movement was particularly important for Beethoven. The minuet posed relatively few problems, and the trio theme was adopted from an abandoned theme in A at major (‘Kafka’, folio 59v), now transposed to G. Since this sketch is headed ‘tr io’ it must originally have been planned in this position for an earlier sonata. This could either have been in Op. 7, after a minuet in E at,34 or Op. 10 No. 2, after a minuet in F minor. It would seem to t better with the latter, where its opening gesture of a rising fourth would match similar rising fourths at the sta rt of both the minuet and the nal Presto. One sketch for the Trio in G shows an excursion to B at in its second half, but this key was surely too remote, and briey used, to be effective in such a short movement. The nale was singled out by Czerny as a model of how Beethoven often used to extemporize, building up a movement from a few insignicant notes.35 There is, however, no reason to suppose that the movement received fewer sketches than usual, for quite a number survive, including one that shows a dramatic interrupted cadence going not to a B @ chord (as in bar 33 of the nal version) but to the dominant-seventh of C. This would have given a very different tonal structure to the movement. Despite the limited number of sketches and their scattered locations, there is every reason to suppose that the movements of Op. 10 were as usual composed largely in numerical order, though with some overlap. They were, however, clearly interrupted by Op. 7 and Op. 49 No. 1, as well as various works in other media. There is some cross-fertilization not only between the sonatas (as evidenced by the transposition of a trio idea for No. 3), but also with other works and ideas being sketched at that time. Douglas Johnson has drawn attention to the large number of entries, mostly in D major, that can be found near sketches for Op. 10 No. 3 but were not incorporated into it. They could be associated with other D major works, notably the String Trio Op. 9 No. 2 and the Violin Sonata Op. 12 No. 1, both of which date from around the same period. Beethoven seems never to have been short of ideas during this period, and many were set aside, occasionally being taken up in some later context.

Notes 1 Translated by Kathrine Talbot in Elaine Sisman, ed., Haydn and His World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 293. 2 WR, pp. 32–3. 3 BB-65; A-51. 4 BB-119; Alb-50.

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5 For details about her life, see Peter Clive, Beethoven and His World: A Biog raphical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 250. 6 N-II, p. 512. 7 WR, p. 107. 8 WR, p. 80. 9 See Barry Cooper, Letter ‘To the Editor’, The Beethoven Journal , 23/1 (2008), 47. 10 Douglas Johnson, Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the ‘Fischhof ’ Miscellany: Berlin Autograph 28, 2 vols (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1980), vol. 1, especially pp. 323–4, 332–9. 11 Helmut Loos, ‘Beethoven in Prag 1796 und 1798’, in Beethoven in Böhmen, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg and Martella Gutiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1988), pp. 63–90, at pp. 72–4. 12 KC, vol. 1, pp. 529–30. 13 LvBWV, vol. 1, pp. 37 and 52. 14 WR, p. 112. 15 BB-113; Alb-49. 16 BB-153; Alb-66. 17 LvBWV, vol. 1, p. 272; not 19 January as stated in KH, p. 116. 18 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, pp. 101 and 147; see also pp. 422–5. 19 N-II, p. 32. 20 The manuscript is now in BNba, HCB BMh 11/51. 21 Kafka Miscellany (Lbl, Add. 29801), f. 82r; see Joseph Kerman, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Autograph Miscellany from 1786 to 1799, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1970), vol. 2, p. 293. 22 See LvBWV, vol. 2, p. 132; Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, pp. 422–3. 23 This draft could not have been the rst movement as Johnson suggests ( Fischhof , vol.1, p. 332), since this movement would have already been drafted before Beethoven turned his attention to the next two on folio 24r. 24 See Barry Cooper, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; 2nd edn, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 87 (2nd edn, p. 94). 25 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, pp. 169–70, 177. 26 Kafka Miscellany, f. 102r, cited in Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, p. 429; see also Ker man ed., Miscellany, vol. 2, p. 294. 27 Fischhof Miscellany (Bsb, Autograph 28), ff. 27v and 29r. The latter draft was proba bly written rst. 28 Kafka Miscellany, f. 66r. 29 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 2, p. 176. 30 See Hugh Macdonald, ‘To Repeat or Not to Repeat?’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 111 (1984–85), 121–38. 31 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, p. 335; Johnson includes an extended discussion of the sketches and their chronology. 32 Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, ed. Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1970), p. 32/42. 33 How this instruction should be applied in performance is suggested in Barry Cooper ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas, 3 vols (London: ABRSM, 2007), Commentaries, vol. 1, p. 45. 34 Johnson, Fiscchhof , vol. 1, p. 335. 35 Czerny, On the Proper Performance, p. 15.

5


Op. 13 in C minor: Grave [alternating with:] Allegro di molto e con brio. Adagio cantabile. Rondo: Allegro. Op. 14 No. 1 in E: Allegro. Allegretto. Rondo: Allegro comodo. Op. 14 No. 2 in G: Allegro. Andante. Scherzo: Allegro assai. Op. 22 in B at: Allegro con brio. Adagio con molta espressione. Minuetto. Rondo: Allegretto.

The struggle towards the Pathétique Even before Beethoven’s three sonatas Op. 10 had appeared in print in September 1798, he was already beginning to draft some successors. The earliest substantial movement for these that is known from the sketches appears to be an Allegretto in C minor, sketched in outline but mostly in score, on folio 101v of the Kafka Miscellany (see Example 5.1).1 It is situated immediately after the main surviving batch of sketches for Op. 10 No. 2 and is clearly later than these; but it is proba bly not much later, and so dates from around early 1797, before Op. 10 No. 3 had been composed. Although it shows only a kind of summary of the movement, it is clearly not in sonata form but some kind of rondo. As far as it goes, the form is A B A C , with the B section in C major and the C section veering towards F minor. A nal return of A is not shown but may be presumed. Both the form and the rather lyrical character of the opening suggest a nale rather than a rst movement, as does the heading ‘allegretto’, which is rare for rst movements but far more common for nales. Was this another attempt at rethinking the nale of Op. 10 No. 1 in C minor? Or was it the nale for a second C minor sonata, perhaps with WoO 52 or 53 as a middle movement, and with all the rst-movement sketches lost?

Example 5.1 Sketch for ‘Allegretto’ (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 101v).

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The ‘Allegretto’ was by no means promptly abandoned but was taken up and greatly developed in some further sketches (‘Kaf ka’, folios 143–6),2 which are sandwiched between some for the String Trio Op. 9 No. 1 and the Clarinet Trio Op. 11. These two works were published respectively in July 1798 and October 1798,3 which suggests that they were completed at least six months earlier (to allow for the sponsor’s exclusive ownership as usual), along with two other st ring trios also published in July. These later sketches for the Allegretto in C minor therefore probably date from the second half of 1797 or early 1798. Beethoven worked intensively on this movement at this stage, and the sketches occupy six pages (folios 143v–146r). They culminate in a draft of over 200 bars (if one includes a reprise of the opening that is not written out in full), representing the complete movement, alongside many variants of short passages. The rondo form is clearly evident, although the third statement of the A section is modied and leads to a prolonged coda. Several new features here point towards the nale of the Pathétique Sonata, Op. 13. One is an initial three-note quaver anacrusis, though using the notes g1 f1 g1 rather than g1 c2 d2 as in the sonata. This addition, when prexed to the theme in Example 5.1, generates a melodic skeleton based around the notes g1 e2@ c2 g2, before eventually reaching up to a2@. This shape is essentially the same as t hat in the rst few bars of the nale of Op. 13. Another connection with this movement is some arpeggiated semiquaver guration in the coda of the sketch, which is conspicuously similar to guration in bars 107–12 of the sonata nale. Thus even if this draft was originally planned as a possible replacement nale for Op. 10 No. 1, it became a precursor to the nale of the Pathétique. Unfortunately, however, hardly any sketches survive that are clearly intended for this movement, and so it is impossible to tell whether the transformation from the ‘Kafka’ draft to the Pathétique nale was abrupt or gradual. The few sketches that do show a thematic connection to this nale (‘Kafka’, folio 66r, and ‘Fischhof’, folio 41v) present the main theme as it is recalled in the coda (bars 202–6) in the key of A at, the key of the slow movement. 4 Another part of the same group of sketches, however, shows guration that is idiomatic to the violin rather than piano, with widely spaced chords suited to triple stopping on the violin, followed by rapidly repeated quaver triplets (Example 5.2). This suggests that the movement was at this stage not intended for a piano sonata at all. Gustav Nottebohm suggested a work for violin and piano,5 but there is nothing conspicuously pianistic in this group of sketches, and a far more likely context for them is the String Trio in C minor, Op. 9 No. 3, the scherzo of which is sketched nearby, although Nottebohm doubted this connection.

Example 5.2 Sketch for violin work? (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 66r).


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Thus the path to the nale of the Pathétique was far from smooth. The evidence indicates that an early idea for an Allegretto was developed into a full-scale rondo movement, possibly intended for Op. 10 No. 1, before being abandoned, while an idea for the third of the string trios being composed at the same time was later incorporated into a new nale that also took a few elements from the Allegretto draft. This material was blended with motifs from the rst two movements of the Pathétique itself (which suggests that these two movements had been written by then): the opening four-note gure of the nale derives from the second subject of the rst movement, while bars 5–6 correspond to bars 5–6 of the slow movement, sharing the same melodic shape but in C minor instead of A at major. Despite this disparate range of origins, Beethoven succeeded in combining them into a movement that appears both thoroughly unied in itself and also thoroughly integrated with the rest of the sonata. How he brought this about, however, will remain unclear in the absence of the main body of sketches for the movement. For the rst movement of the Pathétique there also survives an extended preliminary draft in score in C minor that shows little connection with the nal version and is not generally associated with it. T he draft appears on folio 117r of the Kafka Miscellany (see Example 5.3), continuing on folio 20v of the Fischhof Miscellany. The handwriting a nd also other sketches that use t he same paper ty pe (sketches for the Violin Sonat a Op. 12 No. 2 and the Piano Sonata Op. 14 No. 1) suggest that the draft dates from early 1798. 6 The movement is so uently written that Joseph Kerman has doubted whether it is a Beethoven sketch at all, rather than a copy of someone else’s composition or of something written much earlier.7 Yet it does not act ually differ signicantly from several other sketches of the period, being frequently incomplete or thin in texture, and sparse in melodic detail, in a manner that would not occur in a nished composition by Beethoven or anyone else. There are striking similarities to the Pathétique’s rst movement, even though the melodic material is different. A slow introduction appears in both and is unusual in a sonata of that period

Example 5.3 Preliminar y idea for Op. 13.I? (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 117r).

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(none of Mozart’s piano sonatas have one, and only one of Beethoven’s earlier ones does – WoO 47 No. 2). Prominent rests, diminished-seventh chords, and a melodic outline that slowly rises to a high A @ are elements present in both introductions, while both allegros begin with repeated-tonic pedals under a melodic line that twice rises to a high C before descending to a domi nant chord. Whether or not the sketch was intended for the rst movement of a new C minor sonata, Beethoven clearly used it as a starting-point for the beginni ng of the Pathétique. At some stage in 1798, therefore, he decided to write a new sonata in C minor, even though he had just completed one and had also just written a str ing trio in the same key. Such intensive use of a single key by him within a short time is unusual, though there are other cases, notably around 1807 and 1809.8 It was in summer or autumn 1798 that Beethoven started using sketchbooks rather than loose leaves, and the absence of sketches for the Pathétique in his rst sketchbook (Grasnick 1) has led scholars to conclude that the sonata must have been written before then, sketched on a batch of leaves that has since disappeared. The only sketch that appears to be denitely intended for the sonata, as distinct from being adapted for it, is a hitherto unrecognized two-bar fragment added at a late stage to the foot of a leaf dating originally from 1796 (Example 5.4: ‘Kafka’, folio 48r, staves 9–10). This sketch clearly relates to bars 7–9 of the slow introduction. The Pathétique is therefore unusual in having much preliminary material that fed into the sonata, but no known source of detailed sketching.

Example 5.4 Sketch for Op. 13.I (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 48r).

At what stage the title was created is also unclear. This was the rst Beethoven sonata to have a title indicating that it represented a particular character t hroughout, and he wrote only one other subsequently (Op. 81a). Much has been written about the nature of the pathos in the sonata, 9 and it seems that Beethoven made every effort to portray pathos and suffering in as many ways as he could. Many of the relevant features, including diminished-seventh chords, melodic lines that emphasize the attened sixth, heavy textures, the key of C minor, and even prolonged silences, are already present in the preliminary sketches described above, and so Beethoven may well have had the intention from an early stage to write such a sonata depicting pathos. The title could, however, have been an


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afterthought to characterize the music he had composed, as appears to have been the case with his Eroica (‘Heroic’) Symphony. Whether the title generated the music or merely describes it, the sonata emerged as one of his most successful and inventive creations. The sonata appears to have been completed by mid-1798, and Beethoven began writing out a score, but abandoned it after only two bars, and in 1801 he incor porated the leaf into the homemade sketchbook Landsberg 7.10 It is sometimes assumed that the leaf was of a paper type that he did not use before 1799, but other sketches on the same paper type contain early ideas for his string quartets Op. 18. These leaves were also incorporated into Landsberg 7 (pp. 57 – 72), and show the theme for the D minor slow movement of Op. 18 No. 1 in F, but in the context of D major quartet sketches that were a precursor to No. 3 in D (which was composed immediately before No. 1). These sketches must have been made before he began the main sketches for these quartets in his rst sketchbook, Grasnick 1, which includes the main work on Op. 18 No. 3.11 Thus the abandoned score of the Pathétique was probably also written before Grasnick 1 was begun – hence towards mid-1798, at the end of the main sketching period. The score does not quite coincide with the published version, however, and so revisions must still have been in progress at that stage. Such an extraordinary sonata, which became highly successful and has remained one of his most popular ever since, may have required more last-minute revisions than usual in Beethoven’s striving for an unreachable perfection. His ad justments to the rst two bars were probably followed by many others later in the work. Even after publication he was still not fully satised: Ferdinand Ries records that Beethoven, most unusually, instructed him to add a few notes to the nale.12 Unfortunately Ries does not indicate what these notes were.

An embryonic sonata Around the time that Beethoven was struggling with ideas that became incor porated into the Pathétique, he was also sketching another sonata. This was to be in E at major (Unv 13); thus, like the C minor one, it was in a key that had already been used recently for a sonata – Op. 7. The sketches for this embryonic sonata have been dated to late 1797 or early 1798,13 and may therefore have been intended for a companion to the C minor sonata. It would have been abnormal, however, to have two sonatas sharing the same key signature placed within a single set. There are three surviving groups of sketches – in the Kaf ka Miscellany, folio 149v;14 Fischhof Miscellany, folio 42r; and Bonn, Beethoven-Haus, NE 91. The rst of these groups is headed ‘Zur Sonat aus E’ (‘for the sonata in E’), though the sketches show a movement in E at. Several sections appear: a sin gle bar in  apparently in B at; a section that moves from B at major to mi nor and back and concludes the exposition; part of a development section that moves to G minor and then G major before moving towards E at at the retran sition; and some ideas for the coda, marked ‘schluss’ (‘end’). The single bar is followed by ‘nach diesem’ (‘after this’) and some rushing sextuplets in the same key (Example 5.5). It is curious that there is no earlier sketch in the tonic, and this

62


material appears to be part of the second-subject group. Preliminary ideas for new works usually show the rst subject and often little else, but here there is no known sketch for the rst subject – or at least none has been identied – whereas the rst bar of the second-subject mater ial (as shown in Example 5.5) is exploited during the sketch for the development section.

Example 5.5 Embryonic Sonata in E at (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 149v).

The only rst-movement sketch for this movement in the Fischhof Miscellany also concentrates on the same passage – the descending theme in B at and its continuation – and there is still no sign of a main theme in E at. It forms part of a group of sketches that is an early example (one of the rst known) of what is sometimes called a synopsis sketch,15 where a group of short ideas provides a kind of synopsis or précis of an entire movement or, in this case, an entire work. Here the rst movement is represented only by the B at material, and it is followed by an indication of an Adagio in E at minor. This key was extremely rare at that time, but Beethoven had already used it for a complete movement in his early Piano Quartet in E at (WoO 36 No. 1), and for the Trio section of the Sonata Op. 7. However daunting the key might have appeared to his contemporaries, Beethoven seems not to have regarded it as anyt hing out of the ordinar y. The theme of the Adagio is not sketched, but the key signature is followed by an inscription that apparently reads ‘leztes stück recitativo’ (‘last movement recitative’), and then the theme for a set of variations that was to form the nale. This theme is preceded by another i nscription: ‘zuvor Adagio mit einem Einfall in die Variationen’ (‘beforehand Adagio with a lead-in to the variations’).16 Thus Beethoven appears to have been planning an Adagio that would dissolve into recitative at the end and lead into a set of variations, creating a three-movement work with a supplementary link. The idea of joining the last two movements together was one that he was to exploit a great deal during the following decade (e.g. Opp. 57, 59/1, 59/3), but one which he had rarely used at the time (the early Trio in G, WoO 37, is an exception), and it did not appear in any piano sonata until the ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’, Op. 27 No. 1, of 1801. The use of recitative within a piano sonata was even more unusual. Although the idea had appe ared among the keyboard sonatas of C.P.E. Bach over 50 years earlier (his rst ‘Prussian’ Sonata of 1742), Beethoven did not incorporate it into a nished sonata until Op. 31 No. 2 of 1802; and the device of introducing a nale through a passage of instrumental recitative is associated mainly with his late works, such as the Sonata in A at, Op. 110, the String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132, and the Ninth Symphony. The abandoned sonata in E at reveals an interest in devices which were too unorthodox to be used in any of his completed sonatas of the time but which


63

ourished in his later works. Its nale, on the other hand, appears almost too orthodox for use in a sonata. The theme drafted on the ‘Fischhof’ leaf is very four-square, with eight bars going to the dominant, followed by eight more that quickly return to the tonic, with both halves repeated. To follow this, Beethoven drafted ve very regular and rather elementary variations on the Bonn leaf, with Variation 4 written in the minor. Thus the unconventional structure of the sonata was of much more interest to him at this stage than precise melodic outlines. Much work would have been needed to turn this set of variations into an inventive and challenging nale on a par with those in his other sonatas of this period, and this could be a reason for its abandonment. Whatever the reason, he soon set to work on two other sonatas that were to progress to completion – Op. 14 Nos 1 and 2.

The contrasting origins of the sonatas Op. 14 The two sonatas of Op. 14 are at opposite ends of the scale in terms of surviving sketches. For No. 1 in E there are copious sketches for all three movements, leading Douglas Johnson to comment: ‘It appears that nearly all of the sketches for Op. 14. No. 1 have survived.’ 17 Although it is impossible to conjecture what might be lost, there are few passages in any of the movements where the latest sketches do not approximate fairly closely to the nal version. By contrast there are no known sketches or other manuscript material for Op. 14 No. 2, and so its date of composition cannot be conrmed. Most of the sketching for No. 1 was done on a single gathered sheet (two bifolios or eight sides), which now forms folios 64–5 and 121–2 of the Kaf ka Miscellany. It is easy to imagine that Beethoven used a similar gathered sheet for the main sketches for each of Op. 13 and Op. 14 No. 2. The loss or discarding of such a sheet would then account for the near-total absence of sketches for these two sonatas. The E major sonata is unique in that it also exists in a version for string quartet, in F major (Hess 34). It has sometimes been suggested that the work might actually have originated as a string quartet before being converted to a piano work;18 but an investigation of the sketches found no evidence for thi s,19 and none has emerged since. On the contrary, Beethoven himself explicitly stated that the piano version came rst, in a letter of 13 July 1802: The unnatural mania that people now have for wanting to transplant even piano works to string instruments, instruments that are so opposite in every way, should really stop … I have arranged only one of my sonatas for string quartet, because I was so earnestly implored to do so …’. 20 This E major sonata was indeed the only Beethoven sonata that also appeared in a quartet arrangement at that time, although in later years a few other sonatas or individual movements appeared in unauthentic quar tet arrangements made by other people.21 Although conceived as a piano work, however, the sonata does possess a certain quartet-like character, especially in the rst movement, with snatches of dialogue, textures that easily transfer to string quar tet, and little passagework

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that is overtly pianistic. Beethoven was at the time contemplating composing a set of string quartets, which eventually emerged as Op. 18, and had made various preparations for this particularly challenging genre, including string trios, a string quintet, and f ugues for string quartet. The sonata could therefore be seen as yet another part of his preparations – quar tet-like music designed for piano. Another aspect of Beethoven’s preparations for quartet writing was the acquisition of manuscript sketchbooks that would enable him to keep all his sketches for the quartets together. As noted above, he started using t he rst of these books, Grasnick 1, in 1798, and the rst substantial works found in it are h is rst string quartets. On what appears to have been the rst page of the book, however, there is a late draft for the rst movement of Op. 14 No. 1, thus cementing the con nection with the quartets. Unfortunately this leaf has been cut i nto several fragments, of which only three survive, in different locations.22 The remaining known sketches for the sonata were all made on loose leaves, presumably shortly before Beethoven began using sketchbooks. In the initial study of them Nottebohm concluded they were made in 1795, on the grounds that they are found adjacent to sketches for the Second Piano Concerto, which was completed by that date,23 and his conclusions have been repeated in many later writings. It is now clear, however, that the evidence was awed, for Beethoven revised the concerto in 1798, writing out a new autograph score which dates f rom that year, and the sonata sketches are clearly contemporary with this revision.24 For the rst time in his output, it is possible to see how Beethoven gradually built up the work from the initial stages to the nished version, and the evolution is particularly clear in the exposition of the rst movement. For this there are ve main drafts plus a number of variants and shorter sketches, and the rst four draf ts were transcribed almost complete by Nottebohm.25 As has been pointed out by Carl Dahlhaus, Beethoven’s expositions typically fall into ve sections or some thing close to this pattern: a rst subject, a t ransition, and three (or more) thematic (or non-thematic) ideas in the secondary key area.26 Op. 14 No. 1 is no exception, with its ve sections occupying respectively bars 1–12, 13–22, 22–38 (the second subject, or what Beethoven used to term ‘mitte Gedanke’), 38–46 (a theme decorated by a turn), and 46–56 (contrasting G $ and G), followed by a brief reprise of the opening theme, now in the bass (57–60). In all of these the interval of a rising fourth is prominent.27 The ve continuity drafts can be summarized as in Table 5.1. Table 5.1 Drafts for exposition of Op. 14 No. 1 Draft

Bars (unused bars in brackets)

Length

Source

1 2

1–6, (17 bars) [1–8 absent], 9–14, (17 bars), 46–50, (3 bars), 57–60, (4 bars) 1–22, (26 bars), 46 –53, (2 bars), 57– 60, (4 bars) 1–50, (5 bars), 57–60 [1– 60? – only fragments sur vive, including 51– 6]

23 bars 39 bars

‘Fischhof’, 31r ‘Kafka’, 65v

67 bars 60 bars 60 bars

‘Kaf ka’, 121r ‘Kafka’, 122v ex-Grasnick 1

3 4 5


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The rst draft (‘Fischhof’, folio 31r), though continuous and mostly using two staves, is very short, a mere 23 bars, and only the rst six match the  nal version. The striking semiquaver gure in bars 5–6 was actually derived from the opening idea of an abandoned movement in F major of about 1794 (‘Kafka’, folio 140r); Beethoven had evidently retained this guration in mind. The tra nsition is characteri zed by a sudden switch to G major, leading toward B minor and thence to B major. The abrupt modulation to G was quickly abandoned, but it inuenced the nal version, where the recapitulation contains a corresponding digression to C major (bar 103) before working round toward E minor and thence E major. Such a modulation would have been much less effective if it had already bee n heard in the exposition, from where it had bee n suppressed. The second draft (‘Kaf ka’, folio 65v) begins at bar 9, the rst eight bars be ing taken as read. The nal version is now in place up to bar 14, as are bars 46– 50 (G$ contrasting with G ) and an extended eight-bar version of the closing theme (bars 57–60), but the whole occupies only 47 bars (including the missing rst eight), and several passages were later discarded, including a 17-bar passage after bar 14. In the third draft (‘Kaf ka’, folio 121r) a little more of the nal version has been established: the whole of the rst two sections up to bar 22 (though incorporating one extra bar), plus a little more of the fth section (the whole of bars 46–53). This draft, at 67 bars, is act ually longer than the nal version. The fourth draft (‘Kafka’, folio 122v) includes sections 3 and 4, and so the whole of bars 1–50 now approximates to the nal version, as do the last four bars (57–60). All that remained to be done after this were some slight renements and the creation of bars 51–6. The nal draft was written on the leaf now in fragments, and so several bars are missing – bars 5–7, 18–20, 30–34 and 44–50 – but there is no reason to suppose they differed substantially f rom the nal ver sion; and the fragments show revisions to bars 51–6 in which the nal form is established in essence. Thus this set of sketches is striking for the way the exposition is built up piece by piece, jigsaw-like, but not in order: one piece is in place in the rst draft, three more i n the second, two more in the thi rd, two more (or one long one, bars 23–50) in the fourth and t he nal piece (bars 51–6) in t he fth. From there the writing out of the autograph would have been fairly straightforward. In the ve drafts, once a piece of the jigsaw was in place it was retained; once a passage had been rejected it did not reappear. This pattern occurs in many other Beethoven works, although not usually so clearly and it is not invariable. The sketches for the second movement again came very close to the nal version after some redrafting. At an early stage Beethoven planned a more conventional minuet form, with a repeat after 16 bars and also a repeat of the second part, but these repeats were removed, leaving a continuous minore section. For the maggiore section he rst drafted a binary form in E major, with the initial motif closely related to that of the maggiore section of WoO 53, one of

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the discarded minuets from Op. 10 No. 1, although with different continuation. Soon, however, he had replaced this with a maggiore section in C, and this reached its nal version with little apparent difculty. The use of the tonic mi nor for the minuet-like movement, as in Op. 10 No. 2, seems to have precluded any consideration of an additional slow movement, and there is no sign of one among the sketches. The rst idea for a nale, headed ‘presto’, was quite imaginative, with an elegant descending melodic line and syncopated accompaniment (Example 5.6: ‘Kafka’, folio 121r). It is followed by the comment ‘in gis moll E dur adagio  tel takt’, which seems to indicate that the central section was to be in G sharp minor, to be followed by an adagio episode in  in the tonic – perhaps to compensate for the absence of a true slow movement. These ideas were quickly abandoned, however, and a new nale idea emerged, with prominent use of rising fourths as in the rst movement, and this was developed into a complete movement in ensuing sketches. The main section that does not survive in the sketches is the centra l G major episode in triplets. Here Beethoven at one stage envisaged further development of the repeated-note idea of the main theme, in G major and related keys (Example 5.7: ‘Kafka’, folio 121v); 28 but this would have left insuf cient contrast in the movement as a whole, and it was replaced by bravura guration not found among the sketches. This proved to be t he one passage in the sonata that was not susceptible to arrangement for string quartet, and he had to devise entirely different guration in the quar tet version.

Example 5.6 Sketch for Op. 14 No. 1.III (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 121r).

Example 5.7 Sketch for Op. 14 No. 1.III (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 121v).


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Publication of Opp. 13 and 14 Since there are hardly any sketches for these sonatas in Grasnick 1, which was begun in summer or early autumn 1798, it must be assumed that they were completed by about that date. There are therefore two surprising features about their publication. First, they were not published until well over a year later, in December 1799; second, Op. 13 was published separately from the other two, with a different opus number. The three make a typical Beethoven grouping in that they were composed in quick succession, they have three different key signatures including at least one sharp one and one at one, and one of the three is in a minor key. Thus they may have been conceived initially as a group of three, but, if so, it seems likely that Beethoven decided that Op. 13 was so different from the other t wo that it would be better published as a gra nd sonata on its own. Prince Lichnowsky, who was Beethoven’s principal sponsor at the time, may also have had a particular preference for this sonata (a preference shared by most musicians since then) and have been so enamoured of this extraordinary work that he paid not only for its dedication but also for a full year or more of exclusive rights before publication. Beethoven may then have wanted the other two sonatas not to appear until after the Pathétique. At any rate, publication of the Pathétique was announced in the Wiener Zeitung by the publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister on 18 December 1799, while the two sonatas of Op. 14 were published in a single volume by Tranquillo Mollo, announced in the Wiener Zeitung three days later on 21 December.29 Lichnowsky received the dedication of Op. 13, while that of Op. 14 was given to Baroness Josephine von Braun (1765–1838). She and her husband Peter were both ne pianists, 30 and they may also have paid for a year’s exclusive use of the two sonatas, causing a delay in the publication. At one time it was believed that the Pathétique was rst published by Joseph Eder, and therefore sometime before Hoffmeister’s announcement of 18 December, but it is now clear that Eder’s edition was simply a reprint of Hoffmeister’s, using the same plates. 31 Several further editions of the sonata in the following years attest to its immediate and lasting impact. So too do individual appraisals of it: Czerny was quick to learn it as soon as it appeared; Therese Brunsvik expressed her approval as early as January 1800; and Ignaz Moscheles was lost in admiration when he rst encountered it.32 Even the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung , which had reviewed earlier works, including the Op. 10 sonatas, with less than wholehearted warmth, was unusually enthusiastic about the Pathétique, praising its inner unity and strongly impassioned character.33 Neither of the two sonatas of Op. 14 ever achieved such great popularity.

The Grand Sonata Op. 22 Beethoven deferred his next piano sonata, Op. 22 in B at, until he had completed his Septet Op. 20, his First Symphony, Op. 21, and the set of six quartets Op. 18, but set to work on it almost immediately afterwards. Nearly all the known sketches for it were written in a sketchbook that dates from about May to September or

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October 1800. Several leaves from the book were removed after Beethoven’s death, and not all have yet been traced; but some have been, and their original position in the sketchbook has in most cases been established through a study of their contents, watermarks, in k offsets and other evidence.34 The displaced leaves have been incorporated into a facsimile and transcription of the hypothetically reconstructed sketchbook by Richard Kramer (referred to here as ‘Summer 1800’). 35 Even if the pages are arranged in their original order, however, this does not always match the precise chronology of their use, for Beethoven may have jumped forward a few pages at times, or jumped back to ll empty spaces. The sketches for Op. 22 appear towards the end of the reconstr ucted sketchbook, shortly after those for the last of the string quartets Op. 18. Since the last three of these quartets were delivered to Prince Lobkowitz in October 1800, 36 their sketches must precede this date, but probably not by more than a few weeks. The sonata was therefore probably composed mainly in or around August–September that year, a date supported by other evidence. Kramer’s edition also includes a loose leaf (Pn, Ms 71) that was evidently not part of the sketchbook but was contemporary with it and contains further sketches for Op. 22. The earliest part of the sonata to appear in the sketchbook is the theme of the nale; but it appears among sketches for Op. 18 No. 6, also in B at, and it was evidently conceived as one of several possible nale themes for this quartet. Having removed it from there, Beethoven did not immediately tra nsfer it to a new piano sonata in that key but instead began sketching one in D major (‘Summer 1800’, folio 18v: Example 5.8), clearly headed ‘Sonata’. The rst 16 bars were written in a single draft, and were followed by a brief idea for a second movement, a   Adagio in G. In an alternative idea in Ms 71 he wrote out the theme he had rejected from the B at Quartet, but now in A major (Example 5.9). This is a longer and more elaborate draft of the theme, extending to well over 50 bars, clearly showing a rondo form and apparently intended for the nale of a sonata in A. What appears to be the planned rst movement of this sonata is on the reverse side, headed ‘Alla Marcia’ (Example 5.10).

Example 5.8 Sketch for Sonata in D (‘Summer 1800’, f. 18v).

Example 5.9 Sketch for Sonata in A, nale? (Pn, Ms 71).


69

Example 5.10 Sketch for Sonata in A, ‘Alla Marcia’ (Pn, Ms 71).

Both the D major and A major openings appear rather conventional: the D ma jor one shows a strident unison passage that immediately recalls the mood and thrust of the star t of his previous D major piano sonata, Op. 10 No. 3. The A major one lacks the initial drive that is so characteristic of most of Beethoven’s openings, and its conventional march patterns and textural regularity do not offer good prospects for the rst movement of a new sonata. Soon he had a much more promising idea (Example 5.11), and jotted it down immediately under the A major march theme in Ms 71. Its guration is much more unusual and inventive, and the striking rest on a strong beat, in both bars 1 and 2, creates much tension and impetus, thrusting the music forward towards the climax in bar 4. Prominent early rests such as these are common in Beethoven’s music and form a distinctive aspect of his style.37 The sketches suggest, therefore, that as soon as he had noted this theme in B at he abandoned his D major and A major ideas and xed on this new idea as his starting point. It remained almost unchanged in the nal version.

Example 5.11 Sketch for Op. 22.I (Pn, Ms 71).

Immediately beneath it he noted an idea for the second subject, which already shows close similarity to that in the nal version (bars 21–5). Although the A major march was discarded, the rondo in A could still be used as the nale for the new sonata if transposed back to B at, and its opening motif duly appears in this key in the middle of the sketchbook (folio 19r of ‘Summer 1800’), headed ‘Rondo aus B’ (‘Rondo in B at’), apparently as a reminder that it was to be used for this purpose. Thus the nale theme was in place at an unusually early stage of the work’s gestation, and it is perhaps signicant that bars 4–7 of the rst movement are clearly related to this theme (a rising step followed by descending scale), even though in their initial appearance in Ms 71 they were very different. The theme of the Trio in the third movement is also related, whereas the Mi nuetto relates to the rst-movement theme (rising from D to F and soon to B at).

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Beethoven’s next task was to work out the details of the rst movement, which he did on folios 26v and 27 of ‘Summer 1800’. Sketches on folio 26v, which represent the end of the exposition and start of the development, show little similarity to the nal version. Almost the only recognizable feature is the tremolando bass (commonly known as ‘murky bass’) on F. The following page (27r) shows an early draft for part of the exposition and development, but a complete exposition draft must have been made elsewhere, for the next page (27v) contains a draft for virtually the whole development section, missing only the rst few bars (68–70) and two near the end (118–9) that more or less repeat the previous two bars. About half the draft uses single staves, but the rest is in score on two staves, usually with both hands entered, and each bar matches the nal version or con tains only minor differences from it. The rst movement of this sonata is unusually regular, with the recapitulation corresponding very closely to the exposition, and without any coda. Thus Beethoven moved straight on to the slow movement on the next page of the sketchbook (28r). The few places where the rst-movement recapitulation diverges from the exposition must have been sketched elsewhere or even worked out at the piano. The sketches for the slow movement in E at (folios 28v–30v of ‘Summer 1800’) represent almost all sections of it, and mostly they come very close to the nal version. In the main draft for the recapitulation, however, the transition passage moves to A at major (a turn to the subdominant at this point is common in Beethoven’s recapitulations), whereas in the nal version the turn to a atter key was intensied by a move to G at major (bars 61–2), as in some later sketches, before a return to E at via the tonic minor. Since the Adagio was more or less fully sketched by this point, one might expect the Minuetto to appear on the next page, but it does not. Instead, after a page of fragments in various keys, the verso contains sketches for the nale. It is possible, however, that one or more leaves have been lost at precisely this point in the sketchbook, which would accou nt for the loss of Minuet to sketches. An alternative possibility is that Beethoven envisaged only a three-movement sonata at this stage. He had already had problems deciding whether or not to include a minuet movement in Op. 10 No. 1; and in both Op. 10 No. 2 and Op. 14 No. 1 he had included a minuet movement instead of an adagio. Some uncertainty over the inclusion of minuets is also apparent in a few later sonatas. Thus the Minuetto may have been added only later as an afterthought, sketched on lost leaves that either came at the end of the sketchbook or were not part of it. Since the movement is so short, its sketches probably occupied no more than two leaves altogether. For the nale, the main theme and rst e pisode had already been drafted in the sketch in A major in Ms 71, and so the nale sketches on folios 31v to 33r, though showing renements to this section, pay much attention to the central episode in the minor. Most of these sketches are not very different from the nal version. There is no sign of the triplet guration that infuses the nal return of the rondo theme (bars 165–80), however, and the main draft for what follows shows a very different coda from the one eventually composed, which appears nowhere among


71

the sketches. The coda draft shows a turn towards the subdominant (as is common at this point) before the tonic is reasserted. At the very end, G @s and G$s are interspersed in a series of V–I progressions, concluding with a long descending scale (folio 32v: Example 5.12), which can be seen as the ultimate extension of the descending scale in the opening theme. An adjacent sketch retains the idea of a descending scale but is close to the nal version (bars 196–8), where the scale subtly emerges from a reprise of the opening theme. One curious feature of the movement is the similarity of bars 18–20 to the theme of Beethoven’s Variations in G on an Original Theme, WoO 77, as has often been noted. The variations appear in the same sketchbook (folios 25–6), but the passage in the sonata had probably already been outlined by then, albeit in A major, in Ms 71, which could well be the rst time Beethoven had written it down.

Example 5.12 Sketch for Op. 22.IV (‘Summer 1800’, f. 32v).

Steps to publication of Op. 22 By autum n 1800 Beethoven had more or less completed the sonata and was in a position to offer it to publishers. Any last-minute revisions could be made while negotiations about publication were under way. The Variations in G, WoO 77, completed about t he same time, were duly published before the e nd of the year, and there was clearly no shortage of local Viennese publishers willing to take on a new piano sonata f rom him. Instead, however, Beethoven offered it to Franz Hoffmeister, who had published the Pathétique in Vienna in 1799 but had now moved to Leipzig, where he had gone i nto part nership with Ambrosius Kühnel. Hoffmeister was also a composer and Beethoven clearly had much fondness for him, addressing him as his ‘brother and friend’. This was the rst time that Beethoven arranged for one of his Viennese sonatas to be published elsewhere, and consequently much correspondence survives, revealing far more about the publishing negotiations than is the case with Viennese publishers. In response to Hoffmeister’s enquiries, Beethoven offered him four works – the Piano Concerto in B at, the Septet, the First Symphony and ‘a grand solo sonata’ – in a letter dated 15 December.38 Post normally took about a week to travel between Vienna and Leipzig, and Hoffmeister’s reply does not survive, but it was positive, and Beethoven wrote again in a letter curiously dated ‘15 (or thereabouts) January 1801’, offering the same four works. He proposed

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20 ducats each for the septet, the symphony and the sonata, and 10 ducats for the concerto since it was an early work. He explained that the price for a septet or symphony ought to be more than for a sonata, but that he was charging the same because septets and symphonies did not sell so well. He might have noted, too, that they were more expensive to engrave. Again he described the sonata as a ‘grand solo sonata’, and this time he listed the four movements, adding ‘diese Sonate hat sich gewaschen’, which literally means that the sonata has ‘washed itself’ – a German expression indicating real excellence.39 Thus Beethoven was clearly proud of his latest sonata, which is indeed an exceptionally ne work on the grandest scale of the time. Hoffmeister accepted Beethoven’s proposals and eventually published the four works, but only after several delays. In March 1801 Beethoven was preoccu pied with composing and performing his ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creations of Prometheus) and was also unwell for a time, as he explained in a letter of 22 April, which specied the opus numbers for the four works as Opp. 19–22.40 A manuscript copy of Opp. 19–21 was sent about then, 41 and the sonata was probably sent too, although this is not mentioned in the correspondence. In June Beethoven sent the list of dedicatees for the four works, naming Count Browne for the sonata. 42 Browne had already received the dedication of the String Trios Op. 9, while his wife had received the Sonatas Op. 10 and two sets of piano variations. Whether the count had actually commissioned the sonata is unknown, but he and his wife were clearly two of Beethoven’s leading supporters at the time, and were very generous patrons of music. Whoever did commission the sonata had probably by that time already had it for about six months, and so in Beethoven’s June letter he urged Hoffmeister to publish the work without further delay; but by then it was in a queue behind the concerto and the symphony. Printed copies of these two works were finally sent to Beethoven in December, but he had not been sent any proofs to correct, and when he examined the editions he discovered numerous errors in the symphony. These proved to be mainly the fault of the copyist of the manuscript, rather than Hoffmeister’s engraver,43 but fortunately the manuscript of the sonata was far more accurate. The work was ready for publication by 19 December, as re ported from Leipzig to Caspar Josef Eberl, who was head of the Vienna branch of Hoffmeister’s rm; but it was delayed again, and on 13 March 1802 Eberl wrote that Beethoven was still awaiting delivery of the printed copies.44 They nally arrived by the beginni ng of April, and Beethoven expressed his satisfaction to both Eberl and Hoffmeister.45 Unlike with the symphony, no corrected reprint was necessar y. The manuscript used by Hoffmeister still survives, 46 although the autograph is lost. It is written in the hand of an assistant of Beethoven’s chief copyist Wenzel Schlemmer, though the copyist has not been precisely identied, and it includes marks made by the engr aver which match the Hoffmeister edition, conr ming that it was the engraver’s exemplar. The cor respondence


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with Beethoven makes it clear that, as with the symphony, he was not sent proofs, and so none of the differences between manuscript and printed edition can be the result of last-minute revisions by him. All of them must be either correction (or attempted correction) by the engraver of an error in the manuscript, or an error made by the engraver. Thus from a textual point of view, the reading i n the manuscript should be preferred to that i n the printed edition if both are plausible – a situation overlooked in most modern editions of the sonata. Most of the obvious errors in the manuscript were corrected by the editor or engraver, such as the missing staccato in bar 3, beat 4, the missing natural in the left ha nd in bar 49, and the missing at in the alto at the star t of bar 59,47 indicating that the proofs were checked by an intelligent musician – probably Hoffmeister himself. Somet imes, however, an attempted correction was misguided: in bar 59 of the second movement, the engr aver inserted t ies to the slurred chords at the beginning of the bar (Example 5.13); yet there are none in the ma nuscript, nor in the corresponding place in t he exposition (bar 14) in either source, and so it must be concluded that this ‘correction’ is spurious: the two tied notes should be repeated. The engraver also made some minor errors. Most are obvious and easily corrected, such as the omission of left-hand staccatos in bar 9, and the substitution of for in bars 34 –5 (Beethoven never wrote but always rinf. for rinforzando). Others are sufciently suspect that modern editors have generally corrected them, such as the spurious staccato marks on the dotted-crotchet chords in bars 81–2 and 85–6. Some, however, seem so plausible that they have been retained in subsequent editions. For example, most editions shows the ‘decresc’ in bar 104 (rst movement) on the second beat but it should be at the beginning of the bar; and in the last right-hand chord of bar 168, the eng raver overlooked the lowest note, F below middle C, which is missing from most subsequent editions. Nearly all the errors in the edition, however, are very minor, and concern articulation marks or the precise alignment of dynamics, and it is easy to see why Beethoven expressed satisfaction with what is generally a very ne and clearly laid-out edition. The sonata as a whole is almost excessively regular in st ructure, with two sonata-form movements, a minuet, and a rondo nale, but it is full of original touches and makes a tt ing culmi nation for the eighteenth-centur y piano sonata.

Example 5.13 Op. 22.IV, bar 59 (rst edition).

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Notes 1 Transcribed in Joseph Kerman, ed. Ludwig van Beethoven: Autograph Miscellany from 1786 to 1799, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1970), vol. 2, p. 150. 2 Transcribed in Kerman, ed., Miscellany, vol. 2, pp. 150–5. 3 LvBWV, pp. 48 and 58. 4 See Douglas Johnson, Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the ‘Fischhof ’ Miscellany: Berlin Autograph 28, 2 vols (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1980), vol. 2, p. 56; Kerman, ed., Miscellany, vol. 2, p. 25. 5 N-II, pp. 42–3. 6 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, p. 445. The draft is transcribed in Kerman, ed., Miscellany, vol. 2, p. 156. 7 Kerman ed., Miscellany, vol. 2, p. 289; the sketch is transcribed ibid., p. 156. 8 See Barry Cooper, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; 2nd edn, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 164 and 182 (2nd edn, pp. 176 and 197). 9 See, for example, Elaine Sisman, ‘Pathos and the Pathétique: Rhetorical Stance in Beethoven’s C-minor Sonata, Op. 13’, Beethoven Forum, 3 (1994), 81–105. 10 In Bsb; see K.L. Mikulicz, ed., Ein Notierungsbuch von Beethoven aus dem Besitz der Preussischer Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1927), p. 49. 11 JTW, p. 82. 12 WR, p. 94. 13 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, pp. 454–7; transcriptions in vol. 2, pp. 154–7. Johnson pro vides a brief discussion of all these sketches. 14 Transcribed in Kerman, ed., Miscellany, vol. 2, pp. 156–7. 15 See Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 106–7. 16 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 2, p. 154. 17 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, p. 347. 18 See, for example, Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York and London: Norton, 2003), p. 131. 19 Michael E. Broyles, ‘Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 14 No. 1 – Originally for Strings?’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 23 (1970), 405–19. 20 BB-97; A-59. 21 See KH, passim. 22 See JTW, pp. 79–81. A facsimile of the three fragments, showing the draft for Op. 14 No. 1, is in ibid., p. 80. The main body of Grasnick 1 is in Bsb. 23 N-II, p. 59. 24 Johnson, Fischhof , vol. 1, p. 350. 25 N-II, pp. 45–6, 47–8, 48–9, and 50–1 respectively. 26 Carl Dahlhaus, Ludwig van Beethoven: Approaches to his Music, trans. Mary Whittall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 101–2. 27 See Carl Schachter, ‘Beethoven’s Sketches for the First Movement of Op. 14, No. 1: A Study in Design’, Journal of Music Theor y, 26/1 (1982), 1–21, which includes a detailed discussion of these sketches. 28 Kerman, ed., Miscellany, vol. 2, p. 33; the 8va sign is inadvertently omitted in Kerman’s transcription. 29 KH, p. 32. 30 See Peter Clive, Beethoven and His World: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 43. 31 See Alan Tyson, ‘Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata and its Publication’, The Musical Times, 104 (1963), 333–4. 32 KC, pp. 204, 150, 582. 33 See Robin Wallace, Beethoven’s Critics: Aesthetic Dilemmas and Resolutions during the Composer’s Lifetime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 8–9. The original AMZ review is in vol. 2 (1800), cols 373–4.


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34 See JTW, pp. 89–99. 35 Richard Kramer, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: A Sketchbook from the Summer of 1800, 2 vols. (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1996); also a third volume, A Newly Recovered Leaf of Sketches from the Summer of 1800 for Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 18 No.2 (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1999). The main part of the sketchbook is Bsb, Autograph 19e. Of the leaves that contain sketches for the sonata, six are in this, two are in the Dreesmann Collection, and two in BNba, HCB BSk 25/73. 36 Sieghard Brandenburg, ‘Beethovens Streichquartette op. 18’, in Beethoven und Böhmen, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg and Martella Gutiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn: BeethovenHaus, 1988), pp. 259–310, at p. 286. 37 Barry Cooper, ‘Beethoven’s Uses of Silence’, The Musical Times, 152/1914 (Spring 2011), 25–43, at p. 35. 38 BB-49; A-41. 39 BB-54; A-44. 40 BB-60; A-47. 41 BB-61. 42 BB-64; A-50. 43 BB-74, 75, 76. 44 BB-76, 80. 45 BB-82, -84; A-57. 46 Bsb, Autograph 23. 47 For a complete list of such corrections, see Barry Cooper, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas, 3 vols (London: ABRSM, 2007), Commentaries, vol. 2, p. 6.

6

New century, new approaches

Op. 26 in A at: Andante con variazioni. Scherzo: Allegro molto. Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un Eroe. Allegro. Op. 27 No. 1 in E at: Andante [alternating with:] Allegro. Allegro molto e vivace. Adagio con espressione [alternating with:] Allegro vivace. Op. 27 No. 2 in C sharp minor: Adagio sostenuto. Allegretto. Presto. Op. 28 in D: Allegro. Andante. Scherzo: Allegro vivace. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo.

The convoluted sketching of Op. 26 Having completed a strikingly regular sonata as Op. 22, Beethoven began a series of more experimental works in the new centur y. These are not, of course, experimental in the sense that he was u ncertain about the efcacy of his approach, but in the sense that he went beyond the accepted norms of sonata composition of the day, while still using the traditional three- or four-movement form as a background for innovation. The rst three all begin with a slow movement, and their structures can be seen as variations on the pattern slow – minuet – fast, although the individual slow movements are of the most diverse types. The following sonata (Op. 28), however, returned to the standard four-movement pattern of the Op. 2 sonatas, fast – slow – minuet – fast. When this group of sonatas was begun has been a matter of uncertainty, for Op. 26 is often described as having been composed or at least started in 1800. There is, however, no clear evidence for such an early date, and there are no sketches for it in ‘Summer 1800’, the end of which is devoted mainly to Beethoven’s Violin Sonata Op. 23. This work is concluded in his next sketch book, Landsberg 7,1 and is followed there by sketches for his next violin sonata (Op. 24, the ‘Spring’ Sonata) and for the rst movement of his Second Symphony; his music for the ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus occupies the second half of the book, from page 73. The ballet received its première on 28 March 1801; 2 and since sketches for Op. 26 appear in La ndsberg 7 as early as pages 21 and 54, it was easy to assume the sonata was begun well before the ballet – thus in late 1800. There are several problems with such a straightforward scenario, however. As mentioned in Chapter 5, Landsberg 7 is a homemade sketchbook, in which


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a variety of leftover papers were sewn together, probably by Beethoven himself, and some leaves had already been partly used. Moreover, he continued using the sketchbook long after he had reached the nal page. Page 78 contains sketches for Egmont , not composed until 1810, and several other pages appear to have been lled retrospectively. All the k nown sketches for Op. 26 appear in Landsberg 7, but their distribution is not in the order one might expect, as shown in Table 6.1. The table shows that the movements of the sonata do not appear i n numerical order in the sketchbook but are very jumbled. This might give the impression that ideas for any of the four movements could occur to Beethoven at any time and he would simply note them down at once. Yet this was not his normal procedure, which was to concentrate on one movement at a time (with occasional thoughts about others) and compose the movements in numerical order. His sketches also normally show a progression towards versions that are increasingly close to the nal one, with only occasional backtracking. With Op. 26 there are several cases where the page order clearly does not match the order of composition, and so the sketches must have been entered in blank spaces after the main sketching in the book had been done. Most of them are on pages that are otherwise blank; in three cases the page is shared with sketches for the ‘Spring’ Sonata; in two cases ( pages 134 and 181) the other sketches on the page are for abandoned works; and on page 137 some sketches for Op. 26 are followed by an early idea for the next piano sonata, Op. 27 No. 1. There is no place where Prometheus sketches can be shown to have followed any for Op. 26. It appears that, when composing Prometheus, Beethoven left large spaces for possible revisions, and many of these spaces were still unused when the ballet was completed in March 1801. Thereafter he lled some of them with late sketches for the ‘Spring’ Sonata, before tur ning his attention to Op. 26, probably around May that year, when he hunted for any remaining convenient spaces Table 6.1 Sketches for Op. 26 in Landsberg 7 Page/stave

Movement

Description

21/5‒8 54/1‒6 56/1‒10 57/1‒4, 7–10 132/1‒3 133/1‒6 134/7–8 135/1–17 136/1–12 137/1–4 158/1–10 159/1/8 180/1–8 181/1 182/7–8

IV IV I, III, IV III III III III III III III II IV II, I I I

early idea for coda (bars 154ff.) bars 1–20, similar to nal version ‘Sonate pour M. – ’: synopsis ‘Marcia’: most of minore section another, less extended, attempt at minore section coda, headed ‘nis’ bars 12‒20, superseding this passage on p. 135 bars 1–38 (compressed minore-maggiore) 39‒end (compressed reprise of minore) bars 47‒58, superseding this passage on p. 136 almost complete movement (some spills on to p. 159/9‒10) opening, central section, coda early idea for II; brief ideas for I continued from p. 180 end of theme or variation

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in the sketchbook to note down his ideas. This procedure makes it very difcult to surmise the order in which the sketches were written, except on the basis of their internal contents. These, however, provide many clues. The rst ideas for the sonata are surely those in a group found on page 56, which provides a synopsis of several movements set side by side. The synopsis is headed ‘Sonate pour M. – ’, an initial that could either stand for ‘monsieur’ or indicate the rst initial of the person who had requested a new sonata. Either way, it indicates that a sonata was once again being composed in response to a commission or request. Under the heading there appears a version of the complete theme of the rst movement, in which the rst few bars are in  time, but each alternate barline has been cancelled to create , and the latter part of the sketch continues in this metre. The rst 16 bars of the nal version (or eight bars in ) are more or less in place in the sketch, but the middle section of the theme is more compressed than in the nal version, occupying only six bars (three in ) rather than ten (bars 17‒26), followed by a reprise of the opening phrase. The sketch is followed by a comment: ‘variée tutt a fatto poi Menuetto o qualche altro pezzo character istica come p.E. una Marcia in as moll e poi questo’ (‘much varied, then Menuetto or some other characteristic piece e.g. a March in A at minor, and then this’). The word ‘questo’ refers to a nale theme sketched immediately underneath. Thus Beethoven was at this stage planning a three-movement sonata, beginning with a theme and variations, and including either a minuet (as in Op. 10 No. 2) or a slow movement (as in Op. 10 No. 1). Interestingly, he was already considering the possibility of a march in the extraordinary key of A at minor, and he seems to have been quickly attracted by this idea, for the theme of just such a march appears on the opposite page. Eight bars are written in score, and already resemble the ‘Marcia funebre’ of the nal version, modulating to C at major for the cadence. Another early sketch appears at the foot of page 182. It shows a fresh attempt at the second half of the theme for the rst movement, but still notated partly in  and much more primitive than the nal version. Opposite (on page 183) is a draft in score of a ‘Menuet’ in A at, followed by a ‘trio’ that begins in F minor before ret urning to A at. The proximity to the rst-movement sketch suggests this was an early idea for including a minuet as well as the march. If so, this idea was retained but the musical material of the minuet was replaced. The ‘Menuet’ ended up as part of a bagatelle (Op. 33 No. 7) while the ‘trio’ was discarded com pletely. This scenario would place the minuet in the same bracket as several other minuets (including WoO 52 and 53 mentioned in Chapter 4) that appear to have been discarded from sonatas. A replacement minuet, much of it already resembling the nal version of the second movement, was then sketched on the previous page-opening (page 180). It is headed ‘M[enuetto]’, although in the nal version Beethoven adopted the heading ‘Scherzo’. These sketches are interspersed with a few for the rst move ment, more developed than before. There is also a ve-bar sketch for a trio section in D at (Example 6.1, marked ‘trio in des trio ligato’ (‘trio in D at, trio legato’)). It has something of the same sustained character a s the nal version, as well as the same key, but the melodic details are quite different. The only later sketches for


79

this movement are found further back, on page 158, where there is an updated version of the scherzo section, along with a complete ‘trio’. When adjacent variants are taken into account, both sections more or less coincide with the nal version.

Example 6.1 Trio sketch for Op. 26 (Bsb, Landsberg 7, p. 180).

On the opposite page (159) is an extended sketch for the nale of Op. 26, with the main theme already rmly in place; and some of the sketches for the Scherzo spill over from page 158 beneath the nale sketch, indicating that they were added after it. This suggests that the slow movement may have been already in place, and that Beethoven began work on the nale before the Scherzo was sketched in detail. The slow movement was sketched intensively on pages 132 ‒ 7, and reached approximately its nal version with few apparent difculties, but it is impossible to tell whether these sketches were made before or after those for the Scherzo. The title ‘Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un Eroe’ (‘Funeral March on the Death of a Hero’) is not found among the sketches, which say simply ‘Marcia’. Thus the title seems to have been more an explanation for the extremely sombre quality of the movement than a starting point from which the musical ideas owed. Neverthe less, it must be given due attention, for this is one of very few explicitly ‘characteristic’ movements among Beethoven’s sonatas, and is one of several compositions from this period reecting his fascination with the concept of heroism. The rst idea for the nale, found in the initial synopsis on page 56 of Landsberg 7, shows running semiquavers in   time, but the theme (Example 6.2) is quite different from the one that emerged, and much more overtly homophonic, with mostly plain harmonies for the left hand. Yet it shows that this general character and style formed the starting point for the movement; the notes themselves could be decided later. The sketch on page 159 is the rst showing the actual theme, but it is in rudimentary form, and Beethoven appears here to have been planning a contrasting section in  in the middle of the movement (assuming this section of the sketch is part of the same movement), followed by a coda that veers towards the subdominant as in the nal version. Further coda sketches appear on page 21, while a main draft of the opening paragraph (bars 1–20) appears on page 54. The remaining sketches must have been written on leaves now lost. Thus the sketching process seems coherent, but only if the sketches are read in a completely different order from the one in which they appear. The order in which they were made, with a summary of their contents, seems to be: pages 56 ‒ 7 (synopsis plus Marcia); 182‒3 (theme of Andante, plus discarded minuet and trio); 180‒1 (Scherzo and dif ferent discarded trio); 158‒9 (Scherzo and Trio, plus rudimentary parts of nale), 132‒7 (Marcia); 54 (nale theme); 21 (nale coda). It is one of the clearest examples of Beethoven using pages in a sketchbook in a virtually random order.

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Example 6.2 Finale sketch for Op. 26 (Bsb, Landsberg 7, p. 56).

In many ways Op. 26 is a highly irregular sonata, sharply contrasting with the very regular one that preceded it. None of the movements are in sonata form: the rst is a set of variations; both of the two middle ones are in minuet-and-trio form, while the nale is an abridged form of sonata rondo, lacking a nal ret urn of the main theme.3 Despite its high level of originality, however, the sonata can be more closely related to works by other composers than perhaps any other. The rst movement contains obvious echoes of Mozart’s Sonata in A, K. 331, for both consist of an andante theme with var iations – unusual for a rst movement. The slow movement, like that of the Eroica Symphony written two years later, may be seen as embodying some elements typical of French Revolution military music, with its march and imitation drum-rolls. According to Ries, the movement owed its origin to a funeral march, much praised by Beethoven’s friends, in Ferdinando Paer’s opera Achilles.4 Czerny makes a similar claim (though he names the wrong Paer opera).5 Achilles, however, was not performed until 6 June 1801, which does not accord well with the sketches for Op. 26 in Landsberg 7, since they were most probably made mainly in May, as suggested earlier. If so, the appearance of Paer’s funeral march a few weeks later must have been coincidental, leading Beethoven’s friends to draw false conclusions. Regardless of what prompted the march as a whole, its maggiore section suggests the inuence of Daniel Steibelt (1765‒1823), who had recently encountered Beethoven in a famous piano duel, during which Beethoven extemporized on a motif from an upside-down cello part of a Steibelt work that had just been performed.6 The encounter evidently took place bet ween March and May 1800;7 thus Beethoven was familiar with Steibelt’s style by the time he composed Op. 26. Two features of this style are particularly innovative and noteworthy. One was the use of tremolando chords, which can be seen in several of Steibelt’s works and appear in Beethoven for the rst time in this ‘Marcia funebre’. The other feature was the explicit use of the sustaining pedal. Steibelt was evidently the rst composer to include pedal markings in his scores; and he did so more extensively than anyone else at that time, becoming quite renowned for the effect.8 It is noteworthy that Beethoven’s rst published pedal indications occurred shortly after his encounter with Steibelt, in his First Piano Concerto and his Quintet Op. 16, both of which appeared in March 1801. 9 Op. 26 was the rst piano sonata to include pedal marks (which appear in every movement except the Scherzo), and Beethoven then used them in each of the next


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three sonatas and most of the remainder. At that time there was no standa rd way of indicating pedal, and most newer instruments had more than one pedal, while older Viennese ones generally had knee levers rather than pedals for raising the dampers. Thus simply to mark ‘pedal’ could be ambiguous, and so Beethoven used the terms ‘senza sordino’ (‘without dampers’) and ‘con sordino’ (‘with dampers’) to indicate addition or cancellation of the sustaining pedal. These terms, too, were not always understood at rst. Josephine Deym wrote to her sister Therese on 6 April 1802, shortly after publication of Opp. 26 and 27: ‘Concerning con Sordino I cannot tell you anything yet, as I did not see Beethoven.’10 He continued with the same notation up to the violin sonatas, Op. 30, of spring 1802, but f rom Op. 31 onwards he used the modern indication ‘ped.’, placed between the two staves rather than beneath them, with pedal-off indicated by a large circle between the staves (though in the Prometheus Variations, Op. 35, completed slightly later than Op. 31, and in his Third Piano Concerto, published in 1804, he reverted to ‘senza sordino’).11 Although the precise effect of the sustaining pedal varied considerably between different ty pes of piano, the differences were not so great as to discourage Beethoven from indicating specic places where the pedal should be used, regardless of the type of piano. The nale allegedly owes its existence to another composer, Johann Baptist Cramer (1771‒1858). Czerny explains: ‘This Finale is in that uniform, perpetually moving style, as are many of the Sonatas by Cramer, whose sojourn at Vienna prompted Beethoven to the composition of this work.’12 Cramer was based in London, but he visited Vienna and met Beethoven in 1799. He had a fondness for running semiquaver patterns, as Czerny implies, usually in nales and usually in   time, as in Beethoven’s Op. 26. Czerny goes on to single out Cramer’s set of three sonatas dedicated to Haydn (known as Op. 22 or 23), which were published in Vienna in 1799 and ‘created a great sensation’, and the nales of the rst and third of these both possess these characteristics. So do several of Cramer’s earlier sonata nales, a good example being in his Sonata in D, Op. 6 No. 1 (Example 6.3). 13 The running semiquaver guration,   metre, and mainly two-part texture that is not simply melody plus accompaniment show an obvious afnity with the nale of Beethoven’s Op. 26, in a style that is not characteristic of the nales of Haydn or Mozart. Vestiges of this style appear in several of Beethoven’s later nales (Opp. 27/1, 54, 57 and part of Op. 78). How far Beethoven was consciously or even subconsciously following Cramer’s model is of course open to question, and Czerny’s suggestion that Cramer’s visit ‘prompted’ the composition of this movement seems speculative.

Example 6.3 Cramer, Sonata Op. 6 No. 1, nale.

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Much the most popular movement in the sonata was the ‘Marcia funebre’, which was published separately many times.14 In 1815 Beethoven arranged it for orchestra, transposed to B minor and B major, as part of his incidental music for the play Leonore Prohaska by Friedrich Duncker. The repeats in the maggiore section were omitted, and four bars (68‒72) were removed from the coda, but in other respects little was altered. In the sonata, Beethoven wrote out the minore section in full after the maggiore one – and did so even in the complete draft on pages 135 ‒ 6 of Landsberg 7. The two minore sections, however, exhibit slight differences, even in the autograph score. The notes are the same but there are differences of expression – for example, bar 44 is the same as bar 6 except that the piano mark is on the fourth beat i nstead of the rst, thus at the star t of a new phrase instead of the last chord of the previous one.15 Such inconsistencies may seem puzzling, but the most likely explanation is that Beethoven wanted to generate an element of apparent spontaneity and variety in the performance, rather than a mechanical reprise. There is always more than one way of playing his music, even when the notation is perfectly clear, and he seemingly wanted to exploit two such possibilities here. The orchestral version is equally puzzling, for here Beethoven did not write out a varied reprise but simply put a da capo indication at the end of the maggiore section. In an orchestral context, however, any soloistic spontaneity would sound articial, and it was more appropriate to have a sense of uniformity with essentially the same performance both times. Thus Beethoven shows here that he well understood the difference between the intimacy of a solo performance and the grandeur of a full orchestral march.

Quasi una fantasia The next two sonatas were apparently composed immediately afte r Op. 26, thus around summer 1801, and the three may have originally been conceived as a set, since they follow Beethoven’s usual principles (mentioned in Chapter 2) for such sets, as well as sharing the unusual feature of beginning with a slow movement. They were all published by Giovanni Cappi in Vienna, and were all rst advertised on 3 March 1802.16 They were also reviewed together in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung .17 But all three were published separately, and the second and third in the set were given the next opus number, 27 (Nos. 1 and 2). This immediately marked them off from their predecessor, as did the heading ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’ that graced the title pages of both. Moreover, the three sonatas were dedicated separately to three different people – Prince Karl Lichnowsky, Princess Josephine von Liechtenstein, and Countess Julie Guicciardi respectively. The description quasi una fantasia suggests that the movements are run together, as in a fantasia, rather than separated as in a sonata, and this is mostly true in these sonatas. In No. 1 the rst movement has two slow sections in E at sandwiching an Allegro in C – a structure not used again in a rst movement until the unnished Tenth Symphony. The nal cadence is followed by ‘Attacca subito l’Allegro’, leading to a scherzo-like movement in C minor and trio section


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in A at. This was the rst time that Beethoven had used a different keynote for the scherzo, and it concludes with the instruction ‘Attacca subito l’Adagio’. The Adagio in A at is not fully developed, however, and concludes with ‘Attacca subito l’Allegro vivace’. This movement is interrupted by a reprise of the Adagio, now in E at, and a nal ‘attacca’ before a brief concluding Presto.18 Thus all the movements are run together without any break, and there are numerous changes of metre – seven altogether – with two of them being reversions to a previous tempo. All these features are ty pical of a fantasia, yet the traditional sonata str ucture is still discernible. It is therefore not a fantasia but a sonata that resembles one, and Beethoven’s title is accurate. The following sonata is even closer to the normal structure, but the absence of an initial allegro, and the attacca that joins the rst two movements, were deemed sufcient to engender a reference to the fantasia genre. Op. 27 No. 1 was not Beethoven’s rst attempt at a sonata of this sort, for an earlier one drafted around 1793 was described in Chapter 3. Such an irregular plan seems to have been too outlandish for Beethoven to make public at such an early date, but by 1801 he was clearly attempting to push the boundaries of the sonata genre. How the unusual structure of Op. 27 No. 1 was assembled cannot be fully ascertained, for only a few very early sketches are known – added in odd spaces in Landsberg 7, like those for the previous sonata. The rst sketches intended for the sonata are probably those on page 137, added in score beneath some sketches for the ‘Marcia funebre’ of Op. 26 in a different ink. They show the rst eight and last eight bars of the rst movement, roughly as in the nal version. Overleaf (page 138) are initial ideas for the C minor movement (notated in ) and its trio in A at (in ). These are immediately followed by sketches for the   nale, with the rst eight bars more or less in place but some 22 further bars that deviate almost completely from the nal version. Thus Beethoven has produced on these two pages a synopsis for the sonata, which at this stage consisted of Slow – Scherzo – Finale, very similar to the structure eventually used in the following sonata. Two sections were then inserted – the Allegro section in the middle of the rst movement, and the Adagio (plus its reprise); Beethoven apparently decided that the three movements as they stood initially would be insufciently substantial. Although all later sketches for the sonata are lost, there is an intr iguing earlier sketch on page 103 of Landsberg 7 (Example 6.4(a)). This was intended initially for No. 10 in the Prometheus ballet, and is clearly the basis for the motif in bar 22 of this number (Example 6.4(b)), where it functions as a kind of second subject for the movement. Yet it is strikingly similar to the Allegro theme inserted into the rst movement of Op. 27 No. 1 (Example 6.4(c)). In both the sketch and the Allegro theme, broken-chord guration in  is followed in the next bar by the same descending four-note motif. Thus the sketch acted here as a springboard for material for both ballet and sonata. T here are also some more general or more tenuous connections between Prometheus and the sonata, such as the linking together of adjoining movements, the use of ‘cadenza-like gestures’, and both works concluding in   in E at.19

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(a)

(b)

(c)

Example 6.4 (a) Sketch for Prometheus (Bsb, Landsberg 7, p. 103); (b) Prometheus, No. 10, bar 22; (c) Sonata Op. 27 No. 1, bars 36‒8.

The sonata was published with a dedication to Princess Josephine von Liechtenstein (née Countess Fürstenberg, 1776‒1848). She had subscribed to the publication of Beethoven’s Piano Trios Op. 1 in 1795, and had attended a soirée at which Beethoven performed in 1798, 20 but her connections with him in 1801‒02 are unknown.

The ‘Moonlight’ and its dedication It is difcult to trace the origin and evolution of Beethoven’s next two sonatas because of the unfortunate fate of his next sketchbook, the Sauer Sketchbook. This was systematically dismembered by its one-time owner Ignaz Sauer (1759– 1833), and many pages appear to be missing, while those that survive are scattered in many different libraries. For Op. 27 No. 2, the so-called ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, virtually the only known sketches are for the nale, and there are only ve leaves containing these.21 Since the rst two movements are very short (on paper), their sketches would probably have taken up no more than three or four pages altogether, and so it is hardly surprising that such slender material has not survived. Nevertheless, there are a few preliminary ideas can be related to the nal ver sion of the rst movement. It has been suggested that the musical inspiration behind the movement is the scene at the start of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, where the Commendatore is stabbed by Don Giovanni and dies soon afte r. This passage is accompanied by triplet quavers similar to those in the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, and Beethoven once copied the voice parts from it (with German text), plus the rst bar of the accompanying guration. Edward Dent opines that ‘conscious derivation’ of this gure in the sonata is indicated ‘pretty clearly’ by the existence of Beethoven’s copy.22 The connection is far from certain, for the copy has not been accurately dated, and Beethoven seems to have been more interested in the


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voice parts than the accompaniment, since he included only one bar of the latter. His copy does, however, conrm his admiration for this passage, and he surely recognized it as a forerunner of his ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. Another idea with a more obvious connection to the movement is a short sketch in B minor from 1793 in the Kaf ka Miscellany, folio 139r (Example 6.5).23 Although only ve bars long, its textu re is identical to that of the Adagio of the sonata, with a melodic line on top, triplet gurat ion in the alto, and a bass line in octaves. The similarity to bars 15‒19 of the sonata (Example 6.6) is remarkable, for even most of the actual pitches are the same. Beethoven recognized in 1793 that he had chanced upon an idea worth noting and wrote it down, but did not immediately nd a context for it; instead he stored it in his mind until he came to write the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, where these bars are so thoroughly integrated that there is no hint that they were invented separately from their context. An even earlier idea, dating to around 1790‒91, is found on folio 154v of the Kaf ka Miscellany, among some sketches for a concerto: ‘In this adagio everything must be played piano throughout, only one single forte may appear.’24 One of the striking features about the rst movement of the ‘Moonlight’ is the instruction ‘sempre pp’ at the beginning. There are subsequently no dynamic marks louder than piano at any point, although there are a few crescendos and diminuendos, and the one at bars 25‒7 could be seen as the equivalent of the ‘one single forte’ in the sketch for the abandoned concerto. This is the rst time that Beethoven had made soft dynamics so consistently prevalent within a sonata movement, and once again the idea can be traced to an inspiration from much earlier.

Example 6.5 Isolated sketch in B minor (Lbl, Add. 29801, f. 139r).

Example 6.6 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, bars 15‒19.

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The detailed outline of the movement was presumably worked out in 1801 on leaves now lost, with the texture then lled out in the autograph score. 25 Most of the movement was in place when the autograph was rst written, for there are few changes. The precise layout of the broken chords in bars 32‒7, however, needed much working out in t he autograph, and in bar 26 Beethoven made no fewer than ve attempts, of which the second and fourth are the same. Eventually he wrote out the entire page twice. Among other changes was the harmonic direction in bar 56, which originally turned not towards E major but a cadential 6– 4 chord in C sharp mi nor followed by an augmented sixth, either leading straight to bar 59 (see Example 6.7) or being revised before any fur ther continuation.

Example 6.7 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, early version of bars 55‒7 (BNba, BH 60).

The supposed connection with moonlight is entirely speculative, though it has some justication. The texture of long melodic lines with broken-chord triplets was emblematic of the serenade, thus an evening song, where typically a lover sings with broken-chord accompaniment for plucked string instrument such as guitar or mandolin. 26 The style later inltrated nocturnes (night pieces) by Field and Chopin, and t he scene that Be ethoven copied from Don Giovanni also took place at night. Hence the implication of moonlight is already present in the texture of the movement, and Beethoven would have recognized this even if he was not attempting specically to portray moon light. Czerny readily perceived the movement as nocturnal, describing it as ‘highly poetical, and therefore perfectly comprehen sible to any one … a night scene, in which the voice of a complaining spi rit is heard at a distance’.27 The rst explicit link between the movement and moonlight was made in Ludwig Rellstab’s novel Theodor: Eine musikalische Skizze (1823), where the character Theodor describes t he movement thus: ‘The lake reposes in the faint shimmer of the moon [ Mondenschimmer ]; the waves lap softly on the d ark shore … and an Aeolian harp mysteriously sounds laments of yearning lonely love down from those ruins.’28 The description evidently had some impact, but the idea spread rapidly only after Wilhelm von Lenz had referred obliquely (and inaccurately) to it in 1852, when he claimed that Rellstab had compared the movement ‘with a boat which visits by moonlight the wild landscape of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland’. By 1860 Lenz was able to assert that the sonata was known u nder the title ‘Moonlight Sonata’,29 and the name has become almost


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universal since then. Such poetic interpretations have often been disparaged in the twentieth centur y, but they illuminate how works were often received in Beethoven’s period and immediately afterwards. The element of complaining or lament, which Czerny and Rellstab perceived in the movement and which seems reinforced by the unusually dark key of C sharp minor, is also based in musical tradition. Such images as moonlight and lament were perceived as a means of explaining or illumi nating the music, rather than as a speculative assertion that they formed the composer’s starting point for a descriptive composition. The third movement is headed ‘Presto Agitato’ in the original edition, but Beethoven actually indicated just ‘Presto’ in his autograph, with the word ‘agitato’ placed in bar 1 to indicate t he character of the openi ng theme, which transforms the broken-chord guration of the rst movement into angry ar peggios. This is the only movement for wh ich direct sketches survive, and the rst theme was already essentially in place at an early stage of sketching, on a leaf now in Bonn. 30 Another sketch from this leaf shows a theme marked ‘M.G.’, Beethoven’s normal indication for second subject (see Example 6.8). Here the theme is in octaves in the right hand over Alberti-bass accompaniment, but it anticipates the closing theme of the exposition (bar s 57‒64) rather than the theme at bar 21 that would normally be considered the sec ond subject. Thus at this stage a rather shorter exposition seems to have been envisaged, with the main second subject coming only near the end of it. The coda of the movement took some time to establish, and at one stage Beethoven considered reintroducing triplet guration, recalling the rst movement,31 but the details are sparse.

Example 6.8 Sketch for Op. 27 No. 2.III (BNba, HCB Mh 66, f. 1r) .

When the sonata was published in March 1802 it bore a dedication to ‘Damigella Contessa Giulietta Guicciardi’. Much has been made of this, for in a letter dated 16 November 1801 Beethoven mentioned how his spirits had recently been cheered by ‘a dear enchanting girl who loves me and whom I love’.32 This girl was evidently Countess Guicciardi, and it has sometimes been assumed that the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata was wr itten specially for her. There is no evidence for this hypothesis, and in fact the chronology contradicts it, for the sonat a was probably completed by September 1801, before Beethoven

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had fallen in love with her. Recent investigations by Rita Steblin have also destroyed several other myt hs about her. She was known as Julie, not Giulietta (which was never used as her name except on the title page of the sonata, where everything was printed in Italian), and she was two years older than previously thought – bor n in 1782, not 1784. 33 She married Count Wenzel Gallenberg on 3 November 1803, and Beethoven’s claim later that she loved him (Beethoven) more than she ever loved her husband seems high ly dubious, since Steblin shows that she was deeply in love with Gallenberg and eager to marry him. Was the dedication an indication of Beethoven’s love? Evidently not. Much can be deduced from a letter that he w rote to Julie’s mother Susanna in Janua ry 1802, and from some recollections of Julie herself and her granddaughter Henrietta Mengersen. Beethoven gave Julie frequent piano lessons during the winter of 1801‒02, but in h is letter he indicates that he absolutely refused any payment for them, saying that this was how he chose to spend his spare time. 34 Henrietta believed Julie was only about 14 at the time of the lessons, but in other respects her recollections concur with the letter – which suggests they are mostly reliable. Instead of payment Julie’s mother sent Beethoven a pres ent, which made him so angr y that he very nearly refused t hat too. Beethoven does not describe the gift beyond saying that it was made by her, but according to Henrietta the family recalled that it was a dozen hand-crafted shirts. 35 And although he accepted the gift, his letter indicates that he remained seriously upset that he should be put in debt to the Guicciardis. He then adds: ‘But I shall plan my revenge; this shall consist of my thinking of nothing else than of how to put you so much in my debt, yes to such a high degree, that it surely won’t occur to you to think how it would even be possible to deal with me like this again.’36 Beethoven’s response was not to offer to marry her. In fact, according to Henrietta, Julie never even realized his infatuation for her at the time.37 He had, however, given her one of his latest compositions, the Rondo in G, Op. 51 No. 2. He now asked for it back, making the excuse (transparent as it seems now) that he needed to dedicate something to Countess Henriette Lichnowsky, sister of Beethoven’s patron Prince Lichnowsky. For his ‘revenge’ on the family he had decided to dedicate something much more important to Julie – the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata – realizing that it was likely to become extremely popular. Right from the outset, and probably even before its publication in March 1802, the sonata was indeed recognized as an exceptional work, even by Beethoven’s standards. The review of the group of three sonatas (Opp. 26 and 27) in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung was prophetic in asserting that they would ‘hardly ever grow old’, while the third (Op. 27 No. 2) ‘can certainly never grow old’. 38 Beethoven became almost irritated by its popularity, according to Czerny: ‘People are always talk ing about the C-sharp Minor Sonata. Really, I have written better things.’39 As the sonata g rew in popularity, the name Guicciardi was circulated more and more widely, eventually spreading across the world. It was


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the perfect way for Beethoven to full his aim of putting the Guicciardis in his debt ‘to such a high degree’; and after his angry letter, they would not have dared offer him payment for the dedication, as was often done. The Rondo in G, meanwhile, was not published until fully six months after the sonata, thus giving the lie to his excuse that he needed something right away for Countess Lichnowsky.

Return to convention: The ‘Pastoral’ Sonata After three irregular sonatas, Beethoven decided to return to a conventional four-movement pattern (fast – slow – scherzo/minuet – fast) in his next sonata, Op. 28, and surprisingly this is his last piano sonata with this str ucture. It seems highly probable that the work was begun im mediately after Op. 27, perhaps with some overlap, although this cannot be proved. It was evidently completed by 5 October, for on that day he received 135 orins for ‘a grand sonata for the piano-forte’ from the newly established publishers the Kunst- und IndustrieComptoir (also known as the Bureau d’Arts et d’Industrie). 40 It has sometimes been nicknamed the ‘Pastoral’ Sonata on account of certain pastoral features, such as drone basses and gentle, stepwise melodic lines, but these features are not as pervasive as in a truly characteristic work like the Pastoral Symphony. The autograph score is dated 1801, although the work did not appear in print until the following August (advertised in the Wiener Zeitung of 14 August 1802). 41 Its dedicatee was Baron Joseph von Sonnenfels (c. 1733‒1817), a professor of political science and a supporter of Enlightenment ideals, as well as a relative of Johann Melchior von Birkenstock, whose daughter Antonie Brentano was later a friend of Beethoven.42 As with the dedicatee of Op. 27 No. 1, Princess Liechtenstein, his connection with Beethoven at the time of the dedication is unknown. Although much of the Sauer Sketchbook is lost, seven leaves survive containing sketches for this sonata, covering all four movements in considerable detail, and they may well represent about half of all the sketching for the work.43 They include several extended drafts that often coincide almost exactly with the nal version for many bars, but certain other passages are conspicuously absent and must have been drafted on lost leaves. Passages not found among the surviving sketches (except perhaps in very rudimentary form) include the following:

• • • •

First movement: end of exposition and rst part of development (bars 113‒204); end of recapitulation and coda (bars 326‒461). Second movement: opening two sections (bars 1–38). Third movement: nal version of bars 33‒44 (after the rst double bar). Fourth movement: all three episodes (there are early ideas for the rst episode); nal version of coda.

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The opening of the sonata is striking in beginning with a bass note that then supports a tonic chord with attened seventh. A similar chord had been used at the start of his recently completed First Symphony and the Prometheus Overture, and there is an even earlier example of this tactic in a sonata sketch from c. 1792 (see Example 2.7 on p. 24). One might therefore have expected Beethoven to begin his new sonata by picking up this idea and worki ng on it, but instead he rst drafted a very different opening (Example 6.9). As so often, he rst decided on the key, writing a sketch in D major at the top of a page that was to be used as something of a rag-bag for diverse ideas (such pages occasionally occur elsewhere among his sketchbooks). The fact that the sketch is headed ‘Sonata’ and shows both key signature and time signature is a clear indication that this is an initial idea for a new work. There is little here that can be connected with the nal version. One might note the in itial bass D, which is then used as a pedal-point; the appearance of an A as the highest note in the rst phrase; and the descending triadic motif that was eventually used in the third movement. But the thematic material is quite different, and even the time signature has not been xed.

Example 6.9 Unused sketch for Sonata in D (BNba, HCB Mh 68).

A second subject is also drafted, labelled with Beethoven’s characteristic ‘M.g.’, beginning with smooth melodic contours similar to those in the nal version (bar 90 et seq.), but again the details are quite different. After this, however, Beethoven quickly changed to the  metre of the nal version, and the different sections of the movement gradually evolved. The nal draft for bars 1–112 is close to the nal version, though it has four extra bars after bar 34, while bars 99‒104 have a different melodic line. The draft for the retran sition (from bar 205 to 268) displays considerable differences in texture and a much more compressed version, some 18 bars shorter than in the nal version. Beethoven evidently concluded that the F pedal-point needed to be unusually prolonged to create the best effect, and it eventually occupied a remarkable 38 bars (219‒56). Once the rst movement was nearly completed, Beethoven noted a kind of synopsis for the rest of the sonata, writing the themes of the second and fourth movements together on the same staves 44 in what appears to have been a continuous train of thought. As so often happens, the minuet or scherzo movement seems


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to have been added after the other movements were conceptually in place, and in fact on this page Beethoven wrote down only a possible theme for the trio sect ion (a theme that he did not eventually use), with no indication of the scherzo. It ap pears that in most cases the character of the slow movement and nale needed to be xed before the minuet or scherzo, which could be added (or even removed) at a later stage, almost as an optional extra – perhaps because minuets varied relatively little in comparison. In the nale, Beethoven decided at an early stage that the nal reprise of the main theme would be transformed into a virtuosic coda, with rapid semiquaver guration. He made several attempts at working out the details, one of which is marked ‘Presto’. In the autograph, however, this was tempered slightly to ‘piu allegro quasi presto’, perhaps in recognition of the technical difculties, which are considerably greater than those in the rest of the sonata. Beethoven returned to Op. 28 many years later, inserting some additional performance details. The changes are not act ual revisions of the text but am plications of it, and appear in Volume 2 of a piano method entitled Wiener Pianoforte-Schule (Viennese Piano School ) published by Friedrich Starke in Vienna in 1820.45 Starke was at that time a close friend of Beethoven, and in Volume 3 of his publication are ve bagatelles by Beethoven (Op. 119 Nos. 7–11) composed at Starke’s request. Volume 2 includes a truncated version of the slow movement of Op. 28 (bars 1–22 and 69 to the end) plus the whole of the nale, and both movements are supplied with some additional ngering, together with the statement ‘Die Applicatur von ihm selbst bezeichnet’ (‘The ngering indicated by him himself’), referring to Beethoven. The added n gering is perhaps less interesting than a soft-pedal marking for bars 83‒8 of the slow movement, an indication that must also derive from Beethoven. Although una corda was available on many pianos in 1800, it was not normally notated at that time. Beethoven’s rst use of it in a sonata was not until Op. 101 of 1816, but by 1820 the indication was becoming quite common, and so he added it retrospect ively for this one passage in Op. 28 – the only time he made such a change to an early sonata long after publication. It is also noteworthy that he was prepared to tolerate not just individual movements but even incomplete movements being separated from the complete work. He evidently did not regard the integr ity of the work as being irrepa rably damaged by such abridgements.

Autograph scores The three piano sonatas Opp. 26, 27 No. 2 and 28 are the rst for which Beethoven’s autograph scores survive, giving added scope for investigating the creation of each work. These autographs, like those for his other works, have many features in common. Although one might expect the details of a work to have been established in the sketchbooks, there are invariably alterations to the text in the autograph – occasionally such substantial ones that a whole page needed replacing, as noted already for the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. The rst page of each autograph

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usually has few if any changes. In Op. 28, for example, the only revision on the rst page is in bar 10, where the last two left-hand notes were originally written an octave lower. Further on, however, changes tend to be more frequent, with few pages escaping entirely. It is not usually possible to see in what order the symbols in each bar were written, but clues can be derived from deleted bar s, which show that Beethoven generally wrote the notes rst, with dynamics and articulation added only later. In the nale of Op. 28 the autograph contains a page with an early ver sion of bars 29‒46, and there is not a single dynamic or articulation mark on the whole page. Beethoven adopted a similar approach to the left-hand line, generally writing several bars for the right hand before returning to ll in the left. His procedure is well illustrated on the rst page of the autograph of Op. 26. In the rst system he wrote out both hands, whereas in the second system only the right hand was written, with no dynamics or articulation in either system. Both systems were then deleted when he decided to reserve t his page for the title and begin on the reverse. Thus he evidently liked to write the notes out for each phrase as a conti nuous ow, as close as possible to real performance time; the left hand would be added shortly afterwards, but the dynamics and articulation were not added until much later – perhaps not until after the whole movement was written out. Inserting them as he went along would have impaired the ow. The autograph of Op. 26 survives complete, 46 but the rst and last pages of the ‘Moonlight’, containing bars 1–13 of the rst movement and the last three bars of the last, became detached and are lost. Also lost is one leaf from the autograph of Op. 28, containing bars 178‒222 of the rst movement (the beginning of the retransition).47 This was a section that had posed difculties in the sketches, as noted above, and the latest sketch draft, which begins at bar 205, does not coincide with the nal version. It appears that Beethoven wrote out these bars in the autograph long before he had decided on all the details; he therefore had to revise the passage so extensively that a fresh leaf was required in the autograph, and both the original and its replacement have gone missing, although a deleted early version of bars 216‒22 survives on the next page. In some other works, discarded pages from autograph scores still survive, and it becomes arguable whether to describe these as sketches or not. 48 Like the deleted early version, however, they fullled for Beethoven a different fu nction from his true sketches that were always intended as preliminary, since they were at one stage, however briey, regarded as the ofcial text. Alterations in the autograph scores can be divided into several types. Some are the result of carelessness or haste, where Beethoven wrote down something he did not actually intend, as in bar 70 of the second movement of Op. 28. Here he wrote the right-hand part of bar 56 (which is nearly the same) and that of bars 71‒2 before realizing his error and writing the correct version, which had already been drafted in the sketchbook. Another type involving no conceptual change occurred where he amended the notation for greater clarity. In bar 19 of the nale of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, for example, both As in the third group of


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semiquavers are preceded by a sharp, but the second sharp is redundant and has been deleted. In the rst movement of Op. 26, bars 119 and 121 were written out a second time with the stem directions of the alto reversed to show the part-writing more clearly.49 Some revisions were made immediately. Evidence for these is where the notation of the cancelled version is incomplete or where the cancellation is indicated through smudging of ink that was still wet. Others may have been made a few hours or even a few weeks later. A striking example occurs at the end of the exposition in Op. 28, where there was originally no rst-time bar and the music moved straight from bar 162 to the repeat of bar 1, leaving an uncomfortable unresolved G, as in Example 6.10. To add the resolution on F , Beethoven had to delete the original repeat mark at the end of bar 162, squeeze in an extra rsttime bar (163a) and add an F crotchet (in the third bar of Example 6.10) – luckily there was space at the end of the stave. He also had to inser t an initial repeat sign after bar 1. With hindsight this F resolution may seem essential, but the idea of a hanging G is actually integral to the movement, for just such a note occurs at the end of the development section. In fact that G is arguably not fully resolved until the last chord of the nale.

Example 6.10 Sonata Op. 28, early version of bars 161‒2 and repeat of 1–2.

In a few cases a direct match can be made between the nal draft in the sketches and an early version in the autograph. A good example occurs in the Trio of Op. 28, where the second half (bars 79‒94) remains in B minor in the sketches and also in the rst version in the autograph. In this version, 79‒86 were followed by a repeat sign, but Beethoven then substituted the nal version, where these eight bars are given a varied repeat instead (as bars 87–94), and the rst four bars of each statement are in D major. The end of the Scherzo was also altered, and at least three di fferent versions can be made out in the autograph, none of which exactly matches the sketches. Both these late revisions have a considerable impact on the movement as a whole, and they demonstrate that, even when most of the work was rmly in place and not in need of revision, Beethoven sometimes had important new ideas that contribute to its success. Another interesting but not immediate revision occurs in bars 38‒40 of the  nale of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. Bar 39 was originally missing and was squeezed in later, but at this stage the left-hand chords fell on accented beats or hal f-beats

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(Example 6.11), as in a similar passage four bars earlier. When Beethoven came to write the corresponding bars in the recapitulation (bars 133‒4) he initially adopted the same pattern of accented chords (though omitting the extra bar). After writing the rst chord of bar 134, however, he altered this and the previ ous bar, making every chord unaccented. This pattern was then continued in the last three chords of bar 134, which were written down after this change of plan. Thus he changed his mind between writing the rst and second left-hand chords of bar 134. The alteration was then incorporated into the exposition (Example 6.12). The earlier version of the exposition must therefore have been left in place until Beethoven reached the corresponding passage in the recapitulation. The change is of course a stri king improvement in terms of increased energy and ner vous tension. At the same time the crescendo was moved to its present position in the exposition, but it was left in its original place in the recapitulation, thus corresponding to that in Example 6.11, three beats earlier than in the exposition.

Example 6.11 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2.III, early version of bars 38‒9.

Example 6.12 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2.III, nal version of bars 38‒ 9.

Discrepancies such as these between parallel passages can also be found in the earlier sonatas, but it is only when autographs survive that we can be sure that these are not just printers’ errors. The autographs conrm that Beethoven himself was responsible for many such ‘random minor variants’, as they might be called, and that they are very common. Often they seem so arbitrary that it is hard to make sense of them. In the nale of Op. 26, for example, the slur in the left hand crosses the barline at the cadence on the dominant in bars 5–6, but in the parallel one on the tonic in bars 19‒20 it stops before the barline


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(see Example 6.13 (a) and (b)). When the rondo theme returns, the position is reversed, with the rst slur stopping short and the second crossing the barline (bars 57‒8 and 71‒2). Then at the third appearance (bars 105‒6 and 119‒20) the slurs are as in the rst appearance. No clear pattern emerges, and some editors have taken great pains to eliminate such irregularities by standardizing parallel passages – the general editorial preference in this case is to make all six slurs stop before the barline. Yet there seems no need for this standardization. Beethoven was evidently not troubled by these random minor variants, and even if he did not consciously create them for the sake of variety, he allowed them to occur and tolerated them. It is better, therefore, to let them stand as they are. He was well aware of the traditional view that art should imitate nature; and in nature two things that seem at rst to be identical will always possess minor differences. Thus such slight inconsistencies in Beethoven’s music are in fact a reection of nature. They could occur spontaneously, when he gave them insufcient attention while composing and ignored those that occurred. Alternatively, some of them were surely created deliberately. (a)

(b)

Example 6.13 Sonata Op. 26.IV: (a) bars 5–6; (b) bars 19‒20.

Another aspect of the autograph scores is that they enable us to appreciate in what ways the original editions changed the music texts. Some editions were engraved directly from the autograph while with others there was an intermediate copy, and it is not always possible to be certain either way. What does emerge is that in most cases, including these three autographs, the printed ed itions were carefully proofread and contain few major errors. On the other hand there are always some minor ones, and it appears that Beethoven ignored these, since correction of them could take up an inordinate amount of time and expense. They often involve omissions (mostly of slurs or staccatos), slightly wrong alignment of dynamics, or minor details such as the wrong type of grace-note. Occasionally there is a wrong note: in the rst movement of Op. 26, for example, there are two Cs for the left hand at the beginning of bar 63, but the original edition adds a quaver E@ too, since the autograph was somewhat unclear at this point. Conversely, minor errors in the autograph itself are often corrected in the printed edition.

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In bar 110 of the same movement, the autograph omits two slurs and a natural sign that should clearly be present, and these have been included in t he original edition. Occasionally it is impossible to be certain whether changes are corrections, late revisions or printing errors, and both versions may be plausible. There are also cases where an obvious error in the autograph remained uncorrected. A classic case is in bar 20 of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, where Beethoven wrote a low D below the upper E in the left hand. This not only creates an absurd discord but introduces a note that was not even available on pianos of the day. He had simply miscounted the leger lines, and intended an E . A particularly common error in Beethoven’s autographs is the omission of accidentals. Sometimes he noticed, and added them later in a different ink. Sometimes they were spotted in time to be inserted in the printed edition. And sometimes they remained missing. He seems to have been particularly prone to forgetting to insert a natural to cancel the last accidental in a key signature. In the rst movement of the ‘Moon light’ Sonata, for instance, the autograph omits a natural in bar 15 and again in bar 21 (both are D$). The latter was added in the printed edition, but the former remained missing. A similar situation occurs in the second movement, where a missing at for a C in bar 19 was added in the edition, but one in bar 51 was not. Such inaccuracy provides a useful reminder that the autograph scores are not always wholly reliable. The autograph scores therefore reveal Beethoven’s acute attention to detail, and his propensity for making late revisions. But conversely they also reveal occasional inattention and oversight, as well as leaving scope for even later revisions that might be included in the printed edition. Thus in some places they do not provide the most accurate or nal version of the sonata. Sometimes it is even unclear whether or not a surprising reading was intended, and modern editors and performers need to take into account all evidence – musical, stylistic, and textual – before reaching a decision that may reect merely a balance of proba bilities rather than certainty.

Notes 1 Bsb, Landsberg 7; transcribed in K.L. Mikulicz, ed., Ein Notier ungsbuch von Beethoven aus dem Besitz der Pre ussischer Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1927). 2 TF, p. 272. 3 See Donald Francis Tovey, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, rev. and ed. Barry Cooper (London: ABRSM, 1998), pp. 94–5, for a detailed analysis of the form. 4 WR, p. 70. 5 KC, vol. 1, p. 216. 6 WR, pp. 70‒1. 7 William Meredith, ‘The Westerby-Meredith Hypothesis: The History of the Eroica Variations and Daniel Steibelt’s Fortepiano Quintet, Opus 28 No. 2’, The Beethoven Journal , 27/1 (2012), 26‒44. 8 Meredith, ‘Westerby-Meredith’, p. 39. See also David Rowland, ‘Early Pianoforte Peda lling: The Evidence of the Earliest Printed Markings’, Early Music, 11 (1983), 5–17. Both articles note that use of pedal by performers was apparently quite rare in the 1790s.


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9 LvBWV, pp. 81 and 87. The discussion of Beethoven’s earliest pedalling in his scores, in William S. Newman, Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way (New York: Norton, 1988), p. 233, is chronologically inaccurate. The autograph of the concerto, a revised version of the work, written out in 1800, includes pedal indications – perhaps Beethoven’s rst; the autograph of the quintet is lost. 10 KC, vol. 1, p. 145. 11 For more details on Beethoven’s use of this notation, see Richard K ramer, ‘On the Dat ing of Two Aspects in Beethoven’s Notation for Piano’, in Beiträge ’ 76‒78: Beethoven Kolloquium 1977 Dokumentation und Aufführungspraxis, ed. Rudolf Klein (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1978), pp. 160‒73. 12 Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, ed. Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1970), p. 48/58. Elsewhere Czerny credits both Cramer and Clementi with creating this style: see KC, vol. 1, p. 222. 13 For Cramer’s nales, see Thomas B. Milligan, A Thematic Catalogue of the Works of Johann Baptist Cramer (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992). 14 LvBWV, pp. 152‒3. 15 There are four signicant changes of expression during the reprise; these are listed in Barry Cooper, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas (3 vols, London: ABRSM, 2007), Commentaries, vol. 2, p. 14. 16 LvBWV, pp. 151‒63. 17 AMZ, 4 (1802), cols 650‒3. 18 Some of the attacca instructions are abbreviated in the original edition. 19 See Timothy Jones, Beethoven: The ‘Moonlight’ and Other Sonatas, Op. 27 and Op. 31 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 18‒19. 20 KC, vol. 2, p. 1115; the subscription list for Op. 1 is reproduced in H. C. Robbins Landon, Beethoven: A Documentary Study (London: Thames & Hudson, 1970), pp. 64‒5. 21 See JTW, p. 120. The sketches are reproduced and transcribed in Michael Ladenburger, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Klaviersonate in cis-Moll op. 27 Nr. 2 ‘Mondschein-Sonate’ (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2003). 22 Edward Dent, Mozart’s Operas: A Critical Study, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 157. A facsimile of Beethoven’s copy, which is in private hands, is provided opposite p. 156 of Dent’s book. 23 Joseph Kerman, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Autograph Miscellany from 1786 to 1799, 2 vols, (London: British Museum, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 255–6; dating is from Douglas Johnson, Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the ‘Fischhof ’ Miscellany: Berlin Autograph 28, 2 vols (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1980), vol. 1, p. 87. 24 ‘in diesem adagio muss alles durchaus piano gespielt werden, nur ein einziges forte darf vorkommen’. See Kerman, ed., Miscellany, vol. 2, p. 128. 25 The autograph is in BNba, BH 60. 26 See Sarah Waltz, ‘In Defense of Moonlight’, Beethoven Forum, 14/1 (Spring 2007), 1–43, at 5– 6. This ar ticle includes several examples of nocturnal songs with a similar texture, by Schubert and others, including one by Zumsteeg (1798) that actually includes the word ‘Mondschein’ (‘Moonlight’) in the text. 27 Czerny, On the Proper Performance, p. 39/49. 28 Waltz, ‘Moonlight’, p. 33. 29 Both Lenz citations taken from Michael Ladenburger and Friderike Grigat, Beethovens ‘Mondschein- Sonate’: Original und romantische Verklärung (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2003), p. 22. 30 BNba, HCB Mh 66. 31 See Jones, Moonlight , pp. 27‒8. 32 BB-70; A-54. 33 See Rita Steblin, ‘“A dear, enchanting girl who loves me and whom I love”: New Facts about Beethoven’s Beloved Pupil Julie Guicciardi’, Bonner Beethoven- Studien, 8 (2009), 89‒152.

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34 The letter (BB-77) is not in Emily Anderson, trans. and ed., The Letters of Beethoven, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1961), but was published with translation and commentary in Alan Tyson, ‘Beethoven to the Countess Susanna Guicciardi: A New Letter’, in Beethoven Studies [vol. 1], ed. Alan Tyson (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 1–17. Henrietta’s recollections are in KC, vol. 1, p. 414. 35 Neither Tyson nor Brandenburg identies this gift: Tyson (‘New Letter’, p. 17) suggests some linen; Brandenburg (BB-77, note 3) proposes a hand-made purse containing money. 36 BB-77. 37 KC, vol. 1, p. 414. 38 AMZ, 4 (June 1802), col. 651. 39 Czerny, On the Proper Performance, p. 7. 40 LvBWV, p. 166. 41 See Martha Frohlich, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 28: Facsimile of the Autograph, the Sketches, and the First Edition with Transcription and Commentary (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1996). The autograph is in BNba, BH 61. 42 Peter Clive, Beethoven and His World: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 341. 43 The leaves are reproduced in facsimile and transcription in Frohlich, ed., Op. 28, pp. 58‒85. 44 BNba, HCB BSk 10/58. 45 Friedrich Starke, ed., Wiener Pianoforte-Schule , 3 vols (Vienna: Author, D. Sprenger and J. Bermann, 1820–21), vol. 2, pp. 56‒63. 46 Kj, Grasnick 12. 47 BNba, BH 61. 48 See Lewis Lockwood, ‘On Beethoven’s Sketches and Autographs: Some Problems of Denition and Interpretation’, Acta Musicologica, 42 (1970), 32‒47. 49 See Barry Cooper, ‘The Evolution of the First Movement of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata’, Music & Letters, 58 (1977), 187n.

7

A ‘new path’?

Op. 31 No. 1 in G: Allegro vivace. Adagio grazioso. Rondo: Allegretto. Op. 31 No. 2 in D minor: Largo [alternating with:] Allegro. Adagio. Allegretto. Op. 31 No. 3 in E at: Allegro. Scherzo: Allegretto vivace. Menuetto: Moderato e grazioso. Presto con molto fuoco.

Fresh commissions Having composed four piano sonatas during the summer months of 1801 – roughly one a month, around May to September – Beethoven took a break from the genre to compose other works, such as the String Quintet Op. 29, the G major Violin Romance Op. 40, and some exercises in vocal writing under Salieri’s guidance. It was not long, however, before he was being pressed for yet another piano sonata. On 21 November 1801 Franz Hoffmeister’s partner Ambrosius Kühnel noted that Hoffmeister was passing on such a request from a countess, and inviting Beethoven to state his price.1 The request came from Countess Auguste Charlotte von Kielmansegge, who was living in Dessau2 and whose name rarely appears in the Beethoven literature. She wanted a particular sort of characteristic sonata, and specied certain ideas or even a programme for it, though the details are unclear. Beethoven initially gave a verbal response to Hoffmeister’s agent in Vienna, indicating that he was happy to compose the sonata but not according to the ‘caprice’ specied. He then wrote a letter but promptly mislaid it, and had to be pestered several times before he nally wrote another one, dated 8 April 1802.3 Here he indicated that the subject matter might have been suitable ‘at the time of revolution fever’ but not now that Napoleon Bonaparte had ‘concluded his concordat with the Pope’.4 Yet he agreed to compose the sonata and ‘in aesthetic terms to follow in general her plan, but not adopting the keys’ that she had proposed. The price would be around 50 ducats, and the countess could then have exclusive use of the sonata for a whole year before Beethoven published it. The price was considerably more than the 20 ducats that Hoffmeister had paid for Op. 22, perhaps to take into account the countess’s unusual specications, but chiey because Beethoven was tending to raise his prices at that time, in view of the great demand for his works. On 22 April his brother Carl specied 50 ducats for a grand sonata or 130 ducats for a set of three sonatas, insisting in a later letter that Beethoven did not consider such a price excessive. 5 Countess Kielmansegge, however, considered the price far too high, and withdrew her request.6

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A ‘new path’?

There is no sign that Beethoven made any effort to begin composing a piano sonata for Kielmansegge, and instead he composed three violin sonatas (Op. 30) early in 1802. These were offered to Breitkopf & Härtel in a letter of 22 April 1802,7 and because the words ‘and violin’ are unclear in the letter, it was long assumed that the letter referred to his next piano sonatas, which had not actually been started. Before long, however, he did receive a request for three piano sonatas, which eventually became Op. 31. The request came from Hans Georg Nägeli, a music publisher in Zurich, who was issuing a series entitled Répertoire des clavecinistes and wanted a contribution from Beethoven. Nägeli indicated later, in a statement dated May 1803, that he sought piano works ‘in the grand style, of great scope, with diverse differences from the usual sonata genre’ and exhibiting ‘thoroughness of detail, richness, fulness of texture’. 8 Beethoven was an obvious target for such a commission. Nägeli’s correspondence with him about the commission is lost, but its essence can be deduced from a letter from Nägeli to Johann Jakob Horner.9 From this letter, Sieghard Brandenburg has convincingly estimated that Nägeli’s initial request was sent about 18 May 1802 and reached Beethoven about 3 June.10 Beethoven’s reply indicated a price of 100 ducats – a considerable reduction from the 130 ducats that his brother Carl had proposed for three sonatas in April. Nägeli misread the currency, however, and sent only 100 orins (worth about 2/9 of a ducat). By 18 July he had received clarication from Carl, and although he initially balked at the price he accepted it and resolved to send the balance of the fee (presumably 350 orins) that day, hoping that Beethoven might agree to include a fourth sonata for such a high price. Yet Beethoven knew the price of 100 ducats for three sonatas was similar to the rate received for the Op. 28 sonata (135 orins or 30 ducats), and was already reduced from the 130 ducats that he had earlier considered reasonable for three; thus he was unwilling to write an additional one. If Beethoven started working on the sonatas soon af ter receiving Nägeli’s initial commission, it could have been as early as June. More likely, however, he began once he had received 100 orins from Nägeli or possibly even waited until receiving the full 100 ducats around the beginning of August. The evidence in the sketchbooks makes the earlier date, around the beginning of July, more prob able. Nägeli was impatient to receive the sonatas, expecting all th ree to ar rive by 17 August and probably not realizing that they were nowhere near ready when Beethoven rst promised them. The Kessler Sketchbook,11 the next one after the Sauer, shows that Beethoven responded quickly, interrupting work on two new and highly original sets of piano variations (Op. 34 in F and Op. 35 on a theme from his Prometheus ballet) to compose the rst two sonatas. The th ird one was sketched in the next sketchbook, the Wielhorsky,12 after which he returned to the two sets of variations. He offered both sets to Breitkopf & Härtel in a letter (from Carl) dated 18 October 1802, and provided a description that indicates they were more or less fully sketched by that time. Thus the resumption of work on the variations cannot have been later than about the begin ning of that month, which means that the three sonatas were more or less complete by the beginning of October. In a later letter, dated 23 November 1802, Carl indicated that Beethoven usually took ve or six weeks to compose a sonata.13 This implies that Beethoven

A ‘new path’?

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would have taken about four months to compose the three sonatas of Op. 31. One can therefore deduce that the sonatas were probably begun in June or July, were more or less nished by the beginning of October, and were polished up in the autograph scores in the following month or two. During most of this period Beethoven was staying at Heiligenstadt, a quiet vil lage just outside Vienna, in an attempt to improve his worsening hearing. It was here that he wrote his famous Heiligenstadt Testament on 6 October, with a supplement on 10 October just before his return to Vienna, lamenting his misfortune and resolving to face the prospect of lasting deafness with steadfastness and determination. To suggest that any of these thoughts permeated the sonatas Op. 31, however, would be pure speculation, and the sketches show no sign of any such connection.

Sketches for Op. 31 The rst sketches for Op. 31 occur near the end of the Kessler Sketchbook, on the last 11 pages (folios 91v–96v). At the tops of three pages (91v, 92r, 93r) there is unrelated material that was probably entered at an earlier date, but the remai ning sketches on these 11 pages appear to be intended for the sonatas. Because Beethoven was so near the end of the book, however, he tended to run out of space and double back into any convenient staves that were still empty. Thus the chronology of the material on these pages is complex and cannot be conrmed. The pages are dominated by sketches for the rst two movements of Op. 31 No. 1 in G, covering more or less the entire two movements, though not quite in their nal form. There are also some brief ideas for the nale and for the later two sonatas in the set, as well as some preliminary ideas in various keys on folios 89v‒90r that may have been conceived as possible motifs for the set. The rst idea written down that belongs recognizably to Op. 31 was probably the opening theme of the rst movement of No. 1 (folio 92r, stave 2), and it already shows the theme almost in its nal form, with the syncopated opening that is so striking a feature of this movement. This syncopation, however, actually takes up an idea already sketched a few pages earlier in string-quartet score on four staves. This ve-bar idea, shown in short score in Example 7.1, reveals that the opening of Op. 31 No. 1 was not conceived as a specically pianistic effect. It was the ‘staggered’ sound of non-synchronized chords that Beethoven was trying to explore, rst for strings and then for piano. He used a similar effect in the accompaniment to No. 3 of his oratorio Christus am Oelberge only a few months later, for expressive purposes.

Example 7.1 Quartet sketch preceding Op. 31 (Wgm, A 34, f. 88r) .

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Immediately beneath the rst-movement theme on folio 92r is a four-bar theme in B major that was almost certainly intended as a possible theme for the slow movement. The key is interesting in view of its later use in the second subject of the rst movement. On the opposite page (folio 91v) Beethoven sketched brief ideas for the main cornerstones of the movement: the second subject (but just in B minor), the link between end of exposition and start of development, the link between end of development and start of recapitulation, the end of the coda, and the arpeggio gure that recurs several times in the nished movement. Thus the sketches on this page-opening can be interpreted as the rst main stage in the composition of the sonata, with a group of ideas for the rst movement and a possible idea for the sec ond, as Beethoven attempted to establish some kind of overview. The main missing feature at this stage was the nale, but on the next page-opening he sketched a second synopsis, this time showing the   theme of the actual second movement in C, some further cornerstones for this movement, and a ‘polonai[se]’ that was surely envisaged as a possible nale. Although sketches for this polonaise continue on the opposite page (folio 93r), Beethoven soon replaced it with the theme of what was to become the actual nale, which appears on the same page. The main features of the sonata were now in place and Beethoven could set to work in detail on the rst movement. He may have started doing so already, for there is a continuity draft of the whole exposition on folios 91v–92r, beneath the concepts for the various cornerstones. At this stage the opening was much more compressed than later, with the cadence in D arriving at bar 7 instead of bar 11, but most of the other main features were already present, including the sudden shift to F major and the use of B minor as a secondary key area. What is most striking is the complete absence of B major, except for a brief four-bar passage during the second theme-group; and even this much disappeared in later sketches. A second continuity draft for the exposition appears on folio 93v, along with a few variants, and this links to a draft for the development section on the opposite page, followed by one for the recapitulation and coda on the page after that. Thus there is a composite draft for virtually the entire movement on these pages. In the exposition the second subject is heard rst in the right hand and then in the left, but both ti mes in B minor, whereas in the nal version the right-hand statement is in B major. In the recapitulation draft the theme appear s in E minor in the right hand, then G major in the left, but Beethoven expanded this in the nal version to E major (right hand), E minor (left), G major (right) and G major (left). This was really the only viable way of preserving both the major–minor contrast on the same keynote and also the change of keynote from E to G. A brief excursion to G minor in the nal version (bars 168–70) preserves the modal con trast of the exposition, and again is not present in the dr aft, which remains r mly in G major at that point. Thus it was only at a very late stage that Beethoven introduced extensive use of B major and E major in these passages, together with frequent alternations of mode. The absence of B major in the draft, however, does not hide the fact that, right from the outset, Beethoven planned an unusual tonal scheme for the exposition. His extensive use of keys other than dominant or relative major for the main

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second subject is arguably his most signicant innovation in sonata form, and his rst example had only just been composed – his String Quintet in C, Op. 29, which uses A major and minor for the secondary key area. There the irregularity had to be explained or ‘answered’ by an A major insertion during the nale; but in Op. 31 No. 1 Beethoven no longer felt this was necessary, and there is no signicant use of B major or minor in the last two movements. From this time onwards he was no longer constrained in his choice of secondary key area, and he used an ir regular one in several later sonatas – the ‘Waldstein’, the rst and third movements of the ‘Hammerklavier’, and Op. 111 – as well as in other works such as the ‘Archduke’ Trio, the Ninth Symphony and each of the three late ‘Galitzin’ quartets. The one restriction he almost always observed was that the tonic triads of the main key and subsidiary key should have at least one note in common. Beethoven’s initial concept sketch for the C major second movement in 8 (‘Kessler’, folio 92v) provides a brief synopsis of the movement, which is in ternary form with extended coda. The sketch (Example 7.2) shows the rst four bars, followed by ‘etc’ to represent the continuation of the theme; next comes a bar from the central section (though notated as three bars in   ), again followed by ‘etc’, representing the rest of the middle section and probably a reprise of the opening one; nally, on the next system, there is an idea for the last seven bar s. As with the rst movement, the opening theme was initially more compressed than in the nal version. The three   bars correspond approximately to bar 52 in terms of texture, though the harmonic direction is different. Further down the page are short ideas for other important moments in the movement, and a single-stave draft for the rst 16 bars. Thus, as with the rst movement, Beethoven was adopting his common method of noting the main features of a movement before joining them together in longer drafts – a method that is particularly clear in this set of sketches.

Example 7.2 Slow-movement sketch for Op. 31 No. 1 (Wgm, A 34, f. 92v) .

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Drafts for the rest of the movement appear on folios 95r (bars 16‒40), 95v (bars 41–64, the end of the central section), 96r (bars 65–98, the end of the reprise) and 96v (coda), along with some variants. Some of the reprise is represented by empty bars, where the harmonic direction was the same as in the exposition. Much of the ornamental decoration shows different details from the nal version, especially in the t wo large cadenzas (bars 26 and 90), but the location of the cadenzas and their general outline are present. The coda is also some way from the nal version, showing the main elements but tted together differ ently and one bar shorter at the end. Some fu rther sketching of such details was probably done on pages now lost, with nal adjustments in the autograph score, which is also lost. Much of the movement, however, could have been transferred direct from these sketches to the autograph score with little or no modication apart from amplication of the texture, and the movement seems to have given Beethoven less trouble than many others. Sketches for the fi nale are entirely lost apart f rom a few initial ideas, since Beethoven had run out of space at the end of the Kessler Sketchbook and must have used some loose leaves that have since gone missing. While sketching the rst two movements, however, he was looking ahead to the second sonata in the set and noting possible ideas. There is more doubling back here, due to the lim ited space, and so the order in which these ideas appear on paper is probably not the order in which they were written down. The rst such sketch chronologically is probably the one on folio 93r headed ‘Sonata II’ (Example 7.3). It is in E at, and thus represents a time when Beethoven envisaged this key for the second rather than the third sonata in the group. Nevertheless it clearly relates to an idea eventually used in No. 3 – but in the second rather than the rst movement: the energetic broken-chord bass line resembles the one that prevails in much of that movement, while the initial right-hand gure closely resembles the closing theme of the ex position (bars 50‒1: see Example 7.4). Even the key is the same, for although the movement as a whole is in A at, its closing theme is in E at in the exposition, making the connection with the initial sketch very plain, even though the note values are different. Further down folio 93r Beethoven sketched what is presumably a possible  nale theme for the same sonata (stave 9). It is in , headed ‘presto’, and shows

Example 7.3 Sketch for second sonata for Op. 31 (Wgm, A 34, f. 93r).

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Example 7.4 Op. 31 No. 3.II, bars 50‒1.

motifs for left hand and right hand in alternation. Although a similar alter nation appears in the opening of the nale of Op. 31 No. 3, the material is quite different, and the only specic feature to be retained was the word ‘presto’. It is signicant, however, that Beethoven was trying to envisage the character of the rst and last movements before concerning himself with what came between. A new idea for ‘Sonata 2’, again in E at, appears a few pages later (folio 95v, stave 7), and is in  time as in the nal version of the rst movement of Op. 31 No. 3, but the melodic content was not retained, and the idea was soon superseded by yet another sketch for the second sonata, headed ‘Sonat[a] 2da’. This new sketch actually begins on the previous page (folio 95r), but it is squeezed in on the bottom two staves and continues beneath the E at sketch; thus it must have been written down after the latter. It is in A minor, and marks the decision to place the E at sonata third and have a minor-key sonata second. Although its key was eventually supplanted by D minor and the  metre abandoned, the theme (Example 7.5) clearly foreshadows that of the nale of Op. 31 No. 2. The sketch continues for 19 bars, followed by an ‘et [cetera]’ and a closing theme in E minor, which may represent the second subject, although it is not marked ‘m.g.’. Thus something of the character of the second sonata (which became Op. 31 No. 2) was established even before its key had been xed.

Example 7.5 Sketch in A minor for second sonata for Op. 31 (Wgm, A 34, f. 95r).

Further ideas that may have been intended for the A minor and E at sonatas appear near the beginning of the Kessler Sketchbook, on folios 3r and 3v respectively. Since in both cases they appear on the lower part of the page, unrelated

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to the sketches above and with nothing else beneath them, they may have been added long after the surrounding material. In view of their contents, they probably date from the time when Beethoven was beginning to work on Op. 31 and was running out of space in the sketchbook. The sketches on folio 3r show a plan for a three-movement sonata in A minor, with a middle movement in A ma jor whose opening theme anticipates that of the Menuetto in the String Quartet Op. 59 No. 3. The theme for what appears to be the initial Allegro bears some similarities to the one in Example 7.5, although it is in a different metre, while a ‘Presto’ sketch probably represents the nale. The single sketch in E at at the foot of folio 3v consists of two four-bar phrases, each using a rhythm similar to the underlying one in the opening four bars of Op. 31 No. 3. Another notable feature is that both phrases begin with a falling ninth, which foreshadows the rising ninth at the start of the Trio in the third movement of Op. 31 No. 3. Thus both the A minor and E at sketches appear to be associated with those in the same keys near the end of the sketchbook, and roughly contemporary with them – though it is unclear which were written rst. They can therefore be regarded as preparatory work for the two later sonatas in Op. 31. It was probably only after all the above sketches had been made that Beethoven decided on the key of D minor for the second sonata and wrote out a synopsis of an extended movement in this key, in  or   time, on folio 90v. Although this is earlier in the sketchbook than the sketches quoted above, it seems unlikely that he drafted this impressive outline of ideas in this key but then turned to other keys (E at and A minor), only to return to his D minor material. The short themes in E at and A minor were surely sketched before this much more substantial movement in D minor, after which he retained this key for the second sonata. Thus the layout in the book seems once again to be chronologically confused, with folios 91v‒96v taken up mainly with ideas for No. 1 in G, and possible themes for No. 2, before he returned to the largely empty folio 90v to write down extensive details for a D minor movement that seemed a more promising opening for the second sonata. As usual, the synopsis shows the main cornerstones of the movement, and it extends to some 43 bars, neatly lling the lowest 14 staves of the 16-stave page. It opens with a conventional ‘Mannheim rocket’ motif (Example 7.6) and is essentially in sonata form, but it exhibits several unusual features. The second subject, characteristically headed ‘m.g.’, is in B at and the exposition concludes in this key. Thus, as with No. 1, Beethoven considered modulating here to an unorthodox key – neither the dominant nor the relative major. The key of A minor then appears as the tonal goal of the development, but it leads to an unexpected interruption in D major in  time and apparently in slow tempo, with a gentle theme marked ‘dolce’, before the allegro resumes. Finally there appears a coda in which the opening ‘Mannheim rocket’ theme is transformed into a  rhythm.14 The use of three different time signatures within an opening sonata-form movement would have been unprecedented, and it appears to be taking up an idea in one of the sets of variations that was currently under way – Op. 34 – where most of the variations have different time signatures. The idea of using thematic transformation also appears in both Op. 34 and the coda of this D minor draft.

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Example 7.6 Sketch in D minor for second sonata for Op. 31 (Wgm, A 34, f. 90v) .

Having thought up such an extraordinary movement, which would have more than satised many composers, Beethoven then overhauled it completely with something even more original. By this time there were few large spaces left in the sketchbook, but he found a mostly blank page-opening at folios 65v‒66r and proceeded to ll it with ideas for the sonata that eventually emerged as Op. 31 No. 2. Since these sketches are so much more advanced than the other ‘Sonata 2’ sketches and the lengthy D minor sketch on folio 90v, they must have been in serted later. Once again they are labelled as the second sonata (‘Sonata 2da’), and again there is a synopsis of the rst movement, showing all the main corner stones. Most of these already resemble those of the nal version: the opening alternation of adagio (later ‘largo’) and allegro; an indication of A minor for the end of the exposition; more adagio then allegro at the start of the development, and then again at the start of the recapitulation; and two short passages of recitative to supplement the two adagio passages at th is point. Thus Beethoven retained his original idea of inserting a slow interruption here, but replaced his in itial idea of a  passage in D major with the recitatives. The conclusion, however, is different from both the early draft and the nal version, ending with a series of D major chords rather than D minor. Between the initial draft of folio 90v and the nal version there can be seen a gradual reduction in the amount of major-key music in the movement. Originally the second subject was in B at and there was a ‘dolce’ interruption in D. In the later draft on folio 65v the music is mainly in the minor but at least it ends with repeated D major chords. The nal version is striking for its absence of any es tablished major keys – even the F major motif in bars 8‒9 never settles in this key (the G is likely to be heard rst as an A @ in an implied F minor), and the arpeggiated major chords at the star t of each of the three main sections are all quickly contradicted by minor ones. Perhaps the most remarkable difference between the rst draft and the later one on folio 65v, however, is the way the conventional ‘Mannheim rocket’ opening in D minor (Example 7.6) has been t ransformed into a slow A major arpeggio. In the nal version this is reinforced by an arpeggiando sign for the opening chord, so that the initial sound is a low C , from which the arpeggio grows upwards. The theme then does not appear as a D m inor arpeggio until bar 21, in a truncated version in the bass clef. There have been debates about whether the ‘true’ rst subject appears in bar 1 or bar 21; the sketches reveal that

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bar 21 contains the original rst subject as drafted on folio 90v, the D minor ar peggio, and bar 1 is a transformation of this. Opposite the synopsis of the rst movement, on folio 66r, appears a sequence of ideas for piano that might seem to have no particular relevance. But all apart from the rst two staves appear to be ideas for possible later movements for this sonata, with several possibilities sketched.15 One is a Menuetto in B at. Another is an Adagio in the same key, which seems to belong with a minuet-like theme in D major and two alternative ideas for what appears to be a nale in D minor, each with a r unning bass line, thus creating a four-movement structure. None of these ideas shows more than a tenuous link to the two movements that eventually emerged, and the idea of a running bass line in the nale was supplanted by one using repeated arpeggio patterns for the left hand. According to Carl Czerny, this idea for the nale was sparked off by a horse: During the summer of 1803 he was staying in the country in Heiligenstadt near Vienna. One day he happened to see a rider galloping past his window. The regular rhythm of the hoof-beats gave him the idea for the theme of the Finale of his Sonata in D minor.16 The year given is incorrect, however (the movement was composed in 1802), and the connection between horse and sonata must be doubted. Several similar themes were noted sporadically in the Kessler Sketchbook, in various keys but with essentially the same idea – repeated main notes preceded by an anacrusis and with arpeggiated accompaniment. One of them, in A minor, is the one headed ‘Sonat 2’ in Example 7.5, and was considered as an opening theme for the rst movement of the second sonata in the group. If the alleged horse had a role, therefore, it could not have been any more than to remind Beethoven of an idea he had already been working on. The ar peggiated left hand can also be regarded as another transformation of the arpeggio opening of the sonata, which had already been echoed by the arpeggiated chord at the start of the second movement. Still more improbable than Czerny’s claim is Anton Schindler’s assertion that, when he asked Beethoven about the meaning of this sonata, Beethoven replied simply, ‘Read Shakespeare’s Tempest .’17 It has become apparent in recent years that Schindler knew Beethoven much less intimately, and for a much shorter time, than he indicated, and that he attempted to bolster his own image by inserting numerous fake conversations with Beethoven, alongside genuine conversations, in the com poser’s conversation books (used in his later years when he became too deaf for oral conversation). Some of the fake ones show Schindler discussing Beethoven’s music, whereas none of the genuine ones do. Thus it seems clear that any comments recorded by Schindler that Beethoven is purported to have made about his own music are almost certainly spurious. This includes the one about The Tempest , although unfortunately Schindler’s claim has led to the sonata becoming popularly known as the ‘Tempest’ Sonata. Although the rst movement has a somewhat tem pestuous character, this is no more so than with several of the other sonatas. The sketches, as far as they go, appear to show purely musical origins for the sonata.

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Apart from the early draft for the rst movement and the handful of preliminary ideas for later movements, subsequent sketches for this sonata, like those for the nale of the previous one, must have been made on loose leaves, now lost. It was evidently some weeks before Beethoven acquired his next sketchbook, the Wielhorsky, and by this time he was starting to compose the third sonata in the group. Page 1 shows brief preliminary ideas for the second movement, including the heading ‘al[legre]tto scherzo’ to indicate the character. Several variants of the main theme and other important passages appear here. They are preceded by a brief concept for the theme of the nale, but no sign of the menuetto third movement. The following pages (2 ‒ 4) contain extended drafts for the rst movement, which indicate that some preliminar y sketching had almost cer tainly been done elsewhere, or at least worked out on the piano, since all the main content is in place. At the foot of page 4 and top of page 5 are some brief sketches for key moments in the second movement, and these are followed on the rest of page 5 by two complete drafts for its exposition. These begin on staves 5 and 12, but surprisingly it is the lower one that must be earlier: it is in several places more primitive; it continues overleaf at the top of page 6, whereas the upper draft has to avoid this by continuing further down on page 6 (from stave 5); and it has been crossed out while the upper draft has been left to stand. The opening theme in the deleted draft is shown in Example 7.7 (in bars 2‒4 the upper voice is a replacement for the lower). It is strikingly different from the nal version, being characterized by almost continuous semiquavers and showing different contours from the nal version, though in a similar register. It is also much more prolix, continuing for 20 bars before the modulation to F minor, instead of only nine as in the nal version. The upper draft, however, comes very close to the nal ver sion right from the start (Example 7.8).18

Example 7.7 Sketch for Op. 31 No. 3.II (Mcm, F. 155 No. 1, f. 5r).

Example 7.8 Later sketch for Op. 31 No. 3.II (Mcm, F. 155 No. 1, f. 5r) .

The variants of the theme t hat are sketched on page 1 lie, in terms of evolution, between the version in the lower draft and that in the upper. Thus Beethoven’s procedure appears to have been to write down a complete draft of the exposition

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on pages 5 ‒ 6, plus an alternative ending for it (page 5, staves 10‒11), then jot down on page 1 various alternatives to the main theme, before deleting the previous drafts and inserting a new one, starting in the empty space in the middle of page 5. This means that when he rst started using the Wielhorsky Sketchbook he began on the rst complete opening, pages 2 ‒ 3, to allow him a view of an extended draft for the rst movement. Only after reaching page 5 with work on the second movement did he turn back to page 1 to insert a rather mixed bag of ideas, mainly for this movement. Curiously the closing theme (bars 50‒61) in the deleted drafts is very close to the nal version, while the ending in the substitute exposition has a rather different closing theme for bars 50‒61. Thus Beethoven took some time creating and assembling all the sections of the exposition, and making the usual minor adjustments to melody and phrase structure, before completing the autograph. The rest of the second movement appears to have caused less difculty, and most of the helter-skelter nale fell into place very quickly. Perhaps the prelimi nary work was done mainly through improvisation and experimentation at the piano. An early idea for a gentler, contrasting passage (page 9, staves 2‒3), prob ably conceived as a closing theme for the exposition, was soon abandoned, and in the nal version the perpetuum mobile effect is retained virtually throughout, apart from the occasional pause on an emphatic chord. Straight after the last nale sketch Beethoven resumed work on his Prometheus Variations, with no sign of any menuetto sketches for the sonata. Thus, like several other minuet or scherzo movements, its composition seems to lie outside the main body of work on the sonata. Was it added as an afterthought to a three-movement work? This seems improbable, for it would be uncharacteristic of his style to create a lively scherzando in A at followed immediately by a presto nale without something slower to set them off. More likely, Beethoven intended some kind of moderately paced minuet from an early stage, but left its composition to another time and place. He had been composing so many short dances for balls in the previous few years that another minuet would not have proved much of a challenge and it was probably drafted quickly in a few spare moments on a lost leaf or two.

Publication of Op. 31 Since Nägeli had commissioned three sonatas, Beethoven probably sent all three together, near the end of 1802; it was only in his late period that he began sending works from a group individually, as with his last three piano sonatas, Opp. 109‒11, and his late quartets. Nägeli, however, was still hoping for a fourth sonata from Beethoven,19 and so he decided to publish just the rst two while he waited for it. He launched the rst ve volumes in his series Répertoire des clavecinistes around April 1803, with Beethoven’s two sonatas in volume 5 and some ne sonatas by Clementi, Dussek, Cramer and Steibelt in the rst four volumes. The quality of the engraving was much admired, 20 but unfortunately its accuracy did not match its visual appearance. Beethoven was not sent the

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proofs of his two sonatas beforehand, and there were many serious errors in the published text. This is all the more unfortunate for modern performers, since the autograph scores and corrected manuscript copies of Op. 31 are lost, and so the precise text intended in cert ain passages is open to doubt. Ries relates that when the new edition reached Beethoven, the composer asked Ries to play through the sonatas for him. There were numerous misprints, which greatly disturbed Beethoven, and somehow Nägeli had managed to insert four extra bars near the end of the rst movement of No. 1, after bar 298 (Example 7.9). Beethoven was furious when he heard them.21 It may be that his manuscript was insufciently clear at this point, for the sketches show that he made several re visions in this area and the nal version does not appear among them; nor does Nägeli’s, however, and so the source of the extra bars is uncertain.

Example 7.9 Op. 31 No. 1, four inserted bars in Nägeli edition .

To put things right, the rst idea was to publish a list of corrections. Beethoven’s brother Carl wrote to Breitkopf & Härtel on 21 May 1803: Be so good as to announce in advance [vorläug ] that the sonatas by Beethoven which have just appeared in Zurich have been distributed without being proofread, and consequently contain many errors. I shall send you a list of errors in a few days so that you can announce them. 22

Gottfried Här tel replied on 2 June that he would gladly publish the list of corrections in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung , and he repeated the offer in a letter to Beethoven of 30 June. He probably held back from reviewing the sonatas, to await the arrival of the list, but it appears never to have been sent and was certain ly not published. Meanwhile, however, a better idea had occurred to Beethoven and his brother. Carl wrote to Nikolaus Simrock of Bonn on 25 May, offering to send the list of errors, indicating that there were about 80 of them, if Simrock wanted to publish the sonatas. 23 There was no legal impediment for this, since there was no international copyright law and Simrock lived in a different country from Nägeli, and so he readily agreed. Ries was given the task of preparing the list of mistakes, as he recalls in his reminiscences. He also quotes three short notes from Beethoven in this connection, of which the rst states: ‘Please extract the mistakes and send the list of them to Simrock straight away, with the comment

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that he should just make sure that they [the sonatas] appear soon.’ 24 Ries then wrote out the list of errors, but Beethoven was not satised: ‘I must ask you once more about the unpleasant task to write out neatly [in’s Reine] the mistakes in the Zurich sonatas and send it to Simrock. The list of the mistakes which you produced you can nd at my place …’25 Ries must have wondered what was wrong with the original list, and so Beethoven explained in a third message: ‘The signs are badly indicated, and equally in many places the notes themselves are mis placed. So take care. Otherwise the work will again be no use.’26 Ries duly wrote out a fair copy and sent it to Simrock on 29 June, suggesting that Simrock claim his as the ‘only correct edition’. 27 Simrock’s edition appeared quickly, proclaimed as ‘Edition tres correcte’ (though with the rst word misprinted as ‘Editiou’!). It must have appeared by mid-October, for Ries informed him on 22 October 1803 that Carl had already sold the three copies that had been sent to Beethoven. Ries, however, borrowed a copy from Johann Traeg, a music dealer, to check the text, and pro ceeded to send Simrock a few additional corrections.28 One of these was probably the left-hand chord in bar 169 of the rst movement of No. 2, which was missing in the Zurich edition and was misplaced into bar 170 in Simrock’s. Simrock is not known to have produced a corrected edition, but a third edition appeared before the end of the year. This came from the Viennese publisher Giovanni Cappi, who modelled the layout of his edition ver y closely on Nägeli’s but incorporated most of the corrections found in Simrock’s. He must have been working from a correction list rather than direct f rom Simrock’s edition, for the layout of several details differs from Simrock’s, and the misplaced chord mentioned above is correct. There are also a few minor changes. Most striking is the addition of a staccato mark to the left-hand chord in bar 1 of Op. 31 No. 1 (see Example 7.10). Since a staccato mark is also systematically added in the corresponding place in bars 46 and 194, all three must stem from Beethoven, for in general Cappi followed Nägeli’s articulation marks very closely. Thus it appears that, even at this late stage, Beethoven did not consider it inappropriate to make small alterations to his text.

Example 7.10 Op. 31 No. 1, bars 1‒2, Cappi edition.

Meanwhile, Nägeli waited in vain for a fourth sonata from Beethoven, and eventually decided to pair No. 3 from the set with a new edition of the Pathétique Sonata, pirated from the original edition. The two sonatas were allocated to Volume 11 of Répertoire des clavecinistes, which was announced in May 1804, and they were probably engraved by then. However, Volumes 10‒12 of the

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series were not actually sent out until the beginning of November, 29 although Beethoven received his copies of volume 11 some time in advance and was able to send one to his friend Josephine Deym (née Brunsvik).30 Having been denied a fourth sonata, Nägeli managed to recoup some of his outlay in a deal with Muzio Clementi’s publishing rm in London. It appears that Clementi sent three sonatas by Dussek to Nägeli in June, for which he received Op. 31 No. 3 and a sonata by Woel (from Volume 12 of Nägeli’s Répertoire) in exchange.31 Thus the manuscript of Op. 31 No. 3 used by Nägeli (or possibly a copy of it) was then used by Clementi for an English edition. This appeared as early as 3 Septembe r 1804, some two months before Nägeli’s.32 Therefore, although Nägeli’s was engraved rst, Clementi’s was actually published earlier, and so it is debatable which should count as the ‘rst’ edition. As with the rst two sonatas in the set, Simrock of Bonn and Cappi of Vienna produced their own editions shortly after Nägeli’s had appeared. It is possible that they were again supplied with correction lists, but there is no evidence that this happened. Their texts are similar to Nägeli’s apart from a few obvious corrections and newly introduced errors, and there is no documentation referring to any list of corrections, as there had been for the previous two sonatas. Thus these editions have little textual value. Clementi’s, on the other hand, is of considera ble textual importance, for it does not derive from any surviving source (all the manuscript copies and autograph being lost), and therefore any differences from Nägeli’s version could be a result of a misreading by Nägeli rather than Clementi. More often, in fact, it is Clementi’s edition that is faulty, but in some cases his is more accurate, including one that is particularly worth noting. In bar 16 of the rst movement, Clementi’s version is as in Example 7.11. It might be assumed that, in the second beat in the right hand, there should be four semiquavers (as in the Nägeli, Simrock and Cappi editions), and that Clementi’s engraver carelessly drew the lower beam across only three notes instead of four. However, exactly the same inconsistency is found when the passage recurs in bars 143, 152 and 234. It seems almost impossible to believe that the engraver would make the same mistake four times; it is far more probable that this reading is correct, and that Nägeli’s engraver thought on each occasion that four semiquavers made better rhythmic sense than a quaver plus three semiquavers. Thus it seems clear that Beethoven wanted a quaver plus three triplet semiquavers, but as usual omitted to include the gure 3 above them. The same four-note motif occurs many times in the ‘Emperor’ Concerto, in the autograph of which it has no gure 3 and often looks somewhat like four semiquavers. The manuscript from which Nägeli’s engraver worked was probably similar in this respect, which would account for the mistake; it was also made by Clementi’s engraver when the motif rst appears in bar 7. Conrmation that Clementi’s edition provides the correct reading in each of the ve places apart from bar 7 is provided by a sketch in the Wielhorsky Sketchbook, page 2, stave 13,33 which is the only place where the sketches show the nal version of this passage: here Beethoven clearly wrote quaver plus three semiquavers. Thus most recordings and modern editions are incorrect in all ve of these bars.

114

A ‘new path’?

Example 7.11 Op. 31 No. 3, bar 16, Clementi edition .

Nägeli seems not to have consulted Beethoven about either a possible dedicatee or an opus number, and consequently the sonatas appeared without either. Simrock allocated the opus number 31, either on Beethoven’s advice or because he was aware of the publication of the Op. 30 Violin Sonatas in May and June 1803.34 This number has since been generally adopted, although it appeared on the title page only as a handwritten addition, which suggests that Simrock was uncertain about it until after the title page had been engraved. Cappi’s Viennese edition bears the opus number 29, which caused some confusion at rst, as this number had already been used for Beethoven’s String Quintet in C. Clementi, in contrast, used the opus number 47 for his edition of the third sonata. The reason may be that he had heard of the appearance of Opp. 44 and 45 earlier in 1804, 35 and allowed one spare number in choosing 47.

‘From to-day, I will pursue a new path’ It was in 1852, some 50 years after the composition of Beethoven’s Op. 31, that his former pupil Carl Czerny published some recollections mentioning these sonatas, in the July issue of Cocks’s Musical Miscellany.36 According to Czerny: About the year 1803, when Beethoven had composed his Op. 28, he said to his intimate friend, Krumpholz, ‘I am but little satised with my labours up to this time. From to-day, I will pursue a new path.’ Shortly after this event, appeared his 3 Sonatas, Op. 29 [31], in which may be traced the partial fullment of his determination. Czerny made a similar observation a few months later in some notes he wrote for Otto Jahn dated 15 November 1852:

About 1803 Beethoven once said to his fr iend Krumpholz: ‘I am not satised with my previous labours. From now on I will follow a new path.’ Soon afterwards appeared the 3 sonatas Op. 29 [31]. 37 These comments have often been cited, but all too rarely interrogated. Since Krumpholz was a close friend of Czerny and Beethoven and had introduced them

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to each other, Czerny may have been present in person when Beethoven made the remark. He probably did not report Beethoven’s words absolutely verbatim, but there is no reason to doubt his memory of the gist of the comments, despite the 50-year delay before he reported them. The date of 1803 is also about right, although it was more likely to have been late 1802, soon after the appearance of Op. 28 that August. His attempt to relate them to the sonatas Op. 31, however, seems misguided, in the light of Beethoven’s own comments at that time. In offering his two sets of variations, Opp. 34 and 35, to Breitkopf & Härtel on 18 October 1802, Beethoven stressed that each set was worked out in a ‘completely new manner’ (Beethoven’s underlining), and added: If I have new ideas, I usually gather this only when others say so, for I myself never know this, but this time I must conrm myself that the manner in both works is entirely new for me. 38 In a later letter Beethoven even asked Breitkopf & Härtel to print a short i ntroductory note stating that the two new sets of variations were quite different from earlier sets.39 Thus he was obviously very pleased with the originality of these two works, but had hardly noticed whether there was any novelty in the sonatas that were being composed during the same months. Hence his reference to following a new path almost certainly referred to the variations, not these sonatas. If he had in mind anything else in his reference to a new path, it was probably the nascent Eroica Symphony and the oratorio Christus am Oelberge, both of which were begun very soon after the variations. Moreover, the novelties in Op. 31 are perhaps less striking than those in some of the sonatas written shortly before or after them, such as Op. 26, with its opening variation movement and extraordinary funeral march; the two sonatas of Op. 27, with their fantasia-like qualities; and the soon-to-be-written ‘Waldstein’ Sonata, with its unprecedented breadth. Nevertheless, Czerny was right to discern some novelty in Op. 31, which he could interpret (or misinterpret) as ‘partial fullment’ of Beethoven’s expressed intentions. Striking innovations include the use of the mediant as the secondary key in the rst movement of No. 1; the enormous scale of its slow movement; the use of alternating largo and allegro at the start of No. 2 and the appearance of recitative in the recapitulation; the non-tonic openings of Nos. 2 and 3; the  scherzo that substituted for a slow movement in No. 3; and a generally advanced level of sophistication. Such innovations are far more conspicuous in Op. 31 than in the violin sonatas Op. 30 written only a few months earlier. On the other hand, for Beethoven every sonata represented a new path, each one being highly distinctive and quite unlike any other.

Notes 1 BB-71. 2 BB-88; Alb-39. 3 See BB-78, 82, 84. The last of these is A-57. 4 A reference to the agreement of 15 July 1801 concerning the establishment of the Catholic Church in France: see BB-84, note 2. Anderson (A-57, note 1) refers only to an agreement later than the date of Beethoven’s letter.

116

A ‘new path’?

5 BB-85, 90; Alb-38, 40. 6 BB-88, 89. 7 BB-88; Alb-38. 8 ‘im grossen Styl, von grossem Umfang, in mannigfaltigen Abweichungen von der gewöhnlichen Sonaten-Form … Ausführlichkeit, Reichhaltigkeit, Vollstimmigkeit soll diese Produkte auszeichnen.’ Intelligenzblatt no. 23 (August 1803), col. 98, from AMZ, 5 (1803). Cited in Sieghard Brandenburg, ed., Kesslersches Skizzenbuch, 2 vols [transcription and facsimile] (Bonn: Beethovenhaus, 1976‒78), vol. 1, p. 16. 9 BB-99; Alb-3. 10 See Brandenburg, ed., Kesslersches, vol. 1, p. 16. 11 Wgm, A 34, facsimile and transcription in Brandenburg, ed., Kesslersches. 12 Mcm, F. 155 No. 1. Facsimile and transcription, with commentary, are in Nathan L. Fishman, ed., Kniga eskizov Beethovena za 1802‒1803 gody, 3 vols (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe muzykal ńoe izdatels̓ tvo, 1962). 13 BB-113; Alb-49. 14 For an extended discussion of this 14-stave sketch and some of the preliminar y ones, as also of the later ones for the rst movement of Op. 31 No. 2, see Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 178‒90. 15 For details, see ibid., pp. 190‒6. 16 Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, ed. Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1970), p. 12. 17 See Anton Schindler, Beethoven as I Knew Him, trans. Constance S. Jolly, ed. Donald MacArdle (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), p. 406. 18 This sequence of sketches makes it extremely improbable that Beethoven derived the main Scherzo theme from a Bach prelude (BWV 933) that is melodically somewhat similar, as suggested in Michael Allen Warner, ‘A Little Prelude and the Scherzo That Almost Wasn’t: Beethoven’s “New Path” and the Early-Nineteenth-Century Bach Re vival’, Journal of Musicological Research , 32 (2013), 83‒115. 19 BB-152; Alb-65. 20 See AMZ, 5 (May 1803), col. 580. 21 WR, pp. 78‒9. 22 BB-1138; Alb-59. 23 BB-141, BB-146, BB-139; Alb-61, Alb-63, Alb-60. 24 BB-142; A-76. WR, p. 78. 25 BB-143; A-77. 26 BB-144; A-78. 27 BB-145; Alb-62. 28 BB-165; Alb-71. 29 See BB-201, note 2. 30 BB-201; A-97. 31 See Alan Tyson, The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), p. 43. 32 Ibid. 33 See Fishman, ed., Kniga eskizov. 34 KH, p. 75. 35 Tyson, The Authentic English Editions, p. 43. 36 See KC, vol. 1, pp. 213‒14, from which the following excerpt is quoted. This passage is also quoted in O.G. Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries (New York: Dover, 1967), p. 31, but slightly rewritten (as if tra nslated to Ger man and back), and with 1800 substituted for 1803. 37 KC, vol. 1, p. 228. See also Czerny, On the Proper Performance, p. 13 (translation altered). 38 BB-108; A-62. 39 BB-123; A-67.

8

The middle period opens up

Op. 53 in C: Allegro con brio. Introduzione: Adagio molto [leading to:] Rondo: Allegretto moderato [later Prestissimo]. Op. 54 in F: In Tempo d’un Menuetto. Allegretto [later più allegro]. Op. 57 in F minor: Allegro assai [later più allegro]. Andante con moto [leading to:] Allegro ma non troppo [later Presto].

The Erard piano and the ‘Waldstein’ After the profusion of sonatas during the period 1795–1802, Beethoven’s interest in the genre seems to have waned, as noted in Chapter 1. His reference to a desire to write ‘only oratorios, operas, etc.’, transmitted to Johann André in a letter written by his brother Carl and dated 23 November 1802,1 is surely more indicative of a ‘new path’ than the Op. 31 sonatas discussed in the previous chapter. Another noteworthy feature of Carl’s letter is the price demanded for three sonatas – an off-putting 900 orins. This was equivalent to 200 ducats, 2 and was therefore twice the price charged to Nägeli, who had found even 100 ducats excessive for only three sonatas. Not surprisingly, André seems to have been duly discouraged, and there is no f urther indication of business between him and Beethoven. Beethoven’s Wielhorsky Sketchbook conrms that during the winter of 1802‒03 he was indeed composing some operatic excerpts and the oratorio Christus am Oelberge, and he continued avoiding piano sonatas during 1803, concentrating on the oratorio and the Eroica Symphony. The nearest he ap proached during that time was a sonata for violin and piano, Op. 47, known as the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, Op. 47, written specically to suit a visiting violinist (George Bridgetower), though later dedicated to Rodolphe Kreutzer. Two factors may have persuaded him to return to piano sonatas. One was the problems he was facing in his attempts to write an opera. He began one in autumn 1803 entitled Vestas Feuer , but abandoned it when he became exasperated with the text, and took some time to nd a replacement, Leonore, which then had to be translated and adapted from its French origins. This left time for other compositions. The second factor was the arrival of a new piano, a gift from the Parisian rm of Sébastien Erard. The rm had already sent a similar piano to Haydn, and on 6 August 1803 dispatched one to Beethoven. 3 It had probably reached him by

118


22 October, for it is referred to in a letter by Ries of that date, 4 which was some time before Beethoven abandoned Vestas Feuer . The new piano, which differed markedly in construction from the lighter Viennese models, 5 may well have induced him to compose something for it, especially if, as seems likely, piano sonatas were still being requested by local patrons. Any new sonata, however, needed to be qualitatively different from previous ones, and on a higher level – no longer a ‘trie’. His experience with new, large-scale works, especially the Eroica but also Christus and the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, had enabled him t o begin operating on a much broader canvas, which could now be applied to the next piano sonata and tried out on his new Erard (despite his increasing deafness). It is in this so-called ‘Waldstein’ Sonata, far more than in Op. 31 of the previous year, that he cons picuously set out on a new path, opening up what is generally regarded as his middle period of sonata composition. His fascination with his new instrument seems to have been manifested rst in some piano gurations jotted down in his t hen-current sketchbook, known as Landsberg 6 or the ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook. 6 They include scale patterns on pages 96 and 107 of the sketchbook that clearly predate at least some of the sketches for Vestas Feuer and were therefore made very soon after t he Erard arrived. He had sketched similar scale patter ns (though not the same ones) on several earlier occasions, but apparently none since page 15 of the previous sketchbook about a year earlier.7 Those on page 107 of Landsberg 6 consist of a batch of four patterns, all in C major for both hands, with the last two in contrary motion. It is perhaps no coincidence that scale patterns are a prominent feature of the rst movement of the ‘Waldstein’, with contrary-motion scales just before the recapitulation and just before the end (bars 154–5 and 299). The C major scale patterns are followed on page 107 by some guration in E minor; this could be interpreted as an idea for the key of the second subject of the new sonata, for it is surely signicant that the exposition of the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata ends in this key. Another indication that Beethoven was working towards a grand sonata in C occurs in a group of sketches on page 97, not previously identied as connected with the ‘Waldstein’. They show several features evident in the sonata’s rst movement, including energetic repeated quavers and other quaver guration in C major in common time, and they imply an exposition that ends in a distant key, A major. Two A minor sketches (Hess 327) that follow could be interpreted as ideas for a slow movement in that key.8 Further evidence for a new piano sonata appears on page 119, around the time that Beethoven abandoned Vestas Feuer , thus about November or more probably December 1803. At rst sight this sketch (see Example 8.1) shows no afnity with the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata, for it is in  metre with no direct melodic connection to any of the themes in t he sonata. Lewis Lockwood and Alan Gosman suggest it was ‘possibly’ intended for the nale;9 but it would be abnormal for Beethoven to sketch a nale theme before the rst movement, and the sketch shows such striking subliminal connections with the rst movement, which had not then been sketched, that it is surely better viewed as an initial sketch for this.


119

Example 8.1 Preliminary sketch for Op. 53 (Kj, Landsberg 6, p. 119).

A comparison of Example 8.1 with the start of the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata reveals many similarities:

i ii iii iv

the rst sound is an unharmonized C; a theme continues in the bass clef, supported by C major chords; the theme uses repeated quavers, which gradually rise in pitch; after a few bars the music stops at a whole-bar pause, followed by a restatement of the opening phrase; v the music modulates via a melodic A–A –B to a B major chord, in preparation for an E major second subject. The way in which Beethoven managed to retain these preliminary ideas while completely transforming the surrounding material is an illustration of his extraordinar y ability at turning base metal into gold. The transformation was probably achieved through improvisation and experiment at the piano, for the rst recognizable sketches for the opening theme appear on the very next page (120), and already show the main theme of the rst movement, though at this stage there are semiquaver oscillations rather than repeated quavers. Thereafter Beethoven’s progress on the rst movement can be divided into eight stages.10 The rst consists of preliminary ideas for various parts of the movement, and possible themes for a slow movement and nale. Many of these ideas did not survive into the nal version, though several of them were retained in some form. A few needed no further alteration, such as bars 3–4, with its striking contrast of register; the descending opening of the lyrical second subject; and the left-hand semiquaver guration in the retransition. In the second stage (pages 122 and 124) Beethoven produced an outline of the movement, with drafts for most of the exposition,

120


and extended passages for the development and coda, along with a few indications of places where the recapitulation would differ from the exposition. The third stage consists of detailed work on the development section, especially its rst half. The fourth stage focuses on the second half of the development, includ ing the retransition, where Beethoven had particular difculty in working out the precise shape and length of the build-up to a high F (bar 152 of the nal version). The fth stage presents a draft for the recapitulation, which effectively renders a further draft for the exposition unnecessary. The next two stages are two attempts at the coda, after which Beethoven was ready to write out the autograph score as his nal stage for the movement’s composition.11 One of the most noteworthy features of the new Erard piano was its compass, which extended to c4, whereas many Viennese pianos reached only f3, a fth lower. Signicantly, the ‘Waldstein’ is Beethoven’s rst sonata to reach beyond f3 (apart from a single anomalous F in Op. 14 No. 1). One might expect, then, that he decided from the outset to tailor his new sonata to his new piano, but this did not happen. The early sketches do not stray beyond f3, apart from a single f3 (page 122, stave 1), whereas f3 itself is repeatedly emphasized as part of the main thematic material. Appearance of a high g3 does not appear until the seventh stage of sketching, which also includes a h igh a3. These notes reappear in the nal version, in both the rst movement (though rarely) and the nale, but no higher ones are used in this sonata. Thus it seems that Beethoven was reluctant to use too many notes that would be unplayable on many of the instruments that were still in use, and was not writing the sonata primarily for his own instrument. Moreover he had already used high notes occasionally: his piano arrangement of his Prometheus music uses g3 several times, and his Third Piano Concerto, premiered in April 1803, uses c4, although it may not have done so at its rst performance, despite the appearance of this note in a sketch from that period.12 The relationship between the arrival of the Erard and Beethoven’s use of higher notes is therefore not straightforward; at most, the new piano helped push him towards more extensive use of these notes than he might otherwise have adopted in this sonata. Although the rst movement in its published version is followed by a brief slow introduction to the nale, Beethoven originally composed a conventional slow movement, an Andante in F, which he later withdrew from the sonata. Thus the sketches for this Andante immediately follow and partly overlap with those for the rst movement. He initially considered the key of E major for the Anda nte in a sketch on page 121 of Landsberg 6. It would be surprising but not unimaginable for him to use the same remote key for the second subject of the rst movement and the theme of the second: something resembling t his effect occurs in his Fifth Piano Concerto in E at, where the rst movement moves to B major (though notated as C at) for a second theme, anticipating the key of the second movement. Nevertheless, in the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata Beethoven seems to have quickly decided that two appearances of E major would be one too many, and began sketching the same Andante in F instead of E further down the same page. The Andante theme is intimately related to the second subject of the rst movement, and both were being created at the same time, as is evident in the


121

sketchbook.13 The cross-fertilization that occurred between them is illustrated in Example 8.2(a)–(e). In Example 8.2(a) (Landsberg 6, page 120) Beethoven indicated for the rst time the type of theme he was planning for the second subject, in the key of E major that he had already noted in his  sketch on the previous page (see Example 8.1). Note that the sharps in Example 8.2(a) are added as accidentals rather than as a key signature, thus conrming that this was an E major melody in a C major context. At this stage he seems to have been simply registering the key and general descending outline of the theme rather than its precise form, which was still very r udimentary.14 On the opposite page appears the rst Andante sketch (Example 8.2(b)), and like the previous sketch it begins on G  before gradually descending to C, accompanied by a bass part a third lower, but this time the melody turns back on itself instead of continuing its descent. Further down the page, however, Beethoven transposed the theme to F major and also moved it up a third (so that it starts on C instead of A: Example 8.2(c)); but the rhythm remained the same, despite the changed note values, and the general shape of stepwise descent by a fth, followed by a turning back, was preserved. This sketch already corresponds closely to the nal version of the Andante theme (though the latter is back in ). The next page is devoted to the rst movement, and the second subject preserves the octave descent from G  that was evident in Example 8.2(a), as can be seen in Example 8.2(d);15 but it has taken on a more distinctive rhythm, which was retained for the nal version (Example 8.2(e)). In the nal version, however, the theme turns back on itself instead of descending the full octave. As a result, its outline is identical to that of the initial Andante sketch (Example 8.2(b)), apart from the rhythm and a few unimportant decorative notes in the sketch; it is a direct variation – or rather transformation – of it. Thus Beethoven clearly planned for the two themes to be similar but not too conspicuously close.

(a)

(b)

Example 8.2 (a) First sketch for Op. 53.I, second subject (Kj, Landsberg 6, p. 120); (b) First sketch for Andante (ibid., p. 121).

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(c)

(d)

(e)

Example 8.2 (c) Later sketch for Andante (ibid.); (d) Later sketch for Op. 53.I, second subject (ibid., p. 122); (e) Op. 53.I, second subject, nal version (bars 35‒8).

The main Andante sketches appear on the pages following those for the rst movement, but even before they had been begun Beethoven was also thin king of the nale. A theme in C major in  time (page 123, stave 3) appears to be intended as a possible nale theme, as is a ‘Rondo’ in  at the top of page 125. Both themes utilize arpeggiated versions of a C major chord, arguably derived from the opening chord of the rst movement. An early version of the actual nale theme then appears on page 126, on the opposite page to a motif from the rst movement that is clearly related (see Examples 8.3(a) and ( b)).16 Beethoven must have noticed the similarity since the two themes are in the bottom right-hand corners of two facing pages. The rst-movement motif eventually appeared i n the left-hand part of bars 136–9, though by this stage its connection to the nale theme was some what disguised. The nale theme itself, meanwhile, took its nal form only after several more pages of sketching. Such a large-scale movement inevitably needed many more pages, though almost all par ts of it are represented somewhere in the sketchbook.17

(a)

(b)

Example 8.3 (a) Sketch for Op. 53 nale (Kj, Landsberg 6, p. 126); (b) Sketch for Op. 53.I, bars 136‒9 (ibid., p. 127).


123

The main sketching for the nale terminates on page 145 of Landsberg 6, and it overlaps with sketches for a piano piece in C major in  time (WoO 56), which is sketched on pages 138 and 145 – 7. The location of these sketches clearly indicates that they were intended as a possible minuet and trio for the sonata: such a movement would t there perfectly, and there would be no reason to compose a piano piece in  for any other purpose at this stage. It will be remembered that on previous occasions Beethoven added or removed a minuet movement from a sonata (e.g. Op. 10 No. 1), or sketched one out of sequence with sketches for the rest of the sonata (e.g. Op. 31 No. 3). Here the sketches are once again slightly out of sequence, in that the nale was already well under way before the minuet was begun, but it is within the same area of the sketchbook. The minuet also has motivic connections with the rst movement of the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. One feature present in the sonata very early on was the appearance of an unexpected sharpened note. In Example 8.1 (above) we nd a G  in the rst phrase, and an A  to effect the modulation towards E major. In the rst sketch for the main theme of the ‘Waldstein’ there occur both D and F, the latter surviving into the nal version, which also uses an A to effect the modulation to E. Such sharps are conspicuous in this minuet (Example 8.4), where an unexpected G and C form part of the main theme. At the same time the bass descends gradually from C to G, recalling its gradual descent over the same compass at the start of the rst movement of the sonata.

Example 8.4 Opening bars of WoO 56, 1803‒04 version (Pn, Ms 29).

At this stage, therefore, the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata was developing into an enormous work, comparable to the recently completed Eroica Symphony. Even in its nal version it is longer on paper than any of Beethoven’s other piano sonatas apart from the ‘Hammerklavier’, and at one stage it was clearly much longer still. In the autograph score of the rst movement, which had probably been writ ten out by the time he was sketching the minuet and nale, there was a repeat of the development and recapitulation (bars 90–246), increasing the length of the movement (including repeats) from 387 to 544 bars. This was originally followed by a leisurely Andante of 205 bars. The aforementioned minuet and tr io are quite short on paper, but if all the repeats are observed (including those in the reprise of the minuet) the movement totals 118 bars; and the huge nale consists of 543 bars in its completed version. Beethoven must have sensed that such an extended construction would be difcult for audiences to accept, and he may well have had misgivings about its length on purely aesthetic grounds. Some trimming was therefore essential.

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Structural revisions to the ‘Waldstein’ First to be cut out was probably the minuet, which seems never to have been part of the autograph score since its nal form was written out on a different paper type (16 staves instead of eight). Nevertheless, it is signicant that Beethoven actually brought the piece to completion at that stage rather t han abandoning it, and he evidently decided to save it up for a possible collection of bagatelles, similar to the set of seven in Op. 33 published the previous May (several of these seven give the impression that they may have been conceived as minuet-type movements for larger works). This second collection of bagatelles was nally assembled in 1822. WoO 56 was initially included (like WoO 52, the abandoned movement from Op. 10 No. 1), with several fresh revisions, but it was eventually excluded when a set of six (Op. 119 Nos 1–6) was sent for publication.18 Another cut was the repeat of the second part of the rst movement. The rst-ending bars and re peat sign are heavily cancelled in pencil – which suggests that the cancellation was made some time after the score was written. But the initial repeat sign at bar 92 was never shown – an oversight that would surely have been noticed if the end-repeat had remained in place for long. Beethoven was therefore left with a standard three-movement structure for his sonata. It was still of unprecedented length, however, and he was eventually induced to replace the Andante with something much shorter. The substitute was a short but very slow Introduzione, which leads into the nale without a break. Ries, who was in close contact with Beethoven at the time, explains: Originally there had been a grand Andante in the sonata … A friend of Beethoven’s suggested to him that the sonata was too long, whereupon he was taken to task most severely. Calmer deliberation, however, soon convinced my teacher that the remark had some truth to it. He then published the grand Andante in F major, in 3/8 time, on its own and later composed the interesting introduction to the rondo in its present form.19 Czerny gives a similar account. Referring to the Andante, he says: ‘Beethoven wrote it initially for piano solo and indeed as the middle movement of the grand C major sonata Op. 53. But since it was too long there he gave it to be published separately.’20 The autograph of the sonata conr ms the substitution, for the two leaves containing the Introduzione have been inserted at a late stage, the rst one glued in and the second sewn to the half-page that contains the beginning of the nale.21 Ries is inaccurate, however, in suggesting that the Introduzione was composed only after the publication of the Andante, for the Int roduzione was published with the rest of the sonata in May 1805 whereas the Andante (WoO 57) did not appear until autumn that year.22 The Introduzione was probably written shortly after Beethoven had given the sonata one or two trial performances in private circles – he was still in the habit of giving such performances, for Czerny mentions that Beethoven had often performed the Andante before it was published. As Ries


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implies, Beethoven was not accustomed to following the advice of friends concerning his music, but he probably sensed after only one or two performances that the Andante needed replacing. The Introduzione uses the same paper type as the rest of the sonata (though the ink is different), providing further evidence that it was composed shortly after it, for Beethoven’s turnover of manuscript paper was fairly rapid. The autograph of the sonata as a whole contains few corrections, and was sufciently clear for Czerny to be able to sight-read the sonata direct from it.23 The autograph of the Andante is lost, as a re the sketches for the Introduzione. The ostensible reason for the replacement of the Andante was that it was too long, but such an explanation seems insuf cient: unprecedented length was not a problem for Beethoven in the Eroica Symphony or the future ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, and some writers have proposed additional reasons. Edwin Fischer suggests that the length of the Andante was only ‘possibly’ the reason for its replacement, though he does not offer any alternative.24 Donald Tovey is more forthright, proclaiming that the Andante was ‘quite out of touch with the harmonic style of the rest’, and adding a detailed explanation of his argument. 25 Jürgen Uhde as serts that the urgency of the forward thrust of the rst movement points directly towards the nale, and a lengthy slow movement was therefore unwarranted, even though there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the Andante. 26 The Andante does indeed seem relatively conventional and backward-looking (bars 8–12 are a close paraphrase of bars 40‒4 in the second movement of Mozart’s Sonata in B at, K. 282), with its few bold touches too infrequent compared with those in the outer movements. Beethoven may have considered all these points when deciding on a replacement. Certainly the Introduzione is much shorter than the Andante – it is only 28 bars compared with 205, though the bars are twice as long and the pace considerably slower; and it is not really a complete movement but just a slow introduction to the nale, like the ones later written for the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and Op. 110. It is also much more chromatic than the Andante, and veers away from the tonic key even more quickly than the  rst movement, creating forward thrust despite the slow tempo. The use of an E major chord in bar 2 recalls the key of the second subject of the rst movement, while the ch romatically descending bass in bars 1‒6 echoes that in the rst movement (bars 1–9). The ending alternates low and high registers, subtly preparing for the large leap bet ween rst two notes of the nale theme. Another important feature in the Introduzione is the use of unexpected sharpened notes. This feature has been noted for the rst movement (F) and the minuet (G and C: see above); the Introduzione uses the other two possible notes – D and A – in prominent positions in the rst three bars. Thus the Introduzione is far more thoroughly integrated into the motivic argument of the rest of the sonata than the Anda nte it replaced. The idea of thematic interconnections between movements in this sonata has been discussed at length by Rudolph Reti: ‘all its themes are bui lt from the same model with a uniformity not often found in a large musical work’. Reti’s ‘model’ is ‘stepwise ascent or descent from tonic to dominant, to which a small phrase,

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a loop, is annexed’.27 As example, he shows that the theme of the nale, if trans posed to C sharp minor, has four notes in common with the second subject of the rst movement. This connection seems somewhat tenuous, however, and the sketches reveal that this is not how Beethoven worked. They show that the movements – including the discarded Andante and minuet – are indeed thematically related in various ways, but the connections have been generated by an entirely different process from that outlined by Reti. Understanding this process provides additional insights into the sonata as a whole.

The creation of Op. 54 Before Beethoven had taken steps to publish the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata he had already star ted on the next sonata, Op. 54. The precise date cannot be established, but he was using the sketchbook Landsberg 6 until about March 1804 and there are no sketches for Op. 54 in this. Yet the next sketchbook, Mendelssohn 15, contains sketches for the second of the two movements but not the rst. Thus the rst movement was probably sketched in the same group of lost leaves (or small sketchbook) as the Introduzione of Op. 53 and some m issing sketches for Leonore.28 At one stage there was an interruption in the composition of the opera, either because part of the text was not ready or because the contract for the opera was temporarily cancelled after a change in management at the theatre where it was to be staged. 29 During this period Beethoven composed Op. 54 and the Triple Concerto. The latter was ready for a trial performance that took place shortly before 9 June.30 A batch of sketches for it appears on pages 14 – 17 of Mendelssohn 15, but a draft for the nale of Op. 54 works around these, jump ing from page 13 to page 18, with a few revisions inser ted at the foot of page 14 beneath the Triple Concerto sketches. Thus Op. 54, or at least its nale, must have been composed after the Triple Concerto, and therefore perhaps around June and July 1804. Having just completed a mighty ‘grand sonata’, Beethoven was clearly determined that the next one should be very different, though no less original. A two-movement design was probably planned from the outset, for there are no sketches suggesting an additional movement, and it would be hard to imagine either a slow movement or a scherzo after a moderately paced opening movement in minuet rhythm (marked ‘In Tempo d’un Minuetto’). Some sonatas by earlier composers (including Haydn) had concluded with a minuet, but starting with a minuet was highly abnormal. The contrast with the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata is also evident in the tonal strategy at the opening. Although both sonatas begin in the same bass register, by bar 3 of the ‘Waldstein’ the music has already modulated to the dominant, whereas in Op. 54 it stays emphatically in the tonic almost consistently right through the rst 24-bar section, with numerous F major chords. Innovations continue in the form that unfolds: a varied rondo form in which the two contrasting episodes are closely related. It is not until the coda that the triplet rhythms of the episodes are blended with the dotted rhythms of the main theme to create unity from diversity.


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For the second movement two continuity drafts are known, the second one appearing on pages 12 – 13 and 18 – 20 of the sketchbook, thus bypassing the concerto mentioned above.31 In the rst (pages 8 – 9) there are a few gaps. For exam ple, the exposition shows just the opening bars and a short gap before the octave left-hand leaps from the end of the exposition (see Example 8.5). The curved line over the rst two bars probably indicates a repeat of this gure, as occurs also in the nal version, but the means of moving to the dominant had not been worked out at this stage. What is striking, however, is that Beethoven had already decided on an unusually short exposition and a relatively very long development section as in the nal version, where the exposition is merely 20 bars wherea s the development is 94 bars. The development in the early sketches included a spectacular chromatic descent in minims in the bass – or rather, a series of adjoining chromatic descents – extending up to 22 consecutive bars. In the second draft the shape of the chromatic descent is altered but the length remains more or less unchanged.32 This passage, however, was nally reduced to a mere seven bars of descending minims (bars 37–43), plus a four-bar reprise added in the recapitulation (bars 130–3). This change helps to make the movement seem more organized and less discursive.

Example 8.5 Sketch for opening of Op. 54 (Bsb, Mendelssohn 15, p. 8).

One of the most notable features of this second draft is the tempo mark, ‘Moderato’. Although the movement consists of virtually non-stop semiquavers, Beethoven clearly did not initially imagine these moving very fast. Even in the nal version the marking was still only ‘Allegretto’ – not ‘Presto’, ‘Molto alle gro’, plain ‘Allegro’ or even ‘Allegro assai’ (which for Beethoven meant only ‘somewhat fast’, as he indicated elsewhere33). He often changed his mind about the tempo indication at a late stage, but this seems to have been through attempts to clarify his intentions rather than through a conceptual change. Thus his vision for this movement was a relatively slow allegretto that could be regarded as a moderato. Charles Rosen has argued strongly that the correct metronome mark for a crotchet here would be 76 (despite Czerny’s recommendation of 108 or more) and the same as in the Allegretto in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, 34 which Beethoven himself marked as 76. Other writers have also supported a lower gure than Czerny’s. A useful clue is provided by the chorus ‘O welche Lust’ in Beethoven’s Fidelio, for the main accompanying motif for this is actually sketched on pages adjacent to the sonata movement, such as pages 1 and 22 of Mendelssohn 15; it bears a striking resemblance to the theme of the sonata nale, with rising semiquavers in  metre (see Example 8.6). Beethoven marked

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this chorus ‘Allegretto’ in 1805, which he changed to ‘Allegretto con moto’ in the 1806 version and ‘Allegro ma non troppo’ in the 1814 version of the opera. Thus he clearly intended the chorus to be no slower, and perhaps a little faster, than the sonata movement. Yet it is rarely performed faster than 76 crotchets per minute, and often considerably slower, and it would certainly be ineffective at 108. This provides further support for the argument that the sonata nale should be no faster than 76 – if anything, it should be slightly slower.

Example 8.6 Sketch for accompanying motif in Fidelio (Bsb, Mendelssohn 15, p. 22).

The long-drawn-out composition of the ‘Appassionata’ Since sonatas were often sold in sets of three, Beethoven decided early on to add a third to go with the two he had just written. As usual, one was to be in a minor key – in this case F minor. Its stormy and highly expressive character has given rise to the nickname ‘Appassionata’, which appears to have originated in a fourhand arrangement by Julius André published about 1831.35 Czerny, who studied the sonata with Beethoven, regarded the nickname as ‘too grandiose’. 36 The rst known indication that Beethoven was planning a third sonata in the set appears in a letter he wrote to Breitkopf & Härtel dated 26 August 1804, which included the offer of ‘three new solo sonatas’, 37 two of which were obviously the two that became Opp. 53 and 54. His comment that one of the three could, if desired, contain an accompaniment (for violin) indicates that work on the ‘Appassionata’ had not yet begun, for it is inconceivable that he would have contemplated adding a violin part to this work (or either of the others) after it had been drafted. Any ideas he had for this third sonata at t his stage must therefore have been very rudimentary and tentative.38 It is unclear, however, precisely when Beethoven began the sonata or how quickly he progressed. Nearly all the surviving sketches appear in the sketch book Mendelssohn 15, which was devoted mainly to Leonore. This opera took nearly two years to complete, from early 1804 to autumn 1805, and during its sketching Beethoven appears to have left large empty spaces in the book, but he sometimes returned to them at a later date, adding sketches for either the same work or a different one, thereby confusing the chronology of the individual leaves. A similar procedure had occurred with sketches for Prometheus in 1801 (see Chapter 6). On ve of the pages containi ng sketches for the sonata the upper staves are occupied by ideas for the opera (various numbers), with the sonata sketched underneath, clearly at a later date, though it is impossible to conrm how much later. An added complication is that eight pages in the sketchbook – pages 183 – 6 and 199 – 202 – are interpolations from elsewhere,39 and they happen


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to occur between pages devoted to the sonata. When these interpolations are disregarded, the sonata appears on 14 consecutive pages from 182 to 203. This is more than 150 pages after the sketches for Op. 54, which might suggest a gap of many months, but the gap was probably not nearly so long. Indeed the sketches could have been entered shortly after Beethoven’s initial letter to Breitkopf & Härtel of 26 August 1804, and their position in the sketchbook is not a guide to their exact date. The sketches for the ‘Appassionata’ in Mendelssohn 15 have been published in facsimile and transcription by Martha Frohlich,40 but what may be the earliest sketches of all appear on a loose leaf not generally associated with the sonata.41 One side of the leaf contains various undulating scales, mostly in the bass clef and some with a three-at key signature.42 The other side also contains a bassclef scale gure, but this time as part of a two-stave sketch which, if read with a four-at key signature as in Example 8.7 and as F melodic minor (with im plied D and E naturals), is strikingly similar to bars 298–301a of the nale of the ‘Appassionata’. Any doubts about its connection to this sonata seem dispelled by a sketch on the next t wo staves, which includes some gu ration in   as in the rst movement, and the four-note motif that is so prominent in it from bar 10 onwards. The only accidental ats are for the note G, thus implying a four-at key signature.

Example 8.7 Early sketch apparently for nale of Op. 57 (Meyer leaf).

In the sketchbook itself, the sonata sketches display a variety of inks, suggesting that Beethoven reserved this part of the book for the sonata but worked on it intermittently. The rst two pages (182 and 187) show an abridged version of the exposition, development and coda, representing a movement that seems much shorter than the one that emerged. The lyrical second subject (bars 35‒41) is absent, while the development is represented by only a few bars. A later addition on page 187 seems to point towards a possible second subject in A at major, while the next two pages show various fragments but no overall coherence. Early ideas for the second and third movements were noted at the top of the following two pages (190 ‒ 1) respectively, with the rest left blank and lled in later in a different ink. From the outset Beethoven seems to have decided on a set of variations for the slow movement, but curiously the theme is not found in the sketches, and may have been worked out at the piano. Instead there are ideas for the beginnings of some variations. This was an obvious way of approaching such a form, for once

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the theme and the start of a variation are xed, the rest of the variation will more or less fall into place in most cases, with little need for sketching. The nale sketch, headed ‘Ultimo pezzo’, is in   rather than the  of the early sketch, and like its precursor it exhibits energetic semiquaver guration foreshadowing the character of the nale, but not its actual theme. Further down the page, however, and in a different ink, Beethoven at last wrote down the nale theme, preceded by the link from the slow movement, including the pivotal diminished-seventh chord. Thus the genesis of this nale is noteworthy in that it possessed a distinc tive character before the theme had been conceived, whereas in many movements the opening theme generated what followed. Nevertheless, this theme and the idea of a variation-form second movement were clearly conceived at an early stage, soon after work on the rst movement had commenced and long before many of its details had been worked out. The following page (192), not necessarily written later, is devoted to a complete draft of the exposition of the rst movement. Each of the rst 33 bars is in place, with only small differences from the nal version. Bars 51–6 are compressed into three bars, while the nal section of the exposition corresponds roughly to the nal version (bars 57–65). Yet remarkably there is no sign of the lyrical second subject in this draft – the music moves directly between what became bars 33 and 51 (Example 8.8). The 45-bar exposition represented in this sketch was not unduly short in a   metre (his next sonata, Op. 78, has only 33 bars plus slow introduction); but it must have seemed insufcient for the broad gestures he had designed, and certainly too slight after the grandeur of the Eroica Symphony and ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. Moreover there was insufcient contrast of mood. Thus at this surprisingly late stage he inserted the glorious second subject which, though motivically related to the rst, contributes so much to the movement as a whole, including an extensive portion of the development. The insertion appears in a different ink further down the page, but it seems not to have been a sudden inspiration, for the opposite page contains an earlier idea for a lyrical second subject in the major. Thus Beethoven worked gradually towards the nal version of this passage, and the decision to make the theme related to the rst came after the idea of having a major-key second subject.

Example 8.8 Sketch for Op. 57.I (Bsb, Mendelssohn 15, p. 192).

One conspicuous feature of the sketches is that many are notated in , as in Example 8.8. This was presumably to save time by avoiding numerous dotted crotchets; but Beethoven may have considered notating the whole movement in this way, using triplets where necessary, as in the rst movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. In that sonata the possibility of aligning the dotted gures i n


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the theme with the triplets in the accompaniment (as would have been intended by some composers) may have confused some performers. In the ‘Appassionata’, however, Beethoven prevented this possibility by using  8 notation in the nal version, over-dotting the upbeats (crotchet tied to semiquaver) in both main themes, although these gures are consistently notated with dotted quavers and semiquavers (as in the ‘Moonlight’) in the sketches. The remaining sketches for the sonata in Mendelssohn 15 are devoted largely to the development and coda of the rst movement, with some ideas for other parts of the movement. There are also, however, a few more sketches for the second movement and its transition to the rst few bars of the third, but these two later movements were sketched extensively only later, on pages now lost. As indicated above, the dating of the sketches is difcult to establish, be yond the fact that they were evidently not begun until after Beethoven’s letter of 26 August 1804. A valuable clue, however, is found in Ries’s account of the occasion when Beethoven conceived the theme for the nale of the sonata – an ac count that also provides fascinating details about Beethoven’s working methods. During a country walk together, according to Ries:

we went so far astray that we did not return to Döbling, where Beethoven was living, until about 8 o’ clock; over the whole way he had hummed to himself or par tly howled, always up and down, without singing any denite notes. To my question what it was he said: ‘A theme for the last Allegro of the sonata has occurred to me’ (in F minor, Opus 57). When we entered the room he ran to the piano without taking his hat off. I sat down in a cor ner and he had soon forgotten me. Now he stormed for at least an hour with the new and so beautiful nale of this sonata. Finally he stood up, was astonished to see me still there, and said: ‘I cannot give you another lesson today. I must do some more work.’ 43 Sometime before he published this account, Ries related the events to Ludwig Rellstab, who published his recollection of it in 1841, evidently believing the story was previously unknown (since he says he believes he will be thanked for the information).44 This little-known version is probably much less reliable, since it depends on Rellstab’s recall of what he had heard verbally from Ries some years earlier and is susceptible to Rellstab’s embroidering and distorting, but it is worth comparing. In this version Beethoven was staying in Baden (this must be Rellstab’s error, for Ries when prepar ing an account for publication would be unlikely to confuse Baden with Döbling, which is not at all similar). Ries visi ted him for a lesson ‘in a morning in summer’, but Beethoven proposed a walk instead. Ries had already overheard Beethoven extemporizing before the walk, and noted that it consisted not of a continuous fantasy but individual passages tried out this way and that. Ries then noted that phrases hummed du ring the walk seemed to resemble what he had heard beforehand. When they returned home after ‘several hours’, during which Beethoven had hummed and sung out loud some unintelligible notes and phrases, Beethoven announced: ‘Now I will play

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you something,’ and played the ‘Allegro’ (presumably the nale, Allegro ma non troppo) of this sonata. There is no mention here of any further experimentation as described in the other account. This is one of very few occasions when Beethoven’s actual acts of creation of a specic work were witnessed and documented by a contemporary, and Ries’s reports are extremely revealing, despite the inconsistencies of the two accounts. In later years Beethoven carried a small sketchbook in his pocket for jotting down themes during his walks, but no such pocket sketchbooks are known from this period and it is clear that he did not have one on this occasion. His rst attempts at registering the theme were evidently made at the piano before the walk (a detail omitted in Ries’s own published account), but further attempts had to be done vocally, due to lack of a sketchbook; and as the nale theme of this sonata is al most unsingable he had to hum up and down unintelligibly, without ‘any denite notes’. The notes he sang had to be mere approximations to those he had in mind, though Ries recognized their similarity to what had previously been tried on the piano. The third stage in composing the nale was to sit at the piano and extemporize, playing what he had worked out during the wal k and developing it in various ways for an hour or more. By this time the theme and much of the movement would probably have been in place, at least tentatively. Only after this did he move on to the next stage, which would have been writing sketches into his sketchbook and establishing the precise details. Ries had presumably left by this stage. The chronological implications of this account are also signicant. Beethoven habitually resided in Vienna during the winter months, but often spent the summer at a nearby village. Since he was staying in Döbling when the nale theme occurred to him, this must have been before or after the winter months; and he appears to have stayed in Döbling from about the end of July to early November in 1804.45 Ries seems to have had little contact with Beethoven in 1805 and there is no evidence that Beethoven stayed in Döbling that year. More over, it seems highly improbable that Beethoven’s claims in January and again in April 1805 that the sonata was more or less ready were completely ctitious, as some have supposed.46 Thus the events described by Ries must have taken place in 1804. By October it would have been dark long before 8 o’clock; although a walk in the dark was not impossible, it seems unlikely that the two would have spent long outside after nightfall, which suggests a date no later than September. Since Rellstab’s version mentions ‘summer’, it was probably early rather than late September. This would mean that Beethoven would have begun the rst move ment around the time he rst wrote to Breitkopf & Härtel about a possible set of three sonatas on 26 August, and was turni ng his attention to the nale theme by perhaps the middle of September. The nale sketch headed ‘Ultimo pezzo’ (Mendelssohn 15, page 191), and the even earlier one on the Meyer leaf, were clearly made before Beethoven’s walk with Ries, but these sketches are noteworthy in that they show that the movement possessed a distinctive character before the theme had been conceived. In this respect the sketches apparently support Ries’s anecdote, for they could suggest that the theme itself had caused more of a problem than the general character.


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The difculty of solving this problem would explain why Beethoven was so enthused when he nally did establish the theme during his walk with Ries. The recognizable nale sketch further down page 191, however, must have been made some time after the walk. The rest of the movement, and the nishi ng touches to the previous two, still had to be worked out in detail, and it was a long time aft er mid-September before the sonata was nally ready to be delivered to a publisher. By November agree ment with Breitkopf & Härtel had been reached for the sale of the th ree sonatas (see below), but the ‘Appassionata’ was clearly not ready, for Beethoven’s brother Carl wrote on 24 November that it could not be sent for almost another month. 47 In a letter of 16 January 1805, Beethoven claimed it was ‘only a lack of good copyists’ that prevented its being sent,48 thus implying that it was ready. Three months later he was still making the same excuse: ‘the lack of a reliable copyist, and the very heavy commitments of the only one to whom I can now give such things, have held me back and make it [the sending of the sonata] impossible for me even at the present moment’.49 Beethoven sometimes made exaggerated claims about the progress of a composition, but he did not normally indicate that a work was ready apart from copying unless it were at least almost complete. Thus it can be concluded that the main body of work on the ‘Appassionata’ had been completed by early 1805, although it was not published till much later. It seems, in fact, that Beethoven was more reluctant than usual to send the work to a publisher until he was f ully satised. He regarded this sonata, according to Czerny, as his nest, at least before the ‘Hammerklavier’,50 and this may have been the main reason that he held it back while he tried to rene it. The Fifth Symphony, which he was composing during the same period, suffered a similar fate, for although it was begun before the Fourt h it was not nished until at least a year after it. He may have written an autograph score of the sonata in early 1805, but the one that survives appears to date from 1806, judging by its paper type: all his other works written on similar paper date from that year.51 In summer 1806 he visited Silesia with Prince Lichnowsky and, on his retur n journey in October, water from a storm penetrated his trunk, damaging several manuscripts, including the autograph of the ‘Appassionata’. This still bears the stains from the water, conrming that it was taken on the trip. The manuscript was still wet when Beethoven showed it to his friend the pianist Marie Bigot, according to an account written by her husband Paul Bigot in 1859: He [Beethoven] came to see us and laughing showed his work, still all wet, to my wife, who began to look at it. Following the striking opening she sat down at the piano and began to play it. Beethoven had not expected this and was surprised that Madame Bigot was not held up at all by the frequent erasures and changes he had made.52 Beethoven later presented the manuscript to the Bigots, who took it to Paris, where it still resides.53 Much of the manuscript is clear and easy to read, but the ‘erasures and changes’ are particularly frequent i n the nale. These changes

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affected mainly the texture, but also dynamics, melodic line and harmony. They are most prominent in the central theme in B at minor (bars 142–58), where the texture and harmonic direction were substantially altered in the autograph.54 If such changes were still being made in 1806, perhaps even while Beethoven was in Silesia, it is hardly surprising that he was so reluctant to send a less than perfect work to Breitkopf & Härtel nearly two years earlier. His excuse that copyists were not available may have had some validity, but it was clearly not the only reason for the delay. The delay could have been caused partly by a payment for unusually long private use by some sponsor, but there is no evidence for this.

Publication of the three sonatas Beethoven had already had some successful dealings with the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf & Härtel when he offered them three new sonatas in his letter of 26 August 1804. He had decided to give this rm rst preference after noting that other publishers had been extremely slow in publishing his compositions, whereas Breitkopf & Härtel had claimed to be able to publish numerous copies of a work within a few weeks. It was this speed of publication that attracted him. Extensive correspondence between Beethoven (or his brother Carl) and Breitkopf & Härtel has been preserved, indicating in detail the progress of the negotiations, although ultimately the deal fell through.55 He claimed that other publishers were offering him ‘nearly 60 ducats’ (about 270 orins) for a single solo sonata – only a slight exaggeration56 – but he was prepared to accept less if publication were quick. Carl signicantly indicated in October that the three sonatas were to be published separately because of their different layouts; the assumption must have been that they would attract different types of pianist. This was the rst time that Beethoven had divided up a group of sonatas in this way, apart from the two separately published sonatas in Op. 27, but from this time onwards all his sonatas were given separate opus numbers, as were his other multi-movement works after the three quartets of Op. 59. The individuality of each work was clearly now a factor in how they were to be marketed. Breitkopf & Härtel responded immediately and encouragingly to Beethoven’s offer of the sonatas, and nally agreed to his fee – 1100 orins for the three sonatas, the Eroica Symphony and the Triple Concerto – in a lett er dated 3 November 1804. The rm reckoned to be able to publish all ve works within nine weeks of receipt, and probably sooner.57 Breitkopf & Härtel, however, planned to share costs with the publishing rm Clementi in London, which was possible only if Beethoven agreed to give them universal rights over publication, preventing him from doing a separate deal with Clementi or anyone else in another countr y. Beethoven neither refused nor agreed to sign such a contract, but his brother Carl observed that checking the copies was taking a long time, since Beethoven was so busy with his opera. He told Breitkopf & Härtel in a letter of 24 November 1804 that the rst of the three so natas could be sent in 12 or 14 days and the other two in a f urther fortnight, and it seems clear that the ‘Appassionata’ was still not nished at that stage. Thus the


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works and contract had still not been sent when Breitkopf & Härtel wrote on 22 December that publication could not now take place for at least three to four months. Beethoven responded on 16 January 1805, indicating that two of the sonatas and the symphony had been sent (along with a complimentary copy of an unpublished song, ‘Andenken’), but that difculties with copyists and with checking had caused a delay to the rest of the package. On 18 April he sent a similar message, giving the same reasons for the delay and hoping to send the two remaini ng works within four to six weeks. A few days later, however, he received a letter from Breitkopf & Härtel dated 30 January that had apparently been delayed, which offered him a reduced fee. He replied angrily the following day: ‘Send me back all the manuscripts you have received from me, including the song. I cannot and shall not accept a smaller honorarium; only for the one already agreed can you keep the manuscripts.’58 Breitkopf & Härtel nally replied to his two letters on 21 June, not not addressing their contents specically but indicating that they were returning all his manuscripts, which seem not to have survived. Without waiting for the reply or the return of the manuscripts, however, Beethoven promptly took his autograph score of the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata round to the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir (Bureau des arts et d’industrie), who had published his two sonatas sonata s Op. 49 earlier that year. The rm r m quickly engraved engr aved the sonata direct from f rom the autograph, and were able able to announce it in the Wiener Zeitung as early as 15 May. 59 Even during printing, however, Beethoven was still making renements. The most noteworthy are the alteration of F @ to F$ in bar 105 105 of the t he rst movement, where whe re the printed pri nted plate had to be amended, amended , and the tempo marks of the Introduzione and Rondo, which were changed respectively tively from Adagio to Adagio molto, molto, and from Allegretto Allegret to to Allegretto Al legretto moderato. Whereas the rst r st change was conceptual, the changes of tempo marks were probably an attempt to indicate the speed more precisely precisely, rather than tha n a sudden desire for a slower slower pace. Another feature feature that t hat appears only in the printed edition ed ition is the dedication: curiously, this was to Count Ferdinand Waldstein, whom Beethoven had not seen for some years. Perhaps the dedication was a belated expression of thanks for Waldstein’s support during Beethoven’s last years in Bonn. The second sonata, Op. 54, was also passed to the Kunst- und IndustrieComptoir, but its publication was a much more leisurely affair. Judging by the plate numbers numbe rs (449 for Op. 53; 53; 507 for for Op. 54), one can deduce de duce that th at the publishpubli shers considered other items were in more urgent need of publication, and it was not advertised until nearly a year later, on 9 April 1806, nally appearing on 3 May.60 It was published without a dedication, perhaps because, li ke the sonatas of Op. 49, 49, Beethoven considered considere d it one of of his less impor tant works. But the omisomis sion could equally have been an oversight or the result of a mix-up. The ‘Appassionata ‘Appassionata’’, as indicated above, was not ready for publication until after Beethoven’s Beethoven’s return retu rn from f rom Silesia in October Octobe r 1806; 1806; but it was taken to the KunstKun st- und Industrie-Comptoir soon afterwards, for Beethoven was apparently on his way there when he showed the still-wet autograph to the Bigots. The autograph omits quite a number of accidentals, but a proof copy survives in which nearly nea rly all of them

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have already been inserted;61 thus it may well be a second proof. It includ includes es a few handwritten corrections by Beethoven, such as for a wrong pitch (I bar 223, rst right-hand note corrected corre cted from f rom B to A) and a misplaced pedal p edal sign (I bar 231 231), both of which are correct in the autograph. Beethoven seems also, however, to have made slight revisions between autograph and a nd second proof. In bar 62 of the second movement, an E$ in the autograph (right hand, 13th 13th note) is shown in the proof as i n an earlier proof. In the nal chord E@ but clearly altered from a $ that was present in of this movement, the right hand is marked ‘secco’ (as opposed to arpeggiando) in the autograph, but the proof copy includes an arpeggiando sign and omits the word ‘secco’. Beethoven left both these passages unaltered in the second proof, which implies the changes were were deliberate, and they appeared in print pri nt in this form. Some modern editors, ed itors, however, however, have have restored the autograph version in one or both places. Another disputed d isputed spot occu rs in bar 352 of of the nale.  nale. Here the autograph originally showed bottom F, with four leger lines, for the two lowest left-hand notes, but when Beethoven rewrote the page he put only three leger lines, thus making maki ng the notes a third higher. The printed printe d edition reverts to four leger lines (see (see Example 8.9). The most likely explanation is that he accidentally omitted a leger line in his haste (perhaps partly through subconscious reference to the treble clef, where F has only three leger lines) but corrected the music for the print, perhaps orally. orally. Another possibility is that he briey preferred A@ to F when writing out the passage the second time, but then decided his original thought was better. Less likely, but not impossible, is that he came to prefer A @ but somehow overlooked the Fs in the proof copy and left them unchanged. Both readings rea dings are plausible, but stylistically the printed version is more probable, since the nearest equivalent in another Beethoven work appears to be the end of the String Stri ng Quartet Quar tet Op. 18 No. No. 5, where the cello alternates tonic and dominant (not mediant and dominant) domi nant) in a somewhat similar context. This concurs with the textual evidence that Beethoven intended F rather than A@, at least by the time t he sonata was published.

Example 8.9 Op. 57.III, 57.III, bar 352 (published version). version).

The printed edition was prepared during autumn and winter 1806–07, and its publication was nally announced on 18 February 1807.62 It appeared with a dedication to Count Franz Brunsvik. He was a close friend of Beethoven, who used to address him with the intimate ‘du’. Around 1804–05, during the later


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stages of the composition of the sonata, Beethoven had fallen in love with the count’s sister, the recently widowed Countess Josephine Deym. The relationship was fraught with dif culties, but they retained a deep love and affection for each other and he described her as his ‘only beloved’ in a letter of September 1807.63 The fact that the sonata was dedicated to Count Brunsvik may not be entirely unrelated, though the precise reason for the dedication is unknown. When Opp. 54 and 57 were published, their title pages described them respectively as ‘LIme Sonate’ and ‘LIVme Sonate’, Sonate’, 51st 51st and 54th 54t h sonata, sonata , along with their opus numbers. These labels puzzled many subsequent writers, including Czerny: could Beethoven really have written 50 previous sonatas, and two more between these two t wo?? The solution was found by Hans-Werne Hans-Wernerr Küthen, who showed that these t hese were the 51st 51st and 54th sonatas published by the Kunst- und Indust rie-Comptoir. rie- Comptoir.64 Although published separately, separately, with opus numbers that are not entirely consecutive, the three sonatas composed during what is generally regarded as the rst part of Beethoven Beethoven’’s middle period form an excellent excellent trilogy, trilogy, with some some interesting interconnections between them. Op. 54 is sometimes regarded as the valley between two mountains, and it makes ma kes an effective contrast to them, them , providing a more relaxed interlude between the majestic ‘Waldstein’ and the stormy ‘Appassionata’. The absence of a sharp key in a trilogy is unusual, but the key relationships are cunningly designed. The F major start of Op. 54 is particularly effective if it follows the mighty C major chords at the end of its predecessor; similarly the mysterious F minor m inor opening openi ng of the ‘Appassiona ‘Appassionata’ ta’ provides both continuity and contrast with the end of Op. 54, the last chord of which is in the t he same register as the opening of Op. 57. Remarkably, all three sonatas begin with an unharmonized C, and the dotted rhythms at the start of Op. 54 anticipate the overdotted rhythms that begin Op. 57. 57. Whether or not the three th ree were commissioned together or by three th ree separate individuals, there can ca n be no doubt that Beethoven saw them as belonging together, together, despite his desire that t hat they be published separately. separately. Performing them t hem consecutively as a seven-movement seven-movement multi-sonata multi-sonata would be a major challenge for any pianist, but it would would certainly cert ainly provide an extra struct st ructural ural level beyond beyond just the sum of its parts. par ts.

Notes 1 BB-113; BB-113; Alb-49. Alb -49. 2 See Breitkopf & Härtel’s letter to Beethoven of 3 Nov. 1802, which indicates that 225 orins was equivalent to 50 ducats: BB-109; Alb-47. 3 TF, p. p. 335. 335. Erard and TF give the date as 18th 18th of Thermidor, Therm idor, using the revolutionary calendar. 4 BB-165; Alb-71 Alb -71.. 5 For a detailed discussion of the Erard piano, its differences from English and Viennese models, and its subsequent history in the hands of Beethoven, see Tilman Skowroneck, Beethoven Skowroneck, Beethoven the th e Pianist: Biograph Pianist: Biographical, ical, Organolog ical and PerformancePerfor mance Practical Practica l Aspects Aspect s of His Years as a Public Performer (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 2007), pp. 141–70. A revised and shortened version of the book has been published by Cambridge Cambr idge University Press. Pres s. 6 Transcription, Transcription, commentary and facsimile of the entire sketchbook sketchbook (Kj, (Kj, Landsberg 6) are in Lewis Lockwood and Alan Gosman, ed., Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ ‘Eroica’ Sketchbo S ketchbook ok , 2 vols (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013).

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Der ry, ‘Beethoven’s ‘Beethoven’s Experimental Experi mental Figurations Figu rations and a nd Exercises for Piano’, Piano’, PhD 7 See Siân Derry, diss. ( University of Manchester, Mancheste r, 2012), 2012), pp. 292–7. 292–7. 8 All these piano gurations and preliminary sketches are discussed in more detail in Barry Cooper, ‘Beethoven’s Preliminary Sketches for the “Waldstein” Sonata’, Ad Parnassum Parnas sum (forthcoming). (forthcoming). 9 Lockwood and Gosman, Gosman, ed., Beethoven’s ed., Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ ‘Eroica’ , vol. 2, p. 209. At the beginning of the sketch is a circle (which they do not transcribe) that resembles Beethoven’s usual pedal-off pedal- off sign, which suggests that he wanted the start star t of the sonata to be without pedal. 10 See Barry Bar ry Cooper, Co oper, ‘The Evolution of the First Movement of Beethoven’s Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata’, Music & Letters Letter s, 58 (1977), 170–91. A further discussion can be found in Lockwood and Gosman, ed., Beethoven’s ed., Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ ‘Eroica’ , vol. 1, pp. 63–9. 11 The autograph is in BNba, HCB Mh 7. 7. Facsimi Facsimile le edition in Martin Mar tin Staehelin, Staeheli n, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven, Beethoven , Klaviersonate Klavierson ate in C-dur C-du r op. 53 (Waldstein-Sonate) (Waldstein-S onate) (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1984). 1984). 12 BNba, HCB Mh M h 71, f. 4r. 13 The connection is noted in Alan Gosman, ‘From Melodic Patterns to Themes: The Sketches for the Original Version of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, Op. 53’, in Genetic Criticism and the Creative Process , ed. William Kinderman and Joseph E. Jones (Rochester, (Rochest er, NY: NY: University of Rochester Roche ster Press, P ress, 2009), 20 09), pp. 95–107, 95–107, at 102–5. 14 This was a common approach for for Beethoven: see Barry Barr y Cooper, Beethoven Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Process (Oxford: Clare ndon Press, Pr ess, 1990), pp. 145–7. 145–7. 15 The last three notes of Example 8.2(d) are transcribed one degree lower in Lockwood and Gosman, ed., Beethoven’s ed., Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ ‘Eroica’ , but this interpretation of Beethoven’s unclear notation seems less likely. 16 See Cooper, Coop er, ‘The Evolution’, Evolution’, p. 179. 17 See Lockwood Lockwood and Gosman, ed., ed., Beethoven’s Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ ‘Eroica’ , vol. 1, 1, pp. 72–4, for a diagramdiag rammatic indication of the distribution of the sketches. 18 For more on this collection of bagatelles, see Barry Barr y Cooper, Beethoven Cooper, Beethoven and a nd the Creative Process, Process, pp. 263–70. 19 WR, p. 89. 20 KC, p. 226. 21 This is clearly clearly visible in the facsimile edition, ed. Staehelin. Staeheli n. 22 LvBWV, vol. 1, p. 290; vol. 2, pp. 139–40. 23 KC, p. 206. 24 Edwin Fischer, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas Sonata s, trans. Stanley Godman and Paul Hamburger (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), 1959), p. 81. 81. 25 Donald Francis Tovey, A Companion Companio n to Beethoven’ Bee thoven’ss Pianoforte Pianofor te Sonatas Sona tas,, rev. and ed. Barry Cooper (London: ABRSM, 1998), p. 150. 26 Jürgen Uhde, Beethovens Beethoven s 32 Klaviersonaten Klavierson aten (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1968, repr. 2012), pp. 584–5. 27 Rudolph Reti, Thematic Patterns in Sonatas of Beethoven , ed. Deryck Cooke (London: Faber, 1967), p. 166. 28 Landsberg 6 contains sketches for nos. 1–5 of Leonore Leonore but Mendelssohn 15 begins with no. 12 (see JTW JT W, pp. 143 and 149). 149). Sketches for nos. 6 –11 –11 are largely missing. missi ng. 29 TF, p. 347. Volek and Jaroslav Macek, Ma cek, ‘Beethoven’s ‘Beethoven’s Rehearsals Rehea rsals at the Lobkowitz’s’ Lobkowitz’s’,, 30 See Tomislav Volek The Musical Times, Times, 127 (1986), 75–80, esp. 78–9. 31 For a detailed account of these sketches, see Martha Frohlich, ‘Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in i n F Major, Op. 54, Second Secon d Movement: The Final Version and Sketches’, Sketches’, Journal of Musicology, Musicology, 18 (2001), 98–128. 32 The various versions of this passage are quoted in Frohlich, ‘Op. 54’, pp. 116–18. Stewa rt Deas, ‘Beethoven’s ‘Beethoven’s “Allegro Assai”’, Music & Letters 33 See Stewart Letter s, 31 (1950), 333–6. 34 Charles Rosen, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: Sonata s: A Short Companion (New Companion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 87–92, 190.


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35 KC, vol. 1, p. 239. Only a later edition of 1838 is cited in LvBWV, vol. 1, p. 311, and elsewhere. 36 Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, ed. Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1970), p. 12. 37 BB-188; A-96. 38 For this reason it is extremely unlikely that Op. 57 was well under way by August 1804, as suggested in Theodore Albrecht, ‘Beethoven’s Leonore: A New Compositional Chronology Based on May–August, 1804 Entries in Sketchbook Mendelssohn 15’, Journal of Musicology, 7 (1989), 165–90. 39 See JTW, pp. 147–8. 40 Martha Frohlich, Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ Sonata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 41 The leaf (known as SV 361) is from the André Meyer Collection, and is listed as item 361 in Hans Schmidt, ‘Verzeichnis der Skizzen Beethovens’, Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 6 (1965–68 [1969]), 7–128, at p. 110. It was sold at Sotheby’s, Paris, in October 2012: see Patricia Stroh, ‘Beethoven Auction Report (2012)’, The Beethoven Journal , 27/2 (2012), 84–5. 42 See Derry, ‘Beethoven’s Experimental Figurations’, pp. 294–5. 43 Alexander Wheelock Thayer (rev. Hermann Deiters and Hugo Riemann), Ludwig van Beethovens Leben, 5 vols (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1907–23), vol. 2, p. 435; TF, p. 356 (translation amended). 44 See KC, pp. 693–4. 45 BB-185, note 6. 46 See, for example, Sieghard Brandenburg, ‘Das Leonore-Skizzenbuch Mendelssohn 15: Einige Probleme der Chronologie’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien, 2 (2001), 9–26, at p. 13. 47 BB-199; Alb-91. 48 BB-209; A-108. 49 BB-218; A-111. 50 Czerny, Proper Performance, pp. 12 and 48. 51 Frohlich, Appassionata, p. 129. 52 KC, p. 73, which gives the original French from which the above translation has been made. 53 Pn, Ms 20. There are several facsimile editions, most recently as Wolfram Steinbeck, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven, Klaviersonate f-moll “Appassionata” op. 57: Faksimile nach dem Autograph der Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (Laaber: Laaber, 2011). 54 See Frohlich, Appassionata, pp. 131–41. 55 See the relevant letters between BB-188 and BB-226, and their English translations in Emily Anderson, t r. and ed., The Letters of Beethoven (London: Macmillan, 1961), and Theodore Albrecht, tr. and ed., Letters to Beethoven and Other Correspondence (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1996). 56 Simrock had recently paid 50 ducats for the accompanied sonata Op. 47: see BB-188, note 12. 57 BB-198; Alb-87; their initial response of 30 August is in BB-189; Alb-83. The rm was run by Gottf ried Härtel, who wrote the letters for them. 58 BB-223; A-118. 59 LvBWV, vol. 1, p. 290. 60 For the announcement, see LvBWV, vol. 1, p. 294; for the actual publication date, see Hans-Werner Küthen, ‘Pragmatic instead of Enigmatic: “The Fifty-First Sonata” of Beethoven’, The Beethoven Newsletter , 7 (1992), 68–73, at p. 71. 61 Wgm, Brahms Nachlass VII.45363. 62 LvBWV, vol. 1, p. 313; Küthen, ‘Fifty-rst’, p. 71. 63 BB-294; A-151. 64 Küthen, ‘Fifty-rst’.

9

A Clementi Clementi commission

Op. 78 in F sharp: Adagi Ada gio o canta ca ntabil bilee [later:] Alle [later:] Allegr gro o ma non no n trop tr oppo. po. Allegr Alle gro o vivace. Op. 79 in G: Presto G: Presto alla tedesca. ted esca. Andante. And ante. Allegro vivace. vi vace. Op. 81a 81a in E at: Das Lebe Wohl: Adagio [later:] Allegro. [later:] Allegro. Abwesenheit: Abwesenheit: Andante Andante espressivo. Das Wiedersehn: Vivacissimamente. Vivacissimamente.

Clementi and Rudolph Muzio Clementi, the celebrated pianist, composer, piano manufacturer and publisher, had already published Beethoven’s Beethoven’s sonata Op. 31 31 No. No. 3 after aft er obtaining obtain ing a score from Nägeli (see Chapter 7), and 7), and had ha d tried tr ied to negotiate with Breitkopf Breitkopf & Härtel for a dual publication of some subsequent Beethoven works, although the deal fell through.1 When he visited Vienna in 1807, however, he decided to deal directly with Beethoven, and in a contract dated 20 April 1807 he obtained the British publication rights for six new works. These works were also sold locally to the Kunst- und u nd Industrie-Comptoir Industrie- Comptoir (or (or Bureau des arts a rts et d’industrie) d’industrie),, enabling Beethoven to receive two fees for each work. None None were sonatas, but the Clementi Clement i contract also stipulated that Beethoven would compose, ‘in an unspecied time and at his convenience, three sonatas or two sonatas and a fantasy, for piano with or without accompaniments as he wishes, and that M. Clementi will a rrange payment to him of 60 pounds sterling in the same way. way.’2 The fee of £20 (approxi(approximately 40 ducats) per sonata was wa s a good one, since it would still leave Beethoven free to sell these works to a Continental publisher for a second fee. Clementi left Vienna shortly after this, and when he returned in late 1808 Beethoven had not begun work on the promised sonatas. Beethoven was also aggrieved that he had not been paid for the other six works specied in the contr act, although he had dispatched copies of of all of them, as Clementi indicated in a letter lett er 3 of 28 December 1808. Payment seems not to have reached him from London until at least September 1809, and he was evidently unwilling to compose anything more for Clementi until it did. No new sonatas were completed completed at that time therefore, therefore, although Clementi remained in Vienna. During this period Beethoven became closely acquainted with Archduke Rudolph (1788–1 (1788–183 831 1). There is no conr c onr med meeting meet ing between be tween them before b efore 1808, 1808,

A Clementi commission c ommission

141

but in 1809 Rudolph became be came one of three t hree co-sponsors co-spo nsors in an agreement agre ement providing Beethoven with a lifetime annuity; the agreement was ratied on 1 March. Rudolph received the dedication of the Fourth Piano Concerto in 1808 and was to receive many more. He may also have commissioned the Fifth Piano Concerto at the end of 1808, 1808, and started star ted to take t ake lessons with Beethoven shortly shortly after wards. On 9 April, however, Austria declared war on France after an uneasy peace. After the Battle of Eggmühl on 22–23 April, invasion of Vienna by the French army under Napoleon became a real threat, th reat, and after the Battle of Ebelsburg Ebelsburg on 4 3 May it became almost inevitable. Most of the aristocracy, including Rudolph, prepared prepa red to leave the t he city, cit y, and Beethoven decided to mark Rudolph’ Rudolph’s depar de partu ture re by composing c omposing a movement entitled ent itled ‘Das Lebe L ebe Wohl’ [The [T he Farewell]. Farewell]. This later became the t he rst movement of a new sonata.

‘Das Lebe Wohl’ The earliest signs of the work appear on pages 42 – 3 of his then current sketch book, Landsberg Landsbe rg 5.5 The starting-point was the words ‘Lebe wohl’, which Beethoven represented by the three-note motif G F E @, using the same key as his nearly-completed nearly-completed Fifth Piano Concerto. Concert o. The motif appears on page 43 of 43 of the sketchbook, complete with the words written above it, just as in the nal ver sion. Since the time between Rudolph’s decision to leave Vienna and his actual departure must have been under two weeks and perhaps as little as two days, Beethoven had to compose compo se ‘Das Lebe Wohl’ Wohl’ rather quickly. The concentrated concentr ated ap pearance pear ance of the sketches (which (which occupy just pages 42 – 5 of Landsberg Landsb erg 5) suggests that he did indeed indee d do so, in order to be ready rea dy to present the movement to Rudolph before his depar ture. tu re. The sketchbook shows only on ly one extended extende d draft, draf t, covering almost the entire movement. Whether earlier draft s are lost is unclear, and there may also have been some preliminar y trials tr ials on the piano, but the absence of other drafts provides additional evidence that the movement was composed at speed. Yet it is still stil l a highly high ly impressive impressive and remarkably rema rkably original structure, str ucture, in i n which the ‘Lebe Wohl’ theme of the slow introduction reappears as the second subject of the exposition, as well as lurking as a kind of subtheme inside the rst subject (which incorporates the three notes), notes), creating an u nusually integrated movement. Klaus-Jürgen Sachs has divided the sketch material for the movement into 17 separate sketches, but several of them link together to provide the single main draft (sketches 8, 12, 1, 4, 13 and 15). 6 The remaining sketches represent much shorter, alternative ideas. The extended draft corresponds very closely to the nal version, the main difference being in the coda. An early attempt at the coda (page 42) 42) shows a much shorter version, with bar 200 (or 212) apparently followed directly by bar ba r 243. 243. Even in this version the coda co da would be unusually unusu ally long, however, since it would closely match the length of the entire exposition. An even longer longer version version appears as part pa rt of the main mai n continuity draft, dr aft, though it is still some way short of the nal version, since bar 204 leads straight to bar 209, and there is only a short passage of running run ning quavers and trills tril ls instead of the extended development of of the ‘Lebe ‘Lebe Wohl’ Wohl’ motif with its extraordinar extraordi nary y dissonances, dissonance s, caused

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by superimposition superi mposition of tonic and a nd dominant domin ant har mony (bars (bar s 223–42 223– 42). ). This missing mi ssing section appears in a variant sketch covering the last 51 bars (205–55), at the end of page 45. 45. Thus the coda ended e nded up with a massive 94 bars, compared with only 53 for for the exposition, as if Beethoven was tr ying to draw out a lingering l ingering farewell as long as possible. The sketchbook also includes on page 45 an 45 an inscription that he noted down for the presentation score: ‘Das Lebe wohl – gewidmet und aus dem Herzen geschrieben S[einer]. K[aiserlichen]. H[oheit]’ (‘The Fare well – dedicated and written from the heart to His Imperial Highness’). He then deleted ‘Das Lebe wohl’ and substituted ‘Der Abschied’ (‘The Parting’), though the original title was reinstated when he came to write out the score. The expression ‘aus dem Herzen geschrieben’ is an indication of Beethoven’s affection and admiration for his illustrious patron. Once the date of departure had been xed he added this below the inscription in the sketchbook: ‘am 4ten May’. On the presentation score he wrote a slightly slightly different inscr iption, no longer mentioning mentioning that t hat the work was written writ ten ‘from the heart’; heart’; but the date was preser ved: ‘Das Lebe Wohl Wohl / Vien am 4ten May 1809 bey der Abreise S kaiserl. Hoheit des verehrten Erzherzogs Rudolf’ (‘The Fare Well Well / Vienna on 4 May 1809 on the departu depar ture re of His Imperial Imper ial Highness the esteemed Archduke Rudolph’). Although Beethoven wrote the date in two different places, it appears that Rudolph did not actually leave Vienna until unti l the following day, 5 May. May.7 The date d ate in the t he sketchbook sketchbook and on the autograph must therefore therefore refer to a nal meeting between composer and dedicatee when the score was handed over. It then remained in Rudolph’s possession and, like most of his collection, was eventually deposited in the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, where it still resides.8 Beethoven evidently retained the original composing score (now lost), and the fact that he himself had to write out the fair copy for Rudolph, rather than nd a copyist, is a further indication that he was much pressed for time.

After ‘Das Lebe Wohl’ Usually when Beethoven approached the end of rst-movement sketching he jotted down possible ideas for later movements. On some occasions, too, he noted down at an early stage a plan for all the movements in a multi-movement work. Both features are strikingly absent here, however. This suggests that when he wrote ‘Das Lebe Wohl’ he had no plans to add further movements. He may, of course, have made such plans in his mind either then or sometime during the summer of 1809, but there is no written sign of any. During that time, in fact, the French invasion and subsequent disruption of everyday life meant that he felt unable to compose very much at all. In a letter of 26 July he wrote: ‘Since 4 May I have brought into the world little coherent work, not much more than just a fragf rag9 ment here and there. The whole situation has affected my life and soul …’. His sketchbook for the section after the sketches for ‘Das Lebe Wohl’ conrms this claim, showing many little fragments but ‘little coherent work’. The fragments are of great variety and some are clearly for piano. Some of these may represent

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possible ideas for the sonatas that t hat were promised promise d for Clementi, and a few are aca ctually tua lly labelled ‘Sonata’. ‘Sonata’. One of these (page ( page 54) contains 54) contains three bars of an ‘Allegro moderato’ in C minor, followed followed by three th ree bars ba rs of an ‘Allegro’ ‘Allegro’ in C major, presumably for the same sonata. Another, again headed ‘Sonata’, shows the rst four bars of a ‘Moderato’ in C major (page 69). There 69). There are also an ‘erstes Stück [rst movement] movement] moderato’ moderat o’ in E major, followed followed by a ‘Presto’ in E minor (page ( page 57), and 57), and a series of sketches that include a ‘leztes [last] Stück’ in C minor (page 65), all of similar brevity. The most signicant is one headed ‘Sonata facile’ (page 75), for it shows the theme of the Sonata in G, Op. 79, but in C major (Example 9.1), thus conrm con rming ing that work on Op. 79 had not yet begun by lat e summer 1809. 1809. The sketch shows a four-bar phrase answered by a matching one that ends with a cadence in the tonic. The repeat sign that follows may refer to the whole exposition rather than just the t he initial phrase, phra se, and Beethoven Beethoven also indicated that he wanted the ‘second part’ (development plus recapitulation) repeated – an idea that survived to the nal version. The melody is rather plain and after its opening notes, with its second phrase too similar to the rst, and it needed much renement before reaching its nal version. At this early stage, however, it was simply set aside for possible future futu re development, like many of the surrounding surrou nding sketches.

Example 9.1 Preliminary sketch for Op. 79 (Bsb, Landsberg 5, p. 75).

Instead of proceeding with the t he music promised for for Clementi, Beethoven Beethoven turned tu rned his attention to a new string quartet (Op. 74). Probably he had still not received the long overdue overdue payment from London. There are indications from a little later, however, that he had decided to make ‘Das Lebe Wohl’ the rst movement of a three-movement sonata, for preliminary ideas for the later movements appear on page 86 of 86 of the sketchbook. These ideas were probably written down during September, though though they cannot ca nnot have been written wr itten down before then.10 They show that Beethoven had decided to create a ‘characteristic’ sonata, as he called cal led it later 11 in letters to his publisher. publisher. Such works, which include his Pathéti his Pathétique que Sonata and his recently completed completed Pastoral Pastoral Symphony, once described by him as a ‘sinfonia caracteristica’,12 possess a distinctive character indicated by the title. Titles for

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the three movements of the new sonata are written in the middle of the page: ‘Abschied – Abwesenheit – An kunft [Arrival] – ’, surrounded by sketches for the opening themes of the two later movements. It is curious that the title of the rst movement here reverts to ‘Abschied’, suggesting that Beethoven had forgotten what title he had nally used. There are no sketches for this movement at this point, however, since it had already long been completed and needed no revision. A draft for the second movement reaches bar 22, about half way through the movement, and is not very different from the nal version. The nale sketches, however, which appear to have been entered rst, are very r udimentary and fragmented, with none lasting more than about four bars. The initial one (Exam ple 9.2) shows the main theme with a gentle opening (‘dolcemento’) in the bass clef, anticipating that of the nal version, but there is no sign of the exuberant in troductory semiquavers; the continuation suggests some ki nd of fugato, whereas in the nal version there is almost no imitation except in a short passage in the development section.

Example 9.2 Preliminary sketch for Op. 81a.III (Bsb, Landsberg 5, p. 86).

No f urther sketches for this sonata appear in the sketchbook, and the rest of them must have been written on loose leaves. One such leaf still survives in Bonn.13 This has received little attention, but it contains a draft for almost the complete slow movement, leading into the rst 14 bars of the nale. The draft shows many alterations, making it hard to distinguish its earlier readings, but its nal version after amendments corresponds almost precisely to the published movement, and no further sketching would have been necessar y. One of the main changes made to the draft is in the recapitulation in the slow movement, which was at one stage planned to take a different tonal direction (use of the subdominant for the reprise of the second theme in the nal version is distinctly unusual), but the details were not fully worked out. The last six bars were also the result of later deliberation, for the main draft shows a shorter version, with the nal version inserted at the foot of the page in a separate sketch, connected by a ‘Vi=de’ cross-reference. Unfortunately there was not enough room on the page for the nal bar of the slow movement, and so it does not appear. The sketch for the nale corresponds closely to the published version, and conrms that the lefthand chords in bars 5 and 6 are linked by a tie, not a slur. Ties are present in bars 5–8 in all sources of the complete movement, but it is reassuring to see them in Beethoven’s own hand, since the autograph score is lost and some modern editors, suspecting an error, have substituted slurs.


145

Since Rudolph’s return to Vienna was anticipated for some while, Beethoven had time to arrange for a professional copy of these last two movements. The nale had by this time been renamed as ‘Das Widersehn’, usually translated as ‘The Return’, though literally it means ‘The Seeing Again’, without any sense that either party has ‘returned’. The copyist left the title page blank, and Beethoven completed his dedicatory inscription on it once the date was known: ‘Vien 1810 am 30ten jenner bey der Ankunft Seiner Kaiserl. Hoheit der verehrten Erzherzogs Rudolf’ (‘Vienna, 30 January 1810, written on the arrival of His Imperial Highness the esteemed Archduke Rudolph’). The score was duly presented to Rudolph, perhaps on 30 January itself, and it entered his private collection along with the autograph of the rst movement. Unfortunately it disappeared during the nineteenth century and for a long time remained in private hands and inaccessible. It was nally auctioned in 2006 and acquired by the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, where it now resides.14 Interestingly, this copy includes a few signicant differences from the published version, indicating that Beethoven made revisions to the work sometime after 30 January 1810. The most striking of these occurs in bars 9–10 of the nale, where the manuscript version has parallel octaves as in Example 9.3(a), whereas in the published version Beethoven substituted left-hand quavers that enrich the harmony (Example 9.3(b)).

(a)

(b)

Example 9.3 Op. 81a.III, bars 9–10: (a) early version (BNba, NE 274); (b) published version.

Opp. 78 and 79 By the time Beethoven handed over the last two movements of the sonata that became known as Op. 81a, on or shortly after 30 January 1810, he had composed two other sonatas, Opp. 78 and 79. The precise chronology of the three, however,

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is unclear. The position of the sketches in Landsberg 5 implies that Op. 81a was resumed and probably completed before either of the others had made signicant progress. But these two were probably composed for Clementi around October 1809, shortly after Beethoven had received Clementi’s payment for his previous commission. Since the original contract had specied that a fantasia and two sonatas (or just three sonatas) were to be written, Beethoven appears to have made efforts to full this agreement almost immediately, once he had received the payment. A letter to Breitkopf & Härtel of 19 September, promising them a few sonatas for solo piano,15 indicates that he was starting to work on Opp. 78 and 79 as well as nishing Op. 81a. A few sketches for the Fantasia, Op. 77, appear near the end of Landsberg 5 on leaves that have since become displaced,16 but not a single sketch for Op. 78 has been located, making it difcult to establish whether it was written before or after Op. 79. Although there was probably some slight overlap, as usual, three factors suggest that Op. 79 was composed slightly earlier, despite its later opus number. First, the surviving autograph score of Op. 79 is labelled ‘Sonata 1’ on the opening staves, whereas that of Op. 78 is headed ‘No. 2’. Second, there are a few early sketches for Op. 79 near the end of Landsberg 5, but those for the rest of the sonata are missing, like those for Op. 78. If Op. 78 had been sketched rst one would expect to nd at least some evidence in Land sberg 5. Third, when Clementi published them he placed Op. 79 before Op. 78 in a single volume. The order is reversed, however, in a list Beethoven made at the time,17 and when he sent the two sonatas to Breitkopf & Härtel he did not specify their order or opus numbers in his letter of 2 July 1810. He then indicated in a letter of 21 August that he did not mind non-chronological numbering for two works composed in the same year.18 In a reply Gottfried Härtel proposed Op. 78 for the Sonata in F sharp and Op. 79 for the one in G, 19 and they have remained in this order ever since. A list of manuscripts in Archduke Rudolph’s collection indicates that Op. 77 and 78 were composed in October 1809 (‘comp. im 8ber 1809’), 20 a date that has also been added to a manuscript of Op. 78 found in that collection. Thus all three works, Opp. 77–79, were probably composed within a month or two around that period. The surviving sketches for Op. 79 begin by showing the theme in C major, as noted above (Example 9.1), but it appears in G major on page 97 of the sketch book, where it is headed ‘Sonate presto’. The opening eight bars are a little more advanced than before, but after an ‘etc’ Beethoven jumps straight to what appears to be an idea for the second subject, though it is not headed by his customary ‘m.g.’ (Example 9.4; the pitches in the lower stave are uncertain). Only four bars of this idea are written, and they differ very substantially from the nal version, but they exhibit the same kind of energy and arpeggiated motion as in bars 36–9 of the nal version. They are followed immediately by what must be an early idea for the rst two notes of a slow movement in E at, beginning on G, as in Example 9.4. Beethoven eventually decided on G minor and  for this movement, but he retained E at for the central section. The only other sketch known for the rst movement is for the main part of the second subject (bars 24–8), and it comes close to the nal version. It was quoted by J.S. Shedlock, 21 but the leaf in question has since disappeared.


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Example 9.4 Early sketch for Op. 79 (Bsb, Landsberg 5, p. 97).

Both of the sonatas written for Clementi are quite short, for Op. 78 contains only two movements while the three movements of Op. 79 are conspicuously brief – especially the nal two. The most likely reason for their brevity is that Clementi specically asked for works that were short and relatively simple, to suit the British market, although Clementi himself had already composed and published longer and more challenging sonatas in England. At any rate, Beethoven seems to have set out from the start to compose less challenging sonatas than usual, judging by his heading ‘Sonata facile’ mentioned above for the rst sketch, and he did not deviate far from this initial plan, despite the unusual key of Op. 78.

Dual publication Although Clementi commissioned Opp. 78 and 79, he wanted publishing rights only for the British market, and it was expected that Beethoven would also sell the Continental rights to a Continental publisher, as he had done with the other works in the original contract. Thus in a letter of 4 February 1810 Beethoven offered all three new sonatas, plus many other works, to Breitkopf & Härtel, emphasizing that they would have the rights to sell them in ‘all places except England’.22 While negotiations were still in progress, Clementi prepared to leave Vienna that April, and Beethoven sold the same works to him, including all three sonatas as well as the promised piano fantasia. So as to ensure that both publishers received copyright protection, the British and Continental editions were supposed to be published on the same day. 23 Clementi, presumably following Beethoven’s instructions, published Opp. 78 and 79 on 31 August 1810 and Op. 81a on 28 January 1811.24 Once agreement with Breitkopf & Härtel had been reached, Beethoven sent them similar instructions in a letter of 2 July 1810: Opp. 78 and 79 were sent at that time in a batch that was to be published by 1 September 1810, while Op. 81a was sent in a later batch that could appear on 1 February 1811.25 It is signicant that Op. 81a, though begun and probably completed before the other two, was held back from publication for so long. The reason must be that Archduke Rudolph paid a fee for exclusive use of the sonata for a whole year: its two dates of publication, actual for Clementi and intended for Breitkopf & Härtel, are almost exactly a year after Rudolph’s return to Vienna on 30 Jan uary 1810, which is when he could rst have received the manuscript of the last two movements. Because of this delay in publication, the sonat a received a higher

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opus number from Breitkopf & Härtel than those for the other two (Clementi published it without opus number). The edition was actually published as Op. 81, but because Sim rock used the same number for a Beethoven sextet, these two works have become known respectively as Op. 81a and Op 81b. In the end Breitkopf & Härtel’s editions were all delayed beyond the dates specied: Opp. 78 and 79 appeared about November 1810, and Op. 81a in July 1811. 26 In his above-mentioned letter of 26 July 1809 Beethoven observed that the most accurate editions were generally those based on his own autograph scores rather than copies, and he resolved to send autographs to Breitkopf & Härtel for all future publications except where used performance parts were available.27 Gottfried Härtel in turn asked for Beethoven’s ‘original manuscripts’ of the works being sent in 1810. 28 How far Beethoven carried out this intention is unclear, since many of the engraver’s copies have disappeared. In his letter of 2 July he told the publishers that he was sending ‘manuscripts and copies, as I found best’ – thus a mixture of autographs and copies depending on which was more convenient.29 But he certainly sent an autograph score for Op. 78 30 as well as for the Fantasia, Op. 77, and probably did so for the other two sonatas. Similarly for Op. 79 he gave an autograph score to Clementi, 31 rather than a copy, and may have done also for the other two sonatas; but no other autograph scores are known for any of the three sonatas, apar t from the rst-movement autograph of Op. 81a that had been presented to Rudolph. When a work remained unpublished for a time, Beethoven was often tempted to make revisions, in an effort to achieve unattainable perfection. As noted earlier, he altered part of the nale of Op. 81a after presenting the score to Rudolph but before presenting Clementi with a copy for the London edition, which matches the German one at this point (see Example 9.3), and he made a few other very minor changes at the same stage, though apparently none to the rst movement. Even after presenting a score to Clementi he made additional changes, for the Breitkopf & Härtel edition includes a few staccato mark s in the nale that are absent in both the Rudolph manuscript and the Clementi edition. Opp. 78 and 79 show further changes between the Clementi edition and the Breitkopf & Härtel one. In Op. 79, the last left-hand note in the rst move ment is an octave higher in Clementi’s edition, and in the autograph on which it is based, than in the Breitkopf & Härtel edition, which clearly represents a compositional alteration, not a misprint (see Example 9.5; the omission of in the latter version, however, was presumably inadvertent). This revision gives a stronger and more solid conclusion to the movement. In the second movement Beethoven made a similar octave displacement in bar 6 (left ha nd, note 6). Since the same change was made in the recapitulation (bar 27), this is clearly another compositional revision. In Op. 78 the late revisions were slightly more substantial. For a start, the tempo mark of the main part of the rst movement was altered from ‘Allegro’ to ‘Allegro ma non troppo’, in an effort to prevent too fast a speed. In bar 16, the rst chord is differently spaced in the two editions, with the left hand having octave F s in Clementi’s instead of a closely spaced major third (F and A ).32


149

(a)

(b)

Example 9.5 Op. 79.I, bars 199–201: (a) Clementi version; (b) nal version.

In the second movement the guration is occasionally modied. In bar 47 Beethoven appears to have made a mistake when hurriedly writing out a fair copy for Breitkopf & Härtel, and the version in Clementi’s edition seems preferable, matching bar 16.33 Elsewhere, however, the Breitkopf & Härtel text seems to represent a revision, notably in bars 79–80, where the left hand in Clementi’s version (Example 9.6(a)) has been subtly modied to provide more variety of guration (Example 9.6(b)). Such changes are fairly insigni cant, but they illustrate Beethoven’s desire to continue making improvements at a very late stage. All these changes must have occurred between when he gave scores to Clementi in April and when he sent the other scores to Breitkopf & Härtel on 2–3 July 1810, since there is no evidence that he checked any proofs for these two works. Publication of Opp. 78 and 79 went smoothly. Beethoven told Breitkopf & Härtel that they could be published separately or together, but that if published together the G major sonata should be designated ‘Sonate facile’ or ‘Sonatine’.34 The publishers duly published the sonatas separately, using the title ‘Sonatine’ in preference to ‘Sonate facile’, the title that Beethoven had given to his initial sketch in C major in Landsberg 5. Op. 78 was dedicated to Beethoven’s long-standing friend Therese Brunsvik, sister of his beloved Josephine, but he omitted to send the name of any dedicatee for Op. 79, perhaps regarding the sonata as too slight to be much of a compliment. Clementi’s edition is entitled ‘Two Sonatas’, without any suggestion that one was unusually short or easy, and he used the opus number 63, since he seems to have been unaware that Beethoven had reached well beyond that number with other publishers.

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(a)

(b)

Example 9.6 Op. 78.II, bars 79–81: (a) Clementi version; (b) nal version.

Beethoven was less happy with the outcome of Op 81a. The normal procedure with a group of three sonatas was to publish them as a set, generally with a single opus number, but he indicated from the outset that he wanted his ‘characteristic’ sonata to be published separately. Clementi did this, issuing it as a ‘Sonate caracteristique’. Breitkopf & Härtel, however, were slightly confused by Beethoven’s instructions, for he told them in his letter of 4 February 1810 that the third sonata contained three movements, ‘which must be published separately’ (‘welche man allein für sich heraus geben müste’). 35 This was ambiguous, and the publishers took this instruction to refer to the movements rather than the sonata as a whole; they therefore initially prepared the rst movement separately from the others, with separate pagination. An exemplar of this version is preserved in Bonn, showing the second movement as starting on page 2, preceded by a blank page.36 This mistake was quickly rectied, but there was also a problem with the move ment titles. Beethoven listed them as ‘Abschied, Abwesenheit, das widersehn’ in his letter of 4 February 1810, unaccountably reverting to the earlier title for the rst movement, but this was corrected when he sent in the manuscript. It was then agreed that the work would be published with both German and French titles, to stimulate wider sales. Clementi may have come to a similar ar rangement, for his edition presents the titles in French (German was little known in Britain), giving the work the overall title ‘Les Adieux, L’Absence, et Le Revoir’; ‘Revoir’ is a literal translation of ‘Widersehn’, but there is no such exact equivalent for ‘Lebe Wohl’, and ‘Les Adieux’ (literally ‘the adieus’) seemed the nearest match. Breitkopf & Härtel printed the movement titles in both languages, but they created two different title pages, one in French and one in German, which was evidently not what Beethoven intended. His main complaints, however, were


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twofold, as he indicated in a let ter of 9 October 1811, shortly after receiving the new edition. First, he objected to ‘Les Adieux’ as a translation: ‘Lebe wohl is quite different from les adieux; the former is said warmly to one person alone, the other to a whole assembly, whole towns.’ 37 The translation is particularly unfortunate in that the sonata has become commonly known by its French title ‘Les Adieux’, the very one that Beethoven objected to. He did not object, however, to ‘Le Retour’ for ‘Das Widersehn’, although it is less accurate than Clementi’s ‘Le Revoir’. His second complaint was that the publishers had omitted his dedicatory inscriptions, which were evidently on the engraver’s copy with the same wording as on the manuscripts presented to Rudolph. His nal instructions to Breitkopf & Härtel, sent about the same time as he returned corrected proofs in May 1811, were: ‘Put the title as I have written it out, French and German, not just French, and the same with the other headings.’38 Despite these instructions, the publishers had suppressed the inscriptions mentioning the dates of Rudolph’s depart ure and retu rn. Beethoven demanded that in f uture they would include all inscriptions exactly as he had written them. Thus he encountered numerous problems with Breitkopf & Härtel’s publications, particularly in the large number of printing errors in some of the works, and once they had published all the works that they had received or been promised by 1811 he rarely contacted them again. His offer of ve works in 1816 received no encouragement, 39 perhaps because his price was too high, and the majority of his works for the next ten years, including his next three piano sonatas, were to be published locally in Vienna.

Notes 1 BB-189, note 4. 2 For the complete contract and translation, see Barry Cooper, ‘The Clementi– Beethoven Contract of 1807: A Reinvestigation’, in Muzio Clementi: Studies and Prospects, ed. Roberto Illiano, Luca Sala and Massimiliano Sala (Bologna: Ut Orpheus, 2002), pp. 337–53. The original is in Bsb, Autograph 35,8. The six works in the contract were Opp. 58–62, including both the piano and violin versions of the Violin Concerto Op. 61. 3 Cooper, ‘The Clementi-Beethoven Contract’, pp. 344–5. 4 See L. Poundie Burstein, ‘“Lebe wohl tönt überall’ and a “Reunion after So Much Sorrow”: Beethoven’s Op. 81a and the Journeys of 1809’, The Musical Quarterly, 93 (2010), pp. 366–413, at 376. 5 Bsb, Landsberg 5. Facsimile and transcription in Clemens Brenneis, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven, Ein Skizzenbuch aus dem Jahre 1809 (Landsberg 5), 2 vols (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1992–93). 6 See Klaus-Jürgen Sachs, ‘Beethoven’s “Lebewohl” für Erzherzog Rudolph: Zum Kopfsatz der Klaviersonate Es-Dur, op. 81a, Les adieux’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien, 4 (2005), 121–47. Sachs provides a full and detailed account of the sketches for the movement. 7 Burstein, ‘“Lebe wohl”’, p. 377. 8 Wgm, A 1. 9 BB-392; A-220. 10 See Brenneis, ed., Landsberg 5, vol. 2, p. 46.

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11 BB-451, BB-468; A-262, A-276. 12 See F.E. Kirby, ‘Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony as a Sinfonia caracteristica’, The Musical Quarterly, 56 (1970), 605–23, at 609. 13 BNba, NE 147. 14 BNba, NE 274. For proof that this score is the one that was formerly in Rudolph’s archives, see Sieghard Brandenburg, ‘Die Beethovenhandschriften in der Musikaliensammlung des Erzherzogs Rudolph’, in Zu Beethoven 3: Aufsätze und Dokumente, ed. Harr y Goldschmidt (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik), pp. 141–76, esp. 172–3. 15 BB-400; A-226. 16 See Brenneis, ed., Landsberg 5, vol. 2, p. 42. 17 BB-452, dated 3 July 1819 [1810]; incomplete in A-219. 18 BB.465; A-272. 19 BB-469; Alb-152. 20 Brandenburg, ‘Die Beethovenhandschriften’, pp. 156 and 166. 21 J.S. Shedlock, ‘Beethoven’s Sketches Hitherto Unpublished’, The Musical Times, 50 (1909), 712–14, at 713. 22 BB-423; A-245. 23 For further details about the system of simultaneous publication, see Alan Tyson, The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), pp. 17–21. 24 Tyson, Authentic, p. 141. 25 BB-451; A-262. This last date was given as ‘11 February’, but presumably 1 February was intended. 26 LvBWV, vol. 1, pp. 491, 494, 506. 27 BB-392; A-220. 28 BB-447; Alb-148. 29 BB-451. Anderson’s translation (A-263) is somewhat misleading at this point. 30 The autograph is now in BNba, HCB Mh 9. 31 BNba, HCB BMh 1/41. 32 Most of the main differences between the two editions are listed in Tyson, Authentic, pp. 63–4, but this one is unaccountably omitted. 33 See Barry Cooper, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas, 3 vols (London: ABRSM, 2007), vol. 3, Commentary, p. 13. 34 BB-465; A-272. 35 BB-423; A-245. 36 BNba, C81a/22; details of the irregular pagination of this printing are given in LvBWV, vol. 1, p. 507. 37 BB-523; A-325. 38 BB-499; A-308. 39 BB-950; A-642.

10 Moving into the late period

Op. 90 in E minor/major: Mit Lebhaftigkeit, und durchaus mit Empndung und Ausdruck. Nicht zu geschwind, und sehr singbar vorgetragen. Op. 101 in A: Etwas lebhaft und mit der innigsten Empndung: Allegretto ma non troppo. Ziemlich lebhaft: Marschmässig: Vivace alla marcia. Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll: Adagio ma non troppo, con affetto [leading to:] Zeitmass des ersten Stücks: Tempo del primo pezzo [leading to:] Geschwinde, doch nicht zu sehr und mit Entschlossenheit: Allegro. Op. 106 in B at (‘Hammerklavier’): Allegro. Scherzo. Adagio sostenuto. Largo [leading after several tempo changes to:] Allegro risoluto.

The resumption of sonata composition Beethoven indicated more than once in his later life that he was not particularly enthusiastic about composing piano sonatas, and after nishing three in 1809 it was more than four years before he began another – the longest period he spent in Vienna without writing any piano sonatas, except for the very end of his life. The gap in production was caused partly by the composition of other works, including the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, the Violin Sonata Op. 96, two singspiels, and the revival of his opera Fidelio in 1814; and partly because there seems to have been nobody commissioning one during that period. The heyday of multiple piano sonatas was past, and fewer were being written generally t han 20 years earlier. Beethoven resumed composition of piano sonatas in summer 1814, shortly after completing the nal version of Fidelio. By this time he was rarely composing works of his own choosing, and a piano sonata would clearly not have been his rst choice. Thus the new sonata, later published as Op. 90, was almost cert ainly written in response to some kind of commission or request. Among his patrons, the most probable gure for making such a request would be Archduke Rudolph, who was in close contact with Beethoven and was allowed to make a copy of the sonata before publication. The main reason for the composition of the sonata at that time, however, was probably to repay a debt. The Viennese publisher Sigmund Anton Steiner had lent Beethoven some money in December 1813 to assist with his brother Carl’s illness, and one of the conditions was that, if this

154

Moving into the late period

sum were not repaid by Beethoven or Carl within nine months, Beethoven would have to provide Steiner with an unpublished piano sonata with or without accom paniment.1 By summer 1814 Beethoven probably sensed that repayment by the due date would be impossible, and therefore set out to compose a new piano sonata as quickly as possible. This would mean writing it without accompaniment and making it fairly short, although quality would not be sacriced. A judgment of 14 September 1814 conrmed Beethoven’s obligation to give Steiner for publication an unpublished sonata within three months.2 The Violin Sonata Op. 96, of 1812, was still available to him, but Beethoven opted to give Steiner the new sonata for piano solo (Steiner received the violin sonata the following year under a subsequent agreement). The date of composition can be xed fairly narrowly. Beethoven was working on Fidelio up to May, composing a new overtu re too late for a performance of the opera on 23 May but in ti me for one three days later. Thereafter he composed a new recitative for the character Leonore. These movements occupy the Dessauer Sketchbook 3 up to page 111. The following pages up to 121 are taken up with a short cantata, Un lieto brindisi, which was performed on 24 June. After a few further pages of unused sketch material, sketches for Op. 90 appear from page 128 onwards, indicating it was probably begun in late June or early July. They are followed by sketches for his Elegischer Gesang , Op. 118, which was probably written for a performance on 5 August.4 A two-movement structure seems to have been planned for the sonata from the outset, although the sketches include no overall synopsis (such as is found with many of Beethoven’s other late multi-movement compositions) and some preliminary work may be lost. Those sketches that survive for the rst movement are found on pages 128 – 31 and 137 of ‘Dessauer’, and they come very close to the nal version.5 However, the sketchbook includes only very early ideas for the nale, which appear on pages 132 – 3 and 137 – 8,6 and it is not certain whether all these ideas are even for the sonata. One, quoted by Gustav Nottebohm, shows no melodic similarity to the theme of the nale, but it is in the sa me key and metre, with a suitably lyrical melody (Example 10.1).7 As has been seen with some previous movements, the earliest thematic idea often shows only tenuous links to what was nally adopted, and this one is probably another such example.

Example 10.1 Preliminary sketch for Op. 90.II (from N-II, p. 299).

Further work on the nale is found in an eight-folio gathering of which the middle bifolio is in Vienna and the other three are in Berlin.8 This gathering was used contemporaneously with the Dessauer Sketchbook but was never part of it,9 and the only pages devoted to the nale of Op. 90 are pages 58 – 60 of the Vienna bifolio, continuing on pages 29 – 31 of the Berlin source. They include an extended


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sketch headed ‘l’ultimo pezzo’ (‘the last movement’), a heading which indicates that it must be an early sketch, written at a time when the previous movement was probably well under way but not yet completed. Such headings never appear in later sketches for a movement, since they were unnecessary once the main ideas had been xed. This sketch shows a 32-bar draft of the main refrain in this sonata-rondo movement, written in two-stave score and corresponding closely to bars 1–32 of the nal version, though with plenty of gaps on the lower stave. 10 Rondo form is implied by its extended but self-contained nature, t ypical of rondo themes. The most striking difference from the nal version occurs in bar 2 and its subsequent reappearances, where there is a rest instead of the third note of the bar, thus breaking up the opening four-bar phrase into two two-bar phrases. Beethoven decided later that this was a movement where the melodic line needed to be more owing and continuous. The assumption that the rest of the movement was still at an early stage is conrmed by other sketches in the gathering. These are more disjointed and, although they show clear connections with the nal version, they do not come very close to it. Thus on this occasion Beethoven established the entire shape and most of the details of the main 32-bar theme without having a clear idea of what would follow. This is well illustrated by a very primitive sketch for the theme of the rst episode (Landsberg 12, page 30). The similarities to the nal version of bars 41–8 are obvious, especially in the rst two bars, but the differences are more noteworthy (see Examples 10.2(a) and ( b)). One can disregard the fact that the sketch is just a single line while the nal version has full harmony with dynamics and articulation – such differences between sketch and nished version were normal. But the sketch certainly does not imply the richness of texture of the nal version, which contains much more than a simple har monization. In this nal version the theme from the sketch is placed in the alto voice (only later is it given to the soprano), with a descant above it in parallel sixths, contrary motion in the bass in parallel thirds, and an oscillating tenor that creates energy. More striking still is the way the sketch divides into two matching but separated four bar phrases that lack any sophistication, despite the detailed articulation marks. In the nal version Beethoven has taken the rst two bars as they stood but then proceeded to a varied repeat of them that leads smoothly into a development and extension of the falling gure of the rst bar. As in the rst subject, therefore, he has increased ow and continuity. The autograph score of the sonata is dated ‘16 August 1814’.11 It was probably begun on that day and completed soon after, before being amended intermittently during the following months, as often happened. Thus it had taken about six weeks to compose, during which time Beethoven had also been busy with several other matters such as his opera and the Elegischer Gesang . One of the most striking features of the score is the use of German rather than Italian tempo marks. The rst movement is marked ‘With liveliness, and throughout with feeling and expression’, while the second is headed ‘Not too fast, and to be performed very cantabile’. The use of German must be seen against the political background. With the defeat of Napoleon earlier in 1814 there was a surge of patriotism in

156


(a)

(b)

Example 10.2 (a) Sketch for Op. 90.II (Bsb, Landsberg 12, p. 30); (b) Op. 90.II, bars 41–8.

Austria, and Beethoven closely sympathized with these sentiments. In a gesture of nationalism he wanted to eschew foreign languages in his music, and Op. 90 is the rst prominent example, whereas he had used Italian directions in his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies of 1812, and in Wellingtons Sieg (1813), itself a patriotic work. He continued to use Italian directions such as diminuendo and ritardando within the sonata, however. There are no major corrections in the autograph score, and so Beethoven’s sketching must have been fairly thorough, since there is no sign of any preliminary working draft and he usually wrote out only one score.12 As usual, however, there are substantial numbers of minor alterations, some of them made immediately and others at a later stage during checking or proofreading. Among the former are bars 210–13 of the rst movement, which were originally written out an octave lower (as in bars 214–17) but were cancelled and written at the upper octave in the space immediately following. Among the latter is the rst note of bar 61 (right hand), where Beethoven wrote a quaver B but amended it to a rest during proofreading, although the recapitulation (bar 204) matches the earlier version. One major problem in the autograph occurs at bar 13 of the second movement, where the note has been altered and smudged, leaving it unclear whether it should be A (as in the printed version) or G (as in the passage eight


157

bars later). No convincing evidence has been produced for either solution and it remains an ambiguity.13 Shortly after completing the autograph he lent it to Archduke Rudolph, as is evident from later documents; but, because of the agreement with Steiner, Beethoven had to ask Rudolph to return it. His request thereby conrms that there was no other score at the time. He wrote to Rudolph, sometime between 14 September and 21 October: ‘It would be good if Y[our] I[mperial] Highness would return to me the last sonata in manuscript, since I must publish it [Beethoven’s underlining], thus it’s really not necessary to have it copied for you, in that I shall in a short time have the pleasure of giving you it printed.’14 The autograph had therefore been lent to Rudolph so that he could have a copy made for his collection of Beethoven’s works; but before he had managed to ar range for one, Beethoven found he needed the manuscript back to give to Steiner, and he argued that Rudolph did not need a handwritte n copy anyway as he would shortly be receiving a printed one. About that time Beethoven also referred to the work in a letter to Count Moritz Lichnowsky, brother of Beethoven’s recently deceased former patron Prince Karl Lichnowsky. The count had recently done Beethoven some unspecied favours, and wrote to him that September informing him of some additional kindness that he had just done. Beethoven received the letter on 20 September and replied the next day. He indicated that Op. 90 was shortly to be published and that he had long since decided to dedicate it to Count Lichnowsky, but had intended it as a surprise. In view of the latest kindness, however, he felt obliged to inform him that the dedication was forthcoming, and was in gratitude for the earlier favours rather than the recent one. He also insisted that the count should not give him ‘anything like a present’ in return for the dedication.15 As usual, Beethoven liked to give what he could to those who had shown him kindness, and it is clear from the reference to a ‘surprise’ that Count Lichnowsky had not commissioned the sonata. The autograph score appears to have been nally handed over to Steiner on 21 October,16 and engraving took place during the winter. Beethoven and Rudolph, however, began to lose patience when Steiner showed no sign of publishing the sonata imminently, and so the composer wrote to him on Tuesday 21 March (1815) asking if he could borrow the autograph again for Rudolph 17 – presumably so that the long-awaited copy could be made. Steiner noted on Beethoven’s letter that he was returning the manuscript ‘until the end of the week’.18 It was probably therefore on Saturday, 25 March, that Beethoven sent an undated message to Rudolph asking to have the manuscr ipt back again, as ‘I need it for proofreading’.19 A comment that he would call on Rudolph ‘on Monday’ supports the suggestion that Beethoven wrote the note on a Saturday. Because of the new political situation – Napoleon had escaped from Elba and was likely to be involved in another war with Austria – there was a sudden urgency for Beethoven to have his works printed. Thus Rudolph would appear to have had only four days to arrange for a copy to be made – evidently too little time to nd an available copyist, especially as this was Holy Week, when copyists were

158


always exceptionally busy. This would account for why this copy, unlike most of those in Rudolph’s collection, is written in his own hand, a fact sometimes noted but not previously explained.20 Proofreading of the new edition was done by both Beethoven and Steiner’s assistant Anton Diabelli, at which time Beethoven made some minor revisions such as the one noted above in bar 61. Most of these revisions were also entered in the autograph and Rudolph’s copy. Diabelli then found some additional mistakes shortly before publication, and Beethoven asked for, and received, the autograph back on 29 May for a short time so that he could check them. 21 The new edition was nally announced in the Wiener Zeitung of 6 June, and copies were also sent to the publishers Simrock in Bonn and Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig, who sold the edition with their own title pages replacing Steiner’s. 22 Beethoven noticed a few further misprints, however, and sent a copy marked with the corrections to Steiner. He followed this on 27 June with a whimsical letter, demanding that the marked copy be returned, along with a copy with the corrections incorporated into the plates, by the following evening.23 A second, corrected impression was duly prepared, with 13 corrections, though whether this was done by Beethoven’s deadline is unknown. The most notable correction is the rectication of an octava/loco sign in bar 136 of the second movement. 24 Some of these corrections may have come about through casual visits by Beethoven to Steiner’s shop, where any queries about the text could readily be discussed.25 The new sonata quickly became widely admired, particularly because of its lyricism, its limited technical difculty and the fact that it was the rst solo piano music that Beethoven had published for some years. So many copies of the various states of the rst edition were printed within a few months that the plates became worn, and Steiner soon produced a second edition with entirely new plates, closely modelled on the rst but with no further corrections from the autograph and a few new errors. Thus a few errors in the original edition remained uncorrected. A notable example is in bar 11 of the rst movement, where the lowest note is a dotted minim in the autograph (and Rudolph’s copy), but was printed without the dot, which is also missing in almost all later editions. The necessities of copying and printing the work required the autograph to be passed at least nine times between Beethoven, Rudolph and Steiner, as indicated above. Such a lengthy series of exchanges may not have been that uncommon, but it is unusually well documented in this case.

The rise of counterpoint: Op 101 Despite the enthusiastic review of Op. 90 that appeared in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in January 1816,26 Beethoven decided on a very different type of work for his next sonata, which was published as Op. 101. Although its rst movement echoes somewhat the mildness and lyricism of its predecessor, its second movement and especially its nale mark a dramatic rise in the amount of counterpoint – passages in canon in the second movement and an extended fugato in the nale – in a more technically challenging style that Beethoven had already introduced in his two late cello sonatas, Op. 102, in 1815.

Moving into the late lat e period

159 159

Beethoven’s reasons for composing this sonata are unclear and one must sus pect another a nother comm c ommission, ission, possibly from f rom Archduke Ar chduke Rudolph. As a keen and a nd able pianist and Beethoven admirer, adm irer, he may well have have wanted to increase his growing growi ng collection of Beethoven piano sonatas. It seems unlikely that Beethoven would readily have composed another piano sonata without some persuasion, which few other than Rudolph could provide. Alternatively, Steiner may have requested it after the success of Op. 90, since he eventually bought it for the high price of 60 ducats, although it had earlier been offered unsuccessfully to Breitkopf & Härtel for a lower sum. 27 The dedicatee was Baroness Dorothea Ertmann, who had been a good friend f riend of Beethoven since 1803, 1803, as well well as an outstandi outst anding ng pianist and a great enthusiast for his music; but she evidently did not commission the sonata, for Beethoven’s correspondence makes it clear that the decision to dedicate it to her was a last-minute one, after he had given the work to the publishers, and he was willing to dedicate a different work to her if the title page had already been printed pr inted and a nd could not be altered. altere d.28 The compositional chronology of Op. 101 has been discussed in some detail by Sieghard Brandenburg Brandenbu rg and is far from straightforwa stra ightforward. rd.29 The earliest known sketches are on a leaf formerly in the Scheide Sketchbook and now in Bonn. 30 Since they precede prec ede sketches for the last cello sonat a, Op. 102 102 No. 2, the autograph autog raph of which is dated as the beginning of August 1815 (though it was not completed till somewhat later), later), they must have been written sometime around early summer 1815. Thus they followed shortly after or even perhaps before publication of the previous sonata sona ta on 6 June. They include some br ief ideas for near nea r the end e nd of the rst movement, plus others for developing the main allegro theme of the nale. The word ‘augmentation’ is prominent at the head of the nale sketches, indicating that some kind of fugal procedure was already envisaged, as occurs in the development section of the nale. Above the nale sketches is a ve-bar concept in triple time that may have been envisaged as a possible middle movement, though its key is uncertain and the idea was promptly discarded. Beethoven sometimes, as here, liked to t o establish the charact er of the two t wo outer movements movements 31 while leaving inner ones uid. On the verso of the leaf there is an extended conti nuity draft dr aft for the rst movement, beginning at bar 55 (the start of the false recapitulation, shortly followed by the actual act ual recapitulat rec apitulation ion), ), and continui ng to bar 94 at the t he foot of the page; the remaining eight bars of the movement were probably written on the next page, which is lost. This sketch is surprising in several ways. First, the initial batch of sketches on the recto of the leaf implied that the work was still at an early stage, yet it seems that the whole of the rst movement was more or less in place when the verso was sketched. Second, extended drafts of this kind are rare in the later sketchbooks, including the Scheide. And, most signicant, the sketch is on two staves throughout. Score sketches are generally associated with Beethoven’s late quartets, quar tets, where they enable a much more contrapuntal contrapu ntal style to be worked out than is possible with single-stave drafts. They were not unknown in earlier works, but usually only for short passages. The extended draft for the slow movement of the Lebewohl Sonata Sonata (see previous chapter), for example, was on single staves; the

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one for the main theme of the nale of Op. 90 was in score, but this was for only a short section of a movement, rather than almost half of it, as here. Use of score sketches would facilitate a more contrapuntal style here, as in his late quartets, and it therefore marks a signicant depart ure from f rom his earlier sketching, helping helping to create a different type of sonata from his previous ones. His last ve sonatas are often seen as set apart from the earlier ones stylistically, and so it is noteworthy that the sketching style is also more advanced. This score sketch was originally written in ink, but with large parts of the texture not lled in. Beethoven then went over it again in pencil (perhaps more than once), adding many extra notes to the texture, as well as making maki ng other minor adjustments. One bar was cancelled with a large X and the word ‘aus’ [out] between bars 84 and 85, while bars 90–1 were also crossed out before being reinstated with Beethoven’s characteristic wavy line above them. All other bars of the draft, however, correspond with those in the nal version, and the main differences are in textu re and register. register. Beethoven could therefore have proceeded straight from this sketch to the autograph autograph score, scor e, but he felt he needed at least lea st one more score sketch for the whole movement, movement, and the second half of this su rvives on a leaf in Paris (presumably the rst half was also drafted and is now lost). 32 This draft d raft is much fuller and closer to the nal version version than the previous one, and was probably probably written writ ten out not long afterwards, after wards, but it still has occasional gaps in the texture, preventing it from being used for printing as it st ood. It could even have been Beethoven’s rst attempt at an autograph score of the movement, if he intended to ll up the gaps and add other necessary details, since it is unusually close to completion. On the other hand it resembles later examples of score sketches in that the leaf originated outside any sketchbook; it cannot have formed part of the Scheide Sketchbook, since the paper has 12 staves whereas that in the sketchbook has 16. After completing the rst movement Beethoven set aside the sonata for many months while he worked on other projects. He even jotted down idea s for another sonata on page 50 of 50 of the Scheide Sketchbook, labelled ‘Sonate in Des dur / erster Theil in B moll’ (‘Sonata in D at major – exposition into B at minor’), though nothing nothi ng came of this curious cur ious idea. The main sketches sketche s for the second movement movement of Op. 101 do not appear until much further on in the sketchbook, on pages 74 – 85, 85, immediately after aft er those for the song cycle cycle An An die di e ferne fe rne Geliebte, Geliebte , the autograph of which is dated April 1816. Since the last pages of the sketchbook, 108–112, contain sketches for a sizeable military march (WoO 24) whose autograph is dated 3 June 181 1816, the said sketches sket ches for Op. 101 101 probably date f rom April and the beginning begin ning of May. May. Beethoven quickly decided on F major for the second movement, but the ea rliest thematic idea recorded (page 74: 74: see Example 10.3) 10.3) shows only a vague similarit similarity y to the outline of the theme eventually adopted. On the next page opening (76–7) he drafted a synopsis of the whole sonata apart from the rst move ment, which had evidently been long since completed.33 The second se cond movement is now headed ‘marcia’ ‘marcia’ and begins to show the characteristic dott ed rhythms rhyth ms of a march. The nal Allegro is also noted down, with the main theme very simila r to what had been drafte d rafted d nearly a year earlier. Between the second movement and


161

nale is a ‘3tes Stück’ (‘3rd movement’) that bears no resemblance to the Ada gio section eventually eventu ally composed (which does not appear appea r among these t hese sketches). sketches). Like the Adagio, it is in A minor, but is marked ‘poco All[egre]tto’ All[egre]tto’ and contains running runn ing semiquavers semiquavers in 8. Beethoven toyed with this idea for a little while – it reappears with slight development on pages 82 – 3 – but there is other unidentied material in the meantime that could represent possible alternatives for a slow movement.

Example 10.3 Preliminary sketch for Op. 101.II (PRu, Scheide MA130, p. 74).

The remainder rema inder of these pages is devoted largely to the second movement of the sonata. Nearly all the sketches are once again in score, and although the lower stave is sometimes left blank, Beethoven often availed himself of it to add contrapuntal motifs that t hat would have have been impossible to incorporate i n a single-stave sketch. Thus he was clearly planning for a greatly increased amount of counter point compared compare d with earlier sonatas. sonata s. The only extended extende d continuity conti nuity draft dra ft is in pencil on page 85, covering approximately bars 57– 57–79 79 (preceded in ink in k by 55– 55–6) 6) and representing most of the trio section in B at.34 There are also several sketches for the opening section of the main marcia, marcia, including the sudden switch to A major (bar 12), and some of these can be joined together to form a close resemblance to the rst r st 14 14 bars or so. For the development section, however, Beethoven produced a great array a rray of possible ideas, and many ma ny were left unused. unused . Few of of the sketches for this section come very close to the nal version, which must have been worked out elsewhere. After page 85, sketching 85, sketching suddenly tur ns to a completely different work – a piano trio in F minor that occupies most of the rest of the sketchbook. 35 Thus once again the sonata was set aside unnished, as was the piano trio. About August, Beethoven noted in his diary or Tagebuch, Tagebuch, with apparent impatience at his lack of progress: ‘Finish the sonata and the trio’.36 By that time he had offered the sonata to Breitkopf & Härtel, in a letter dated 19 July, but they did not take up his offer. He duly completed the sonata, though not the trio, in the next few months. This period of composition is represented in his next sketchbook, Autograph 11/1, but much of the book appears to be missing. The 16 survivi sur viving ng leaves are evidently contiguous, contiguou s, but there must have been 16 16 matching leaves forming the second half (or conceivably the rst half) of the book, plus perhaps pe rhaps some other ot her leaves.37 Apart from the rst two leaves of extraneous material, which were possibly not part of the sketchbook originally, and the nal page (folio (folio 16v) 16v),, the contents consist almost a lmost entirely e ntirely of sketches for t he nale na le of 38 Op. 101. Again they are mainly in score, though quite a few are single-stave, and they focus on the development, recapitulation and coda of the sonata-form Allegro section. There are none known, here or anywhere else, for either the

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20-bar Adagio or the following eight-bar recall of the rst movement, which to gether introduce the nal Allegro i n a composite movement. movement. Thus a substantial batch of sketches, covering bars 1 to 113 113 (end of the exposition) is missing. Hence Hence the process by which Beethoven abandoned his previous idea of a 8 allegretto in A minor and arrived at this unusual structure for the sonata cannot be determined, although the structure was closely foreshadowed in his recently com pleted Cello Sonata O p. 102 102 No. 1. 1. Another source of sketches for the nale is Beethoven’s pocket sketchbook of the same period, per iod, for by this time he was regularly using pocket sketchbooks sketchbooks concurrently with his main series of desk sketchbooks. The pocket sketchbook sketchbook from 1815, Mendelssohn 1, is contemporary with the sketches for the rst movement of Op. 101 but does not contain any sketches for it. 39 The next surviving pocket sketchbook sketchbook has been dismembered d ismembered and little survives, sur vives, but it can be dated to late 1816. Three leaves are in Paris, and each leaf is folded in half to form four halfsized pages – thus t hus 12 pages altogether.40 This group g roup was all that was known when Robert Winter attempted to establish the original structure of the book, but he observed that six f urther urt her leaves had recently been identied in Mendelssohn 2.41 These leaves, which provide 24 additional pages, compel a reassessment of the sketchbook’ sketchbook’ss original or iginal struct st ructure. ure. Winter noted that ve of the 12 Paris pages contained sketches for the nale of Op. 101 and proposed that these all fell into the second half of the book as what he called pages (7) (7) to to (12), (12), since since they appear appea r to belong together. together. With this strucst ructure, what appeared to be sketches for the second movement of Op. 101 were to be found on pages (1 (1) and (2) (2);; but although some of these sketches are in F major and   time, with some dotted quavers, they do not belong with this movement, which had reached close to its nal version some months earlier, and they remai ned unused. Among the 24 additional pages, only one (Mendelssohn 2, page 69) 69) contains sketches for the Op. 101 nale; all the other sketches are as yet unidentied and probably remained unused, including a synopsis for a multi-movement work apparently in E at and some ideas for a vocal composition. The Paris sketches for the nale all reect late work on the coda, with those on Winter’s pages (10 (10)) to (12) 12) coinciding almost exactly with some of the last sketches in Autograph 11/1 (folios 15v to 16r). The one page of sketches in Mendelssohn 2 also reects very late work on the movement. Since these last sketches in the Autograph 11/1 are preceded by many pages of work on this movement, one would would expect there to be similar sketching for the nale i n the earlier par t of the pocket sketchbook (the 12 Paris Par is pages p ages plus those in Mendelssohn 2), 2), for pocket sketchbooks were used concurrently with the desk sketchbooks and tend to show similar evolution of individual movements. Yet neither the pages numbered (1) to (6) by Winter nor the additional pages in Mendelssohn 2 (apart from page 69) 69) have any nale sketches, and therefore they cannot belong before the detailed work on the coda on pages (8) (8) to to (12). (12). Therefore Therefore the Paris leaves must have been folded the reverse way round, with pages (7) (7) to to (12) 12) appearing near the beginning of the sketchbook, followed by those in Mendelssohn 2 and nally by (1) to (6). It is very common to nd much unidentied and unused mater ial appearing when

Moving into the late period pe riod

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a major work was more or less nished, 42 as happens here if the proposed structure of the sketchbook is correct. This revised structure also eliminates an anomaly, since the song ‘Ruf vom Berge’ (WoO 147), 147), the autograph autog raph of which is dated d ated 43 13 Decembe Dec emberr 1816 1816 and is sketched on page (6), (6), now now comes after the t he sketches for Op. 101, 101, the autograph aut ograph of which is dated d ated November 181 1816. Many of the nale sketches are for the extended 100-bar fugato in the deve lopment section, which gave Beethoven much trouble.44 There are also some sketches for for the recapitulation, but the coda seems to have occupied his attention much more. There are several endings sketched, including four in quick succession on the Paris leaves, the last of the four also appearing in Autograph 11/1, folio 16r; none of these endings comes close to that eventually adopted, although the preceding bars were by this time fairly well established, and so the nal bar s must have been among the trickiest to compose in the whole work. One of the most notable features of the movement occurs at the climax of the development section (bars 223–7), where the theme appears in the bass in double augmentation, above a repeated bottom E pedal-point. Here Beethoven for the rst time took advantage of the extended compass of new pianos and actually had the note marked in the printed edition as ‘contra E’. The idea of using this note at the climax occurred to Beethoven at a fairly early stage, for it can be found on folio 3v of Autograph 11/1 (stave 2), though this seems not to have been noted previously. previously. The note is combined with double augmentation of the theme as in the nal version, though the theme occurs at a different pitch in this sketch and recurs in sequence (Example 10.4). The note also appears further fur ther down the t he same page, with its four leger lines and marked ‘cont. E’, E’, corresponding to the coda (bar 354) of the nal version. Later sketches do not show the note at these points, but one can be condent that Beethoven still intended it. In one of the few sonata sketches in Mendelssohn 2 the note appears again (Example 10.5). The function of this sketch may not be entirely obvious, but it

Example 10.4 Sketch for Op. 101.III (Bsb, Autograph 11/1, f. 3v) .

Example 10.5 Sketch for Op. 101.III (Kj, Mendelssohn 2, p. 69).

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represents a shorthand shor thand version of bars 228–31, 228–31, immediately before the recapitulation, with the six-octave six-octave broken chord from bottom E to top E represented by the rst and last notes (with ‘8’ denoting octave transposition at both ends) and a long diagonal line between them. Unusually, Unusually, the sketch even includes a pedal ped al marking, matching the nal version. As mentioned earlier, the autograph score is dated November 1816, and it was probably completed that month, by which which time it had already been sold to Steiner. Beethoven also offered it to Robert Birchall for an English edition, but this offer was declined.45 Around early December he brought the completed score to Archduke Rudolph, ‘but only for today; as it will be engraved at once, it is really not worth the trouble to have it copied’.46 Nevertheless a copy was made from which Steiner’s edition was prepared, for there are in places considerable discrepancies between autograph and print, pr int, and these t hese revisions must have have been entered into the lost copy. Among the most conspicuous changes are the movement headings. In the rst movement the autograph has just an Italian tempo mark but the edition includes one in German too. In the second movement the autograph contains just the German, ‘ziemlich lebhaft’ (‘rather lively’), but the word ‘ziemlich’ is clearly a late insertion that did not nd its way into the printed edition, which nevertheless adds the Italian heading ‘Vivace alla marcia’. The third movement, like the rst, has just an Italian heading in the autograph but both language la nguagess in the edition; this applies ap plies to all al l three th ree tempo tem po marks mark s in the t he movement. The entry of ‘contra E’ is marked in both autograph and printed edition, but the autograph contains contai ns an extra instruct inst ruction ion in pencil, added later, that the letter names of all the t he left-hand notes notes in bars bar s 223–7 were were to be printed: pr inted: ‘NB: the letters lette rs also to be placed below in the engravi ng’. ng’. Beethoven wrote out the relevant notes and letter names in the footnote to the layout, and also sent a letter about it to Steiner’s assistant Tobias Haslinger;47 but in the end the extra letters were not added, probably because the music had already been engraved and there t here was insufcient space. Although Beethoven Beethoven used mainly mai nly Italian tempo marks ma rks in the t he autograph score of this sonata, his love of the German language led him to try to nd a German Ger man word for pianoforte (other than ‘Klavier’ ‘Klav ier’,, which might indicate i ndicate a harpsichord). ha rpsichord). He consulted a language specialist, Wilhelm Hebenstreit, and considered Tastenügel, Tastenügel, Hammerügel, TastenTasten- und Hammerügel, Hämmerklavier and Hammerklavier before deciding on the last of these (though he spelt it ‘Hammerklawier’ ‘Hammerk lawier’ to reect its pronunciation).48 The printed edition uses both Piano-Forte and HammerKlavier. Although this term has become associated with the following sonata, Op. 106, Beethoven also used u sed it for both bot h Op. 101 101 and Op. O p. 109. 109. Another issue was a possible name for the sonata. Beethoven proposed, somewhat facetiously, that it should be called ‘The Difcult to Play Sonata in A’, bor rowing a phrase phra se from a recent review rev iew of a performance perfor mance of his Seventh Symphony, which had referred to ‘Beethoven’s difcult to play symphony in A major’. As he explained in his letter: ‘What is d ifcult is also beautiful, good, great etc., so everyone will perceive that this is the highest praise that one can give; for what is difcult makes one sweat.’49 A few days later he referred to it again: ‘There are


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people who are pestering peste ring me about the difcult dif cult to play sonata’, sonata’, and he caricatured the t he difculties with some ridiculously short notes with eight beams, thus semi-hemidemisemi-hemidemisemiquavers, semi-hemidemisemi-hemidemisemiquav ers, or 1024th-notes. 024th-notes.50 Such comments are a good illustration illustr ation of his wit, but they also contain profundity. He recognized recognized that the new sonata was technically much more difcult than the previous four, and that difculty is a good thing in music if it is created for artistic reasons rather than mere showmanship. showmanship. The effort put into lear ning to play such a work was part of the aesthetic of the ‘grand’ style. Instead of the proposed title, Steiner made the sonata the rst volume in a new series of piano works entitled Museum entitled Museum für Klavier-Musik Klavie r-Musik , emphasizing the lasting quality of the works in it. The series recalls Nägeli’s series Répertoire Répertoi re des clavecinistes, clavecinistes, which included Beethoven’s Op. 31 sonatas and had been announced as intending to contain a repertory of signicant works in the grand style (see Chapter 7). Steiner 7). Steiner developed similar ideas in a preface to his edition of Op. 101: Only musical products of recognized worth – compositions which are excelexcellently distinguished th rough their aesthetically pure musical design, design, worked out with artistry, artist ry, gracefulness and clarity – will nd a place in t his Museum for Piano-Music Piano- Music.. Hence we have acquired for ourselves, even from the most famous composers of our day, the latest works in their original form; then, on the other hand, we gladly add to them t hem valuable works works of earlier times, distinguished by their or iginality in invention invention as much as through tthe he precision, precision, re and life in its working out. With the above conditions, it follows from what has been said that within the scope of this project no musical product will be taken up, in which one misses solidity of musical design … In this way we hope to found not just an ephemeral ephemer al work but a Repertor a Repertor y for Longer Time, Time, which must itself be of value in the history of our art …. Later works in i n Steiner’s series included Archduke A rchduke Rudolph’s Rudolph’s Forty Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, Hummel’s Sonata Op. 9, Schubert’s Sonata in G, Op. 78 (D 894), and a single work from ‘earlier times’, Wolfgang Ebner’s Ferdinand Variations ar iations of 1648.51 The idea of composing works as museum pieces, like some great painting in an a n art gallery galler y, functioning as high a rt designed for posterity as well as the present time, t ime, was a relatively new one, but it has since become embe dded in our culture, not least th rough the efforts of Beethoven himself, who may have helped Steiner evolve the concept of a ‘museum’ series. Beethoven’s aim was to be a ‘t rue ar tist’, tist’, and his contemporaries sometimes com mented (or (or com plained) that th at he seemed to be w riting riti ng for posterity posterit y. The new sonata was wa s ideal for launching the series, for it is challenging in every way, with its complex counter point and allusions al lusions to Bach’s Bach’s style, its combination combi nation of intimacy inti macy and a nd grandeur, gra ndeur, its structural innovations, lofty ambition and advanced aesthetic that make it hard to grasp after af ter just a single hearing. It had taken over a year to compose, compose, and had required much sketching in score to accommodate its complexities. It is easy to see why this sonata is often considered, perhaps along with the preceding two

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cello sonatas, as marking the start of Beethoven’s late-style period.52 The printed edition appeared in February 1817, and Beethoven was able to send a copy to its dedicatee, Baroness Ertmann, with a charming letter dated 23 February.53

Op. 106: completion of a trilogy? When Beethoven started work on his next piano sonata, Op. 106, popularly known as the ‘Hammerklavier’, in late 1817, it was the third one that he had begun in just over three years. Op. 101 was begun almost as soon as Op. 90 had been published, and Op. 106 was the rst substantial work to be written after Op. 101 was published. Sonatas were traditionally composed in sets of three. Could Opp. 90, 101 and 106 therefore be considered a trilogy? They have rarely if ever been seen that way, for Op. 101 is usually grouped with its successors as the rst of the ‘nal ve’ sonatas.54 But they full all the usual musical criteria for a set of three, consisting of one minor-key sonata, at least one in a at key and at least one in a sharp key. Moreover, one could perceive the gentle, lyrical ending of Op. 90 as being taken up in the rst movement of Op. 101; and the grandiose gestures at the end of Op. 101, covering most of the keyboard, are imitated by similar gestures at the start of Op. 106. The links are also tonal: Op. 101 has been described by some writers as seeming to begin in m id-sentence, in medias res;55 and it is indeed in medias res if considered as following straight from Op. 90, for its rst two chords suggest E major, the key at the end of Op. 90. Op. 101 in turn ends with A major chords, whose connection with the B at of Op. 106 is demonstrated in the nale of the latter, where similar fort issimo A major chords reappear in bar 10 to prepare for the launch of the main Allegro fugue theme in B at. They appear again at bar 248, this time launching a new cantabile theme (and one distantly related to the nale theme of Op. 101), thus providing a double echo of Op. 101. Another connection between the three sonatas is the sense of progression through them: Op. 90 is technically undemanding and in two movements; Op. 101 is much more challenging, described by Beethoven himself as ‘difcult to play’ (see above), and is in three movements (including a compound nale); and Op. 106 is in four movements (again with a compound nale) with even greater technical challenges. The increasing number of movements foreshadows that in the three ‘Galitzin’ quartets of 1824–25, which are in four, ve and six movements respectively. Thus there is much that links these three sonatas. Moreover, it is plausible that Archduke Rudolph actually requested a set of three, which he would agree could be spread over several years with no xed time -limit. He would naturally receive the dedication of the third, climactic one, but not necessarily the other two. Beethoven was always willing to please the archduke, and so any such request from Rudolph for a new set of sonatas was likely to be fullled. It is hard to think of another good reason why Beethoven would want to compose three piano sonatas during the period 1814–18. The sketches for Op. 106 have proved a challenge for researchers. Beethoven normally used desk sketchbooks such as those described earlier, but between one


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and the next he would for a short time resort to loose leaves, many of which must have gone missing, since there are signicant gaps in the sketch record at such points. After Autograph 11/1, however, he seems to have gone much longer than usual without a desk sketchbook, continuing with loose leaves throughout the period in which Op. 106 was composed. As a result, there must have been a very large number of them, most of which have disappeared, although nearly 50 still survive.56 Concurrent with these leaves are three pocket sketchbooks, but the rst and by far the largest, the Boldrini Sketchbook, has been missing since 1890, and is k nown almost exclusively through descriptions by Nottebohm. 57 The other two, A 45 and A 44, are relatively small and neither is complete, though A 44 can be supplemented by several pages in Mendelssohn 2. 58 Added to these problems is the fact that the autograph score is the only one among the late sonatas that is missing. Nevertheless, far more source material sur vives for this sonata than for many of the early ones, and some provisional conclusions about its composition can be made. Beethoven appears to have begun Op. 106 in December 1817, for its earliest sketches are found on page 18 of the Boldrini Sketchbook, while a few pages earlier there appears a fragment of a Fugue for String Quintet, Op. 137, 59 the autograph of which is dated 28 November 1817. Thus the sonata was not begun until nearly a year after the previous one had been published. In the inter im, however, Beethoven had composed next to nothing. The cause of this fallow period, according to Beethoven himself, was an illness which began on 15 October 1816 and left him so weak that he composed ver y little for over a year.60 Thus in terms of output the two sonatas are almost contiguous. Among the earliest sketches for Op. 106 are some for a vocal work, ‘Vivat Rudolphus’, obviously planned to honour Beethoven’s patron, but these ideas were apparently absorbed into the sonata. 61 It is perhaps signicant that the words ‘Vivat, vivat Rudolphus’ t perfectly with the opening theme of Op. 106, and it seems that the sonata was planned from the outset as a kind of tribute to Archduke Rudolph. This intention was later conrmed in Beethoven’s letter of 3 March 1819, in which he says that the sonata had long been ‘wholly intended in my heart’ for the archduke.62 The letter also claims that the rst two movements of the sonata had been written in time for Rudolph’s nameday (17 April) in 1818. This claim seems to be undermined by a sketch for the second movement (scherzo) in A 45, folio 25, which surrounds an inscription on the same page that must have been written after Beethoven moved to Mödling that year (on 19 May); both sketch and inscription were clearly written about the same time.63 One possibility is that the sketch consists merely of ‘late memoranda for the principal points of articulation’, 64 but the sketch looks more like a preliminary concept sketch before the working out of the exact details, for it differs melodically and harmonically from the nal version, and also includes general verbal instructions that relate to planning a movement, notably ‘Zuerst variirt u. dann wieder simpel’ (‘Initially varied and then plain again’), for the reprise of the scherzo. This t ype of synopsis for a movement normally comes at an early stage of the compositional process.65 However,

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if it is assumed that this is an early sketch, there is an anomaly, for by this point in A 45 Beethoven had devoted many pages of sketches to this movement (‘Boldrini’, pages 75 – 128), had moved on to intensive work on the third movement (Boldrini, pages 116 – 27 and A 45, folios 1–13), and had even progressed to early work on the nale. It was completely outside his normal habits to move to detailed work on a third and fourth movement without completing the second. Thus Beethoven evidently did complete the scherzo by mid-April before moving on to the third and fourth movements, but then while sketching the fourth in Mödling he had fresh ideas for the scherzo. The original version of the scherzo was therefore probably much simpler, consisting of the conventional two sect ions with repeat marks, a trio section in the minor as in the nal version, then an un altered reprise of the scherzo with a short coda. What he apparently changed in May or June, then, was not the structure but the guration and texture, which is what the sketch (Example 10.6) shows.66 The rst section of the scherzo is rep resented by just its rst bar, though the chord spacing is still not as in the nal version; its repetition an octave higher, as in the nal version, is then indicated, while the second section is back at the original register and is followed by a varied repeat (substituted in the nal version by a plain repeat an octave higher). The trio section is omitted from the sketch and was presumably left unaltered. The following retransition is represented by its tremolando chord, though interestingly this is marked in the sketch, whereas in the nal version the music remains fortissimo. The reprise of the scherzo is indicated as the varied version followed by the plain one, whereas in the end Beethoven created a straightforward reprise with only slight variation from the rst statement. Hence he must have decided during the summer that the scherzo needed extensive reworking, and the sketch represents an early stage of this, in which guration and textu re had been altered from the original version and were to be altered again before completion. But the overall shape of the movement must have remained more or less unchanged throughout this period of revision, for there are no sketches for its reworking.

Example 10.6 Sketch for Op. 106.II (Wgm, A 45, f. 25, from N-II, pp. 131 – 2).


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Little can be said about the creation of the rst movement when so few sketches are known, but the one leaf still surviving shows the recapitulation turning initially to E at major,67 which is rather more conventional than the G at major eventually adopted (bars 239–66). On the reverse of the leaf is an idea for a second movement in C major rather than B at, but its  metre and energetic theme68 suggest Beethoven had already decided to place a quick movement second rather than third. Sketches for the slow third movement are a little better preserved, and show parts of the movement taking shape. Much is sketched in  , but Beethoven eventually decided on  with twice as many barlines. Surprisingly, he established the triplet gure accompanying the D major theme (bars 51–3) long before he worked out the melodic contours of this theme, which does not appear in its nal form in the surviving sketches.69 For the nale Beethoven planned from an early stage to compose a fugue.70 This was to be preceded by a slow introduction, but his earliest ideas for both were far from what eventually emerged. For the introduction an early sketch shows just a conventional passage in B at minor leading to F major chords that prepare for the B at major nale.71 A presumably later sketch comes much closer to the nal version, showing a series of descending thirds i n the bass, leading to an ‘organ point’ on A as in the nal version, but the melodic details are shad owy,72 and the sketches closest to the nal version have not been located. Beethoven seems to have prepared for the fugue by consulting Marpurg’s treatise on fugue, from which he copied a theme and its inversion and retrograde forms, into the Boldrini Sketchbook (page 8).73 This suggests he was already planning to write a complex fugue full of contrapuntal ‘devices’, and an advance on the fugato of Op. 101 or even the fugal nale of his last cello sonata. The f ugue theme itself, however, took time to establish. Several possible themes, quite different from the nal one, were rejected, including one in B at minor that was apparently to have appeared in a f ugal episode within a rondo.74 Even when he established the opening leap of a tenth, echoing the opening of the rst movement, various metres were considered, including and  as well as ,75 and the rest of the theme emerged only gradually, almost bar by bar. In fact he sketched in score an entire fugal exposition in three voices, plus the rst episode, with only the  rst half of the theme in place and the rest of it quite different, as in Example 10.7 (Bsb, Landsberg 9, p. 1). The order in which the voices enter is as in the nal ver sion (alto – soprano – bass), and the second bar contains an interesting diversion towards G minor (later eliminated). As can be seen, however, the second half of the subject is very weak and bland compared with the semiquaver runs decorated by chromaticism that emerged on the next two pages of the sketch gathering and entered the nal version. The triplet guration in the seventh bar was initially ex ploited in further triplet gures, but these quickly disappeared from subsequent sketches. The remainder of the movement also required extensive sketching, and there are many major gaps in the sketch record. What does survive shows that, as with the slow introduction and the fugue theme, the enormously complex movement was created by building gradually on much more elementary material. The contrapuntal devices, which include augmentation, stretto, inversion

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and retrograde treatment of the theme, are found in their most basic forms in the sketches before being worked into the much more sophisticated textu res and remote keys of the nal version.

Example 10.7 Sketch for Op. 106.IV (Bsb, Landsberg 9, p. 1).

While at work on the sonata Beethoven received a gift of a Broadwood piano from the manufacturer in London, adorned with signatures of several London musicians, which reached hi m in late spring 1818. How much impact its arrival had on the sonata is uncertain, especially as he could scarcely hear it because of his deafness. It is noteworthy, however, that the rst movement, completed before the piano’s arrival, uses a compass up to high f4, though it does not use the ‘contra E’ found in the previous sonata. On the other hand the last three movements, composed or at least reaching their nal form after that date, do not stray beyond c4, the limit of the Broadwood compass; but they do exploit the bottom register right down to low CC – the lowest note on the Broadwood – especially in the nale.

Publication of Op. 106 The nale must have taken several months to complete, in view of its length and complexity, and during the latter part of 1818 Beethoven was also occupied with 12 sets of ute variations (typically four variations per set) on folksong melodies, which had been commissioned by George Thomson in a letter of 22 June. In addition, he made some tentative sketches for his Ninth Symphony during the composition of Op. 106. But the sonata was completed by about the end of the year and manuscript copies were prepared for publication. His friend and former pupil Ferdinand Ries, then living in London, arranged for a London edition to be published about the same time as the planned Viennese edition by Artaria & Co., so that Beethoven would receive two fees, as on some previous occasions. The copy for London was despatched in the second half of Januar y 1819,76 to be published by the newly established Regent’s Harmonic Institution, of which Ries


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was a member. Neither manuscript copy had been properly checked at that time, however, and numerous mistakes were discovered when the Viennese copy was eventually played through, as Beethoven explained in letters of 8 and 19 March.77 Thus he sent a lengthy correction list to Ries in his letter of 19 March, on the assumption that the same mistakes were probably in the London manuscript. Although both manuscripts are lost, most of the correction list survives (though split into three separate locations), and it contains well over a hundred corrections, plus an estimated 30 or so in the missing portion of the list. Nearly all the corrections are of wrong notes or missing accidentals, and none concern dy namics or articulation. The copyist no doubt made some mista kes with these too, but they were unlikely to be noticed if proofreading were limited t o a play-through, as appears to have happened. Several missing accidentals in the manuscr ipt were also overlooked during proofreading, including some notorious naturals in bars 224–6 of the rst movement. Hence there has been much debate about whether naturals were intended here, but the evidence is overwhelming that they were.78 The ‘Hammerklavier’ is the only sonata for which Beethoven provided metronome marks. The metronome had been patented by Johann Maelzel in 1815, and Beethoven, who embraced the idea enthusiastically, was among the rst to use one. But he found the allocation of metronome marks tiresome and often failed to carry out the task. He had not done so for the ‘Hammerklavier’ when he sent the manuscript to London, and in his letter of 19 March he lamented that his metronome was broken and so the gures would have to be sent a little later. He still had not sent them in May, according to a letter dated 25 May 1819, and promised them by the next post. They were nally included in a letter to Ries dated 16 April, but the letter was evidently not sent until June, since its arrival in London is dated 13 July 1819.79 Most of the metronome marks sent are plausible but the one for the rst movement,  = 138, seems so fast that many performers have suspected an error, although a few have attempted to match this speed, at least for the opening bars. Ries was evidently among those suspecting an error, for the London edition of the work appeared with a metronome mark of  = 138, half the speed, although the m inim is clear in the letter. The slower speed would certainly have put the movement much more within the capabilities of many pianists in England, where virt uosity was seemingly less cultivated than in Vienna. Ries had another shock when he saw the letter, as he himself later recalled.80 Beethoven had included in his letter an extra bar at the start of the Adagio, with the laconic remark: ‘Here it is to be noted that the rst bar must still be i nserted …’. This is perhaps the most famous case of his making an important change at the last minute – at a time when the English edition of the sonata had probably been engraved and, for all he knew, actually published. Luckily there was time to amend the printed edition before publication, even if it had been printed already; there is no sign of an amendment to the plates at this point, but the whole page could have been re-engraved. The extra bar was also writt en out for Artaria with a similar instruction around the same time.81 The bar may have been an afterthought but it is thoroughly integral to the sonata, in at least three ways. It bridges the gap tonally between the B at major of the Scherzo and the F sharp minor

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of the Adagio, by using A as a pivot note, followed by C  that sounds like a turn towards the closely related D minor but proves to be the dominant of the new key. Its leap of a major third recalls the opening of the rst movement, where the ris ing major third is spread over two octaves. And it anticipates an impor tant motif from later in the Adagio, a motif that becomes prominent at bars 69 and 73 but is already adumbrated in the left hand at bars 14 and 22. It is extraordinary that such a crucial insertion occurred only at such a late stage. Beethoven no doubt realized that the sonata would be found especially challenging in England and he feared it might be rejected by the publisher when its length and difculty were noticed. But he was very anxious that the sonata should be published there somehow, as he was in need of extra funds to support his nephew. One possibility would be to send a different sonata, and in his letter of 19 March he wrote: ‘Should the sonata not be right for London I could send another one.’ This was rather an empty suggestion, however. Although he had made a brief concept sketch for a possible ‘Sonata II’ among the nale sketches for Op. 106,82 this had been promptly abandoned, and he would have had to write a new one from scratch. He claimed in his letter that this would be most inconvenient at that stage since he was very busy with other things. 83 This was perfectly true, since he was trying to compose two symphonies that had been commissioned by the Philhar monic Society of London, and he had also just undert aken to write a grand mass (the Missa solemnis) for Archduke Rudolph’s enthronement as Archbishop of Olmütz the following year. Another solution to the London problem would be to publish the sonata in some truncated form, and in the same letter he suggested several possibilities: You could leave out the Largo and begin the last movement with the fugue straight away, or have the rst movement then the Adagio and 3rd the Scherzo, and leave out No. 4 Largo and Allegro risoluto completely, or you could take just the rst movement and Scherzo as the whole sonata. I leave this to you as you think best. These comments might suggest that Beethoven regarded the sonata as a somewhat exible structure, or that he did not much care how it was presented. But he seems to have been condent that, if it were published correctly in Vienna, the English edition was less important. What was most essential was that it should appear in London in some form so that he could receive some payment for it. In the end the Regent’s Harmonic Institution, presumably guided by Ries, adopted Beethoven’s second suggestion, with the rst three movements stand ing on their own but with the Adagio second and Scherzo third, as a ‘grand sonata’. In this format, and with a slow metronome mark for the rst movement, the sonata would have suited the British market much better than in its full format. In addition, rst-movement passages exceeding the compass of Broadwood pianos were provided with an alternative version, presumably supplied by Ries. The nale, however, was also published, in a separate volume entitled Introduction & Fugue, and with no indication that it belonged with the rest of the sonata.


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The two volumes were registered simultaneously at Stationers’ Hall, ofcially denoting publication, on 1 October 1819 (and again on 24 December, probably after corrections had been made).84 The Viennese edition was announced in the Wiener Zeitung two weeks earlier, on 15 September. The advertisement refers to the work as being composed for pianoforte, as does the French title page used on some of Artaria’s copies; but on copies with a German title page the new word ‘Hammerklavier’ was used, as in Op. 101; and the fortissimo chords that hammer out the opening of the sonata have ensured that this ter m has become the nickname for this sonata rather than for its gentler predecessor. The sonata certainly signals a dramatic change of style, and this was well recognized by the publishers, whose newspaper announcement includes a fascinating appraisal emphasizi ng the new level to which Beethoven had taken the sonata genre: While we wish here to set aside all the usual eulogies, which would anyway be superuous for the admirers of Beethoven’s high artistic talent but thereby also go against the author’s wishes, we just wish to observe in a few lines that this work is distinguished above all other creations of this master, not only through the richest and greatest imagination, but that it will at the same time mark out a new period for Beethoven’s piano works in respect of its artistic perfection and of its well-regulated style.85 Thus the publishers were quick to recognize that this sonata went well beyond anything Beethoven had previously composed. The previous piano sonata, too, had broken new ground, and some of Steiner’s comments about his Museum für Klavier-Musik are not far removed from Artaria’s comments about Op. 106. Hence each of the two sonatas independently represents a major step forward and was seen to do so at the time, whereas Op. 90 had been rightly perceived as more of a step sideways, with increased lyricism and elegance rather than bold innovation. The ‘Hammerklavier’, however, was in a class of its own, and Beethoven realized this too: Czerny relates that, while walki ng near Mödling (in summer 1818), Beethoven told him: ‘I am now writing a sonata which will be my greatest.’86 It marks the culmination of Beethoven’s development of the ‘grand sonata’, a phrase used on English, French and German title pages alike, as well as in the Wiener Zeitung announcement. His nal three sonatas may arguably show more depth of spirit, but they do not come close to surpassing its grandeur.

Notes 1 See Peter Clive, Beethoven and His World: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 353. 2 See BB-746, note 4. 3 Wgm, A 40. 4 See JTW, pp. 228–9. 5 See N-II, pp. 298–9. 6 JTW, p. 229.

174 7 8 9 10 11


N-II, p. 299. Wgm, A 36, pp. 57–60; Bsb, Landsberg 12, pp. 23–34. JTW, p. 226. The sketch is quoted complete in N-II, pp. 366–7. BNba, NE 189; facsimile edition in Michael Ladenburger, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven. Klaviersonate e-Moll op. 90 (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1993). 12 See Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), p. 170. 13 See Susan Kagan, ‘Studies in Textual Criticism: The Second Movement of Beethoven’s Fortepiano Sonata in E minor/major, Opus 90: A Wrong Note?’, The Beethoven Newsletter , 9/2–3 (1994), 128–30. 14 BB-746; A-492. 15 BB-740; A-498. 16 Ladenburger, ed., Klaviersonate, p. 35. 17 BB-794; A-535. 18 BB-794, endnote. 19 BB-795; A-537. 20 The manuscript is now in Wn, Mus. Hs. 16.570. See Ladenburger, ed., Klaviersonate, p. 36. 21 BB-808; A-543. 22 Ladenburger, ed., Klaviersonate, pp. 37–8. 23 BB-814; A-545. 24 Ladenburger, ed., Klaviersonate, p. 39. Exemplars of both impressions are in BNba and can be viewed online. 25 See Alan Tyson, ‘Beethoven in Steiner’s Shop’, The Music Review, 23 (1962), 119–27. 26 AMZ, 18 (24 Jan. 1816), cols 60–1. 27 BB-950 and BB-964; A-642 and A-674. 28 BB-1065; A-742. 29 Sieghard Brandenburg, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven. Klaviersonate A-Dur Opus 101: Faksimile nach dem Autograph im Besitz des Beethoven-Hauses Bonn (Munich: Henle, 1998). The autograph is in BNba, NE 219. 30 BNba, HCB BSk 13/61. Facsimile in Brandenburg, ed., Klaviersonate, pp. III–IV. For its location within the Scheide Sketchbook, and a reconstruction of the latter, see JTW, pp. 241–6. The main part of the sketchbook is in PRu, Scheide MA130. 31 See Erica Buurman, ‘Beethoven’s Compositional Approach to Multi-Movement Structures in H is Instrumental Works’, PhD diss. (University of Manchester, 2013), p. 255. 32 Pn, Rés. Vm.7 537, f. 49. See Brandenburg, ed., Klaviersonate, pp. V–VI, which include facsimiles of both sides of the leaf. 33 The main themes in this synopsis are transcribed in Buur man, ‘Beethoven’s Compositional Approach’, pp. 185–6. 34 Most of it is quoted in N-II, pp. 342–3. 35 See Nicholas Marston, ‘In t he “Twilight Zone”: Beethoven’s Unnished Piano Trio in F minor’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 131 (2006), 227–86. 36 See Maynard Solomon, ‘Beethoven’s Tagebuch of 1812–1818’, in Beethoven Studies 3, ed. Alan Tyson (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 193–288, at 255 (entry no. 91). 37 Bsb, Autograph 11/1; see JTW, pp. 247–51. 38 For an inventory of the sketchbook, see Hans-Gü nter Klein, Ludwig van Beethoven: Autographe und Abschriften (Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz: Kataloge der Musikabteilung, I/2, Berlin: Merseburger, 1975), pp. 50–2. 39 Kj, Mendelssohn 1; JTW, pp. 340–4. 40 Pn, Ms 78 and Ms 103; see JTW, pp. 344–6.


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41 They are noted in Sieghard Brandenburg, ‘Die Skizzen zur Neunten Symphonie’, in Zu Beethoven 2: Aufsätze und Dokumente, ed. Harry Goldschmidt (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1984), pp. 88–129, at p. 100; see JTW, p. 345. The leaves are in Kj, Mendelssohn 2, pp. 76–9, 66–9, 4–7, 24–31, 80–3. 42 As noted by Nottebohm, N-II, p. 157. 43 LvBWV, vol. 2, p. 348. 44 Several attempts at the fugue subject itself are quoted in N-II, pp. 553–4. 45 BB-982 and 996; A-662 and Alb-235. 46 BB-1006; A-585 (misdated 1815). 47 BB-1067; A-747. 48 BB-1056 to BB-1071 passim; A-666 and 737 to 748 passim. 49 BB-1061; A-749. 50 BB-1066; A-735. 51 The full list of the series is in Erica Buurman, ‘The Viennese Forerunners of the “Diabelli” Project’, Arietta, 8 (2014), 21–8, at 23. 52 See, for example, Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 346; Glenn Stanley, ‘Some Thoughts on Biography and a Chronology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, ed. Glenn Stanley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 3–13, at 5. 53 BB-1093; A-764. 54 See e.g. Brandenburg, ed., Klaviersonate, p. XIII. 55 See e.g. Michael Broyles, Beethoven: The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven’s Heroic Style (New York: Excelsior, 1987), p. 224; William Kinderman, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 195. 56 45 such leaves are listed in JTW, pp. 537–8, though one is not a sketch but two bars of score, and two others are fragmentary; see Nicholas Marston, ‘Approaching the Sketches for Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 44 (1991), 404–50, where four additional leaves are described, one of which has since been acquired by the Beethoven-Haus (BNba, NE 193). A further leaf was auctioned at Sotheby’s on 6 December 2002: see Ira F. Brilliant, ‘Beethoven Auction Report: Sotheby’s (London), December 6, 2002’, The Beethoven Journal , 17 (2002), 72–3. 57 N-II, pp. 123–37, 349–55. 58 Wgm, A 45 and A 44; see JTW, pp. 351–7. 59 N-II, pp. 350–52. 60 See Barry Cooper, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 254 (2nd edn, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 273). 61 See N-II, pp. 127–8. 62 BB-1292; A-948 (misdated June 1819). 63 See Norbert Gertsch, ‘Ludwig van Beethovens “Hammerklavier”-Sonate Op. 106: Bemerkungen zur Datierung und Bewertung der Quellen’, Bonner BeethovenStudien, 2 (2001), 63–95, at 70. Nottebohm (N-II, p. 133) also conrms that sketch and inscription were contemporaneous. 64 JTW, p. 353. 65 Gertsch, ‘Beethovens “Hammerklavier”’, p. 70. 66 Example 10.6 is taken from N-II, pp. 131–2, where minor notational clarications have been added. 67 Lbl, Add. 14396, f. 30. 68 The theme is quoted in Marston, ‘Approaching the Sketches’, p. 410. 69 See Marston, ‘Approaching the Sketches’, p. 434. Most of this article is devoted to the slow movement and the introduction to the nale. 70 An early synopsis for the last three movements shows plans for a minuet, an Adagio in F sharp minor or major, and a fugal nale. See N-II, p. 129.

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71 Marston, ‘Approaching the Sketches’, pp. 440–1. 72 N-II, p. 135. 73 Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Abhandlung von der Fuge (Berlin: Haude and Spener, 1753–54); cited in N-II, p. 351. 74 Marston, ‘Approaching the Sketches’, pp. 440–5. 75 N-II, p. 136. 76 Gertsch, ‘Beethovens “Hammerklavier”’, p. 71. 77 BB-1294 and 1295; A-938 and 939. 78 See Barry Cooper, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas, 3 vols (London: ABRSM, 2007), Commentaries, vol. 3, p. 43. 79 BB-1302 and 1309; A-944 and 940. 80 WR, p. 95. 81 See Marston, ‘Approaching the Sketches’, pp. 408–9. 82 Marston, ‘Approaching the Sketches’, pp. 437–9. 83 BB-1295; A-939. 84 See Alan Tyson, The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), p. 102. 85 Wiener Zeitung , 15 September 1819, p. 4 (= 844). 86 KC, p. 223.

11 The last three sonatas

Op. 109 in E: Vivace ma non troppo [alternating with:] Adagio espressivo. Prestissimo. Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo: Gesang mit innigster Empndung [followed by variations, some in different tempos]. Op. 110 in A at: Moderato: cantabile molto espressivo. Allegro molto. Adagio ma non troppo [alternating with:] Fuga: Allegro ma non troppo. Op. 111 in C minor: Maestoso [leading to:] Allegro con brio ed appassionato. Arietta: Adagio.

The ‘Little Piece’ for Starke Having published his ‘grand sonata’ Op. 106 in September 1819, Beethoven had no plans to compose any more sonatas for a while, for he was busy with three large-scale works: the Ninth Symphony, the Diabelli Variations and the Missa solemnis. His plans changed, however, in April 1820 when he received a now lost letter from the Berlin publisher Adolph Schlesinger. In Beethoven’s reply, dated 30 April 1820, he offered to write a set of three new piano sonatas for 40 ducats each.1 Schlesinger responded by proposing only 90 ducats for a set of three, but Beethoven agreed to accept this lower gure – just this once, as he indicated in his letter of 31 May.2 After many vicissitudes, these three sonatas eventually emerged as Opp. 109–11. What seems puzzling, however, is that some of the sketches for the rst move ment of Op. 109 clearly predate Beethoven’s acceptance of Schlesinger’s terms and even his initial request of 11 April. They are also not contiguous with sketches for the second and third movements, thus implying that the rst movement was initially conceived as a separate piece. The explanation was provided by William Meredith, who established that the movement was originally written in response to a request from Beethoven’s friend Friedrich Starke. 3 Starke was preparing to publish a piano tutor, and asked for contributions from several composers, including Beethoven. The request was transmitted to Beethoven through his friend Carl Bernard in an entry in Beethoven’s conversation book, about 5 February: ‘Starke wants to have a little music-piece from you for his second part of the Klavierschule … .’4

178

The last three sonatas

Beethoven did not begin work on this piece immediately, for he was preoccu pied with his Missa solemnis and with preparing for a court case concerning the guardianship of his nephew Karl. Du ring that month he also began composing a song, ‘Abendlied’, in response to a different request. The autograph of ‘Abendlied’ is dated 4 March 1820, 5 and the earliest sketches for the new piano piece appear almost immediately after some for the song. Thus Beethoven evidently began composing it in early March or possibly towards the end of February. The main sketches for it in his desk sketchbook, the Wittgenst ein Sketchbook, are on leaves that have become separated from the main body of the book and are now in Grasnick 20b, folios 3r–5v, plus a small fragment on 6v (sketches for ‘Abendlied’ appear on folio 2).6 The contemporaneous pocket sketchbook is BH 107, where sketches for the movement can be found on pages 39 – 41 and 43.7 The rst sign of a new piece for Starke (Grasnick 20b, folio 3r) is a short sketch in F minor placed directly beneath sketches for the Missa solemnis. The sketch peters out after two and a half bars, and near the end of it Beethoven omits some of the rhythmic detail (see Example 11.1), but what links it with the rst movement of Op. 109 is its texture of four-part broken chords, in which right hand and left hand alternate in pairs of notes to provide a continuous semiquaver rhythm, using guration strikingly similar to that of the sonata movement. Immediately be neath this sketch, however, Beethoven indicated an alternative in E major (marked ‘oder’ [or]), which already adumbrates closely the nal version of the main theme of the rst movement of the sonata. 8 The melodic and harmonic shape of this main theme is also essentially the same as that of the nale theme of the Sonata in G, Op. 79, with a descending bass line and a melodic outline that rises and falls alternately, its rst phrase beginning and ending on the third of the scale. Thus Beethoven fused the texture of his F minor sketch with the melodic-harmonic outline of the earlier work. At this stage, however, he seems to have been undecided whether to begin on a weak or a strong beat, for he omitted al most all the barlines; and even in the nal version the accentuation is ambiguous to the listener. The early sketches also indicate or imply  metre, with   established through additional barlines only towards the end of the sketches, on folio 5v.

Example 11.1 Sketch for abandoned F minor movement (Bsb, Grasnick 20b, f. 3r) .

In this rst E major sketch there is no sign of the  adagio sections, but they are hinted at in a verbal comment: ‘fällt ein cis moll u. in eine Fantasie schliesst darin’ (‘moves to C sharp minor and closes there into a fantasy’). The reference


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to C sharp minor is noteworthy, for although the exposition of this sonata-form movement closes in B major, C sharp minor appears prominently at the start of the rst adagio section. More signicant is the reference to a ‘Fantasie’, showing that Beethoven was already contemplating some kind of rhapsodic passage, probably with a change of metre, rather than a continous moto perpetuo. Since the piece was at this stage apparently envisaged for a piano t utor, some contrast between more energetic and more lyrical passages was appropriate, and a  time signature suggesting a change of speed does appear in a sketch further down the same page. Thus the movement was already highly i rregular for the opening of a sonata, but well suited to its intended context. Before long the main cornerstones of the movement were established, for an outline draft that covers most of the movement appears on folio 4r, although it is somewhat compressed and disjointed in places, with some details omit ted.9 The opening eight-bar theme is more or less in place (in ), but the following adagio passage is not brought to a clear-cut conclusion. The beginning of the development section is indicated (again in ), and it moves towards G sharp minor like the nal version, but the following bars are omitted u ntil the recapitulation. In the second adagio the sudden modulation to C major is hinted at through conspicuous F$s, but the details are not worked out. What appears to be a continuation towards the coda appears on stave 13, but it stops after ve bars. On the opposite page (folio 3v) are further details, some of which may have been added after the outline draft. Here one nds more work on the modulation to C major in the second adagio, but only on the harmonic outline; the actual guration and renement of the harmony must have been worked out elsewhere. The following pages show further work, chiey on the development section and coda, and this work continues in BH 107, in sketches clearly later than those in Grasnick 20b. As often happens, Beethoven gave particular attention to the very end of the movement. One possibility was to conclude by ascending to a high note – b2, b3 or even e4 at the top of the keyboard, but another was to end in the middle register, in the alto range. In the end he combined the best of both worlds – a rise up to a high b3 followed by a single low-pitched chord. Since this combination is already adumbrated in a sketch on page 40 of BH 107, it was probably already in place before Beethoven had decided to add t wo further movements; in other words, he did not feel any need to recompose the ending signicantly in order to link it with what followed, although he may have made minor adjustments. The means by which the movement ended up as the rst in a sonata for Schlesinger can be traced in some detail. Beethoven’s initial letter of 25 March 1820 indicates that Schlesinger had previously met him and had expressed an interest in publishing some of his smaller works. Beethoven now offered him two: some ute variations and some folksong settings (Opp. 107 and 108). 10 Unfortunately he had already offered both works to Simrock of Bonn (letters of 9, 14 and 18 March), who conrmed acceptance of the offer and Beethoven’s conditions before Schlesinger had had a chance to reply. In Schlesinger’s lost reply of 11 April he apparently agreed in principle to take both works but asked

180


for more details. Beethoven provided these for the folksong settings, but said that the variations had already been given away by the time Schlesinger’s letter arrived.11 They were actually not sent to Simrock until 22 April,12 a few days after the probable arrival date of Schlesinger’s letter. What Beethoven meant, therefore, was evidently that the score had by then been allocated in h is mind to Simrock; but, to keep both publishers happy, he retained the folksong settings for Schlesinger. He then added in his letter of 30 April: ‘Also I will gladly let you have new sonatas, but these not less than at 40 ducats per sonata, thus a work of three sonatas at 120 ducats.’ The nature of Beethoven’s reply, specically men tioning three sonatas but referring much more vaguely to possible future works such as ‘trios or quartets’, makes it fairly certain that Schlesinger had raised the issue of sonatas – probably a set of three – but perhaps not these other works, in his letter of 11 April. The earliest surviving reference to a sonata for Schlesinger, however, is a conversation-book entry by Beethoven’s friend and secretary Franz Oliva, who wrote on 23 or 24 April: ‘and perhaps use the new little piece for a sonata for Schlesinger’.13 This ‘little piece’ must have been the one intended for Starke,14 and Oliva was clearly responding to Schlesinger’s request. 15 The sketching of the ‘little piece’ had evidently been nished by 10 April, if not earlier,16 and on 19 April Oliva had already made a reference to it: ‘Are you giving that to Starke as a single piece?’17 The answer was probably afrmative, for Oliva’s comment about the ‘new little piece’ a few days later implied that it was still an independent piece. At that time, therefore, Beethoven must have decided that it was more urgent to write a sonata for Schlesinger than provide something for Starke, and he took up Oliva’s suggestion that the piece could form the rst movement of the sonata. Thus, as with the Lebewohl Sonata, the rst movement of Op. 109 was initially quite separate from the remaining ones. Starke, meanwhile, was later compensated with ve new bagatelles by Beethoven (Op. 119 nos. 7–11), which duly appeared in Volume 3 of Starke’s piano tutor.18

The completion of Op. 109 Having decided to use the ‘little piece’ in the new sonata, Beethoven began considering what might be in the later movements. The rst evidence for these is a series of brief sketches showing three contrasting movements for piano, which cannot be anything other than a possible synopsis for the rest of the sonata. They appear in Grasnick 20b, folio 1v, the original location of which was in his desk sketchbook, a few leaves further on than the sketches for the rst movement (now folios 3–6).19 All Beethoven’s previous multi-movement works in E keep the same keynote for each movement, and so it is no surprise that this pattern is retained here. What is surprising is that all three movements are in E minor, but the nale was planned to conclude with an extended section in E major to re store the tonality of the rst movement (‘2ter Theil in E dur durchaus’ (‘2nd part in E major throughout’); the gure is unclear and could be a 3). Since the rst movement was already complete by this time, the synopsis omits this and begins


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with a minuet-type movement, consisting of eight bars cadencing on the dominant and repeated, plus about 16 bars for a middle section and the rst two of a reprise. These ideas are followed by a short sketch in C major that can only have been intended as the beginning and end of a trio section, followed by a ‘D.C.’ back to the minuet. Next comes a ‘molto presto’ in  , clearly intended as the nal movement – the one that was to end in E major. The location of a ‘largo’, designated as the second movement, at the foot of the page rather than the top, suggests that Beethoven may have initially considered a three-movement work with a minuet second (with trio in C major, as in his Sonata Op. 14 No. 1, also in E). If so, the Largo was intended either to precede the minuet in a four-movement structure – which would be surprising since both are in E minor – or more likely as an alternative to it. Like the minuet sketch, the Largo begins with a n eight-bar phrase with repeat sign. This synopsis seems to mark Beethoven’s initial response to Oliva’s suggestion for completing a sonata, for it is difcult to interpret it in any other way. The subsequent sketches also t this picture perfectly. Beethoven did not im mediately develop the ideas in the synopsis, since at this stage, in April 1820, he had no indication whether Schlesinger would accept his proposal for three sonatas, and so he returned to his Missa solemnis, sketches for which appear on the rst 35 pages of his next desk sketchbook, Artaria 195.20 Only at the end of May, after he had received Schlesinger’s letter of 20 May, could he be condent that Schlesinger would publish three new sonatas on acceptable terms. His letter of 31 May indicates that he now intended to complete the rst sonata ‘as soon as possible’ and the remaining two sonatas by the ‘end of July’, 21 an ambitious timescale that proved to be hopelessly unrealistic. By the time he returned to Op. 109 he was using not only a new sketchbook but musical material completely different from the three movements sketched in his previous synopsis. The rst sign of a resumption of the work appears on page 58 of the pocket sketchbook BH 108, in a sketch that can be dated to early June 1820.22 This shows a Presto movement for a ‘Sonata in E minor’, but still with no clear thematic connection to what eventually emerged as Op. 109. The heading suggests that Beethoven was now thinking of omitting the movement for Starke and writing a complete E minor sonata, beginning with this Presto. Sketches that are clearly for the second movement of Op. 109, however, appear in Artaria 195 – mainly on pages 35 – 50, immediately after Credo sketches for the mass. Sketches for the nale appear mainly on pages 50 – 73, with a few pre liminary ones on pages 36 – 7. There are a few later sketches for both movements, and the main sketches are followed by some for the ve bagatelles for Starke. The series of pocket sketchbooks, however, contains a gap, for BH 108 contains Credo sketches corresponding roughly to those on pages 1 – 35 of Artaria 195, but the next pocket book, BH 109, corresponds roughly to the Benedictus sketches on pages 80 – 100 of Artaria 195. 23 Thus there was probably a now lost pocket sketchbook for the intervening material (the sonata and bagatelles), and virtually the only known sketches for the second and third movements of the sonata are those in Ar taria 195.

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These sketches begin with a theme that at rst sight has little in common with the sonata, for the melody does not match the second movement, repeatedly descending instead of ascending during the rst two phrases (see Example 11.2). 24 But the key is the same, and the rhythm and phrase structure of the rst four phrases correspond surprisingly closely, despite being notated in   (and with most of the dots missing from dotted crotchets). Bars 1–2 outline a decorated arpeggio around the tonic chord, bars 3–4 form an answering phrase, while bars 5–6 undergo a varied repeat in bars 7–8, using a rhyth m based on a dotted crotchet tied to a quaver. All these features can also be found in the nal version, except that this is in  with twice as many barlines. Thus Beethoven established the character and rhythm of the movement rst, before attending too closely to melodic details. Soon the main theme was established, however, and a compressed draft of an ex position, apparently 30 bars long and ending in B minor, appears on page 37. This sketch is partly in score, and the rst eight bars already show the descending bass line of the nal version (though in a slightly simplied form) – a bass line clearly related to the one that opens the rst movement. It might even be suggested that it is actually derived from the rst movement; but this derivation occurred only after Beethoven had established the rhythm and chara cter of the second. The bass line at the start of the second movement emerged at the same time as the melodic line above it; its connection with the rst movement was not the star ting point for the second movement but was incorporated only later.

Example 11.2 Early sketch for Op. 109.II (Bsb, Artaria 195, p. 35).

Work on the second movement was completed after a series of four extended drafts plus some variant sketches on pages 41 – 50 of Artaria 195. The drafts are nearly all in score on two staves, like so many of Beethoven’s late sonata sketches, though the lower stave is often left blank. Contrar y to what often hap pens, the four drafts do not work gradually towards the nished version but include other possibilities. The rst shows a second subject in G major, which returns in E major in the recapitulation for an extended conclusion in that key.


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The second draft, for the exposition only, returns to earlier ideas by moving to B minor as in the nal version. The third, which omits most of the exposition, avoids sonata form altogether, being th rough-composed with elements of binary form. The nal draft shows just the second part of the movement, from the begin ning of the development section to the end of the coda. By this time the sketches were coming fairly close to the nal version, and could have formed the basis for the writing out of the autograph. The third movement consists of a theme and six variations, followed by a nal return of the theme. The theme might seem almost commonplace, with its thoroughly regular phrase str ucture and mainly conjunct motion or small leaps, while its rhythms echo those of the Baroque sarabande. Crafting it, however, took much effort, with many melodic and harmonic var iants. Its basic shape was created on pages 36 – 7 of Artaria 195, before detailed work on the second movement, but its most intensive sketching appears only after the main second-movement sketches, on page 53, where there are numerous alterations and deletions, resulting in a version that approaches the nal one. Throughout these sketches the 16-bar structure is almost always present or implied, and most of the sketches suggest internal cadences in B major and G sharp minor, keys used in the nal version; but there are occasional hints of C sharp minor among the early sketches. The ending in particular varies much in different sketches, and the melody in some of the earlier ones ends on E (e1 or e2), rather than the G with which the movement and indeed the whole sonata began.25 The sketch on page 53 is marked ‘con molto sentimento ed espressivo’, which became ‘Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo’ in the autograph score. Here, however, Beethoven added a German heading, ‘Gesang mit innigster Empnd ung’ (‘song with most intimate feeling’). ‘Gesang’ was changed to ‘gesangvoll’ (‘song-like’) in the published version, but an aura of vocality was clearly part of Beethoven’s intention, as in much of his late-period music, and the song-like character of the theme is worth noting. It may be signicant that the theme was conceived while Beethoven was working on the nal version of his folksong settings Op. 108, in which many of the melodies have similarly regular 16-bar structures. Their melodic lines show no close parallels to Beethoven’s theme, for this melody owes much to the theme of the rst movement; but the unexpected leap of a minor sixth to a weakly stressed tonic in bar 11, followed by immediate return, is exactly anticipated in the ninth bar of the song ‘Oh sweet were the hours’ (Op. 108 No. 3), another  andante melody, and it is possible that this precedent and others in the folksongs had some effect on Beethoven’s ideas for the theme. The surviving sketches for the variations themselves are surprisingly rudimentary, and much of the later work was probably done in t he lost pocket sketchbook believed to have been used at this stage. In Artaria 195, after the preliminary sketches on pages 36 – 7 noted above, the rst main phase is on pages 50 – 3, where there are various fragments in  time and detailed work on the theme. The next phase is represented on pages 54 – 69, where ideas are sketched for what appear to be 15 variations. It seems improbable that Beethoven ever intended to use all of them, for this would have created an enormous movement not far short

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of his Diabelli Variations, which at that stage consisted of 23 variations in an unnished draft.26 As in the Diabelli Variations, these 15 use several different time signatures: the fourth variation is in , the fth in  , the eighth a ‘marsch’ in common time, the next two both in  , followed by one in , later marked ‘alla brev[e]’, and the penultimate one is again in  . The remainder, like the theme, are in . The fth in the collection eventually grew into Variation 3; the one in  grew into Variation 5; and the last of the 15 grew into Variation 6 of the  nal version; but otherwise none of the 15 bears close resemblance to those in the nal set, although there are inevitably some common elements. Beethoven then went through the collection of variations numbering t hose he apparently thought most promising. There is no number 1 but two number 3s; apart from that the gures appear in numerical order, from 2 to 9, 27 with some variations left out (including the one in  later resurrected). In this set of nine, only three (numbered 3, 5 and 8) are not in  time – thus there is much greater consistency of metre than before. A further attempt at whittling down the rather sprawling design appears in a score sketch found on the lowest two staves of pages 64 – 9. Here the beginnings of just six variations are evident, 28 and sur prisingly none of them corresponds closely to any of the nal set. Moreover, the trend towards greater uniformity of character is continued, for all but one of the variations are in  and could conceivably proceed at the same speed. In this respect they are more akin to the short sets of variations that Beethoven had recently composed on folksong melodies (Opp. 105 and 107), though these were deliberately made technically easy whereas the draft implies that considerable virtuosity would be needed. Beethoven turned to more detailed work on Variation 1 a few pages later (Artaria 195, page 75), and in the lost sketches that followed elsewhere he restored and enhanced the sense of sharp contrast between successive variations, for in the nal version, after the rst two variations, each one contrasts strikingly in mood and metre with its predecessor. This structure recalls his set published as Op. 34, where each of the six variations has a different rhythmic character; but unlike Op. 34, where each variation is also in a different key, those in Op. 109 are all in E major, including all those sketched and then abandoned; there is not even the usual minore variation.29 The surviving sketches, however, have limited connections with the nal version. What they do show is that Beethoven was concerned with creating an overall shape to the set, and this intention was retained throughout, no matter how diverse the individual elements in the variations sketched. The set is neither a collection of bagatelles that might be rearranged into a different order, nor a set created like an improvisation, where at each point there was little thought of what might come next. The sense of structure was paramount, and the nal variation had a particularly important role to play in sealing the structure. Thus in both of the main surviving drafts Beethoven gave particular attention to the last variation, even though it did not come at all close to that of the nal version. When he came to write out the autograph score of the sonata, Beethoven wrote out a rough draft more fully than usual, as he indicated in a later letter, enabling


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him to send his own fair copy to the publishers.30 This rough draft does not survive, but what are believed to be two leaves of it, perhaps discarded and replaced by other leaves, have been preserved,31 showing the second and third variations from the nale, including various deletions and revisions. The three movements of his fair copy were evidently written out on separate occasions,32 probably soon after (or even just before) the relevant sketches had been completed. The precise date is more difcult to determine, however. Beethoven’s letter of 28 June 1820 claims that the sonata ‘lies ready’, 33 but he may just have meant that he expected it to be ready by the time Schlesinger received the letter. By 20 September he had withdrawn from this position, for a letter of that date states that the sonata was ‘almost completely ready apart from corrections’, and blames ill health for the delay.34 These ‘corrections’, or rather revisions, took a long time, and there are certainly some substantial alterations in the autograph score.35 Some were made during the initial writing-out phase, but others were plainly introduced at a later date. In the end the manuscript was not sent to Schlesinger until around January 1821,36 after more illness and other delays. By Beethoven’s standards the autograph score is fairly tidy, but Schlesinger decided it was too unclear to be used as a printer’s copy and arranged for Franz Lauska to copy out the whole sonata neatly for the printer. This copy and pr inted proofs were then sent to Beethoven, and he must also have received the autograph back at this stage, since this contains corrections in his hand that are characteristic of his proofreading marks but not of his ordinary revisions to a score. The three sources reached him about the beginning of June 1821, and he quickly noticed that the proofs contained numerous signicant mistakes, even though Lauska’s copy was nearly correct.37 He eventually returned the proofs about a month later, along with Lauska’s copy and a correction list, as he indicated in a letter of 6 July,38 though all three sources are now missing. The autograph must have been retur ned then too, since it later passed to Schlesinger’s descendants.39 ‘I have never had a more difcult and troublesome set of proofs,’ wrote Beethoven in his letter of 6 July.40 The problems were greatly increased by his efforts to correct all three music sources as well as writing out a correction list and, not surprisingly, the corrections in these four sources were not entirely consistent. The autograph itself needed several corrections – main ly due to missing accidentals (though most of these were merely cautionary). The main problem, however, was that the printed proofs had apparently not been checked in Berlin against Lauska’s copy. Thus Beethoven now attempted to ensure that Lauska’s was correct in every detail, since the autograph had been considered too unclear to be used by the printer. He noted in his letter that some of the proof corrections might be missing from the correction list but that Lauska’s copy would conrm the correct text and his own autograph was now ‘dispensable’. Remarka bly, a few of the changes made at this stage were not mere corrections but actual revisions, notably in bar 110 of the third movement. After various amendments to the right hand in the autograph the bar reads as in Example 11.3(a). The printed edition, however, has a substantially different left hand as in Example 11.3(b), which must have been changed in Lauska’s copy while the proofs were being

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corrected. The revision, though not as substantial as the extra bar added to the slow movement of the previous sonata, was made at a similar stage, long after the work had rst been sent to the publisher, and it shows Beethoven rening the harmonic under pinning of the second and third beats. The absence of slurs in the autograph, however, is typical of the entire variation, for he only inserted a few as guides and left it to the publisher to add the rest.

(a)

(b)

Example 11.3 Op. 109.III, bar 110: (a) autograph score; (b) original edition .

The changes to the proofs were so extensive that Schlesinger arranged for a re-engraving of the sonata, rather than attempting to amend the plates. This new version was presumably checked in Berlin, for it contains few errors, but Beethoven never saw it before it was sent out, and had to send a fresh list of corrections.41 The most serious error was the omission of bars 44–5 from the rst movement, which are the same as bars 42–3; Beethoven asked for a repeat sign to be inserted at this point, as there was no room for additional bars. Some corrections, including this one, were made by hand in a few exemplars of the edition, but most exemplars remained uncorrected, even in reprints.

The second sonata for Schlesinger: Op. 110 When Beethoven informed Schlesinger on 20 September 1820 that Op. 109 was almost ready, he added that he was now working ‘ohne Aufschub’ (‘without delay’) on both the successors.42 Yet there is no clear sign of them in A rtaria 195, for the sketches for Op. 109 are followed by the bagatelles for Starke and then further


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work on the Missa solemnis. Thus he cannot have continued working on these sonatas for very long. But there is no reason to disbelieve him completely, for early ideas for them could have been sketched elsewhere. A likely place is page 63 of his next desk sketchbook, Bsb Artaria 197. William Kinderman has argued that pages 63 – 8 were used some time before being incorporated into this homemade sketchbook and suggested it could have been as early as June 1820, which he then proposes as their apparent date. 43 William Drabkin, however, has challenged these conclusions and proposed that the pages were not used until Beethoven reached this part of Artaria 197, in the second half of 1821.44 Both authors may be partly right, for the sketches for Op. 110 on pages 64 – 7 appear to date from a different period from the material on page 63, since this is written in a different ink and script. The paper of pages 63 – 4 differs from anything else in the sketchbook (it has 20 staves instead of 16), and it seems likely that the leaf was incorporated into the book after page 63 had been written but while page 64 was still blank. Page 63 begins with an idea headed ‘nächste [next] Sonate’, and would therefore t well with Beethoven’s comment of 20 September 1820 that he had just started on the successors to Op. 109. There is nothing in the sketches on this page that would contradict such a date, which seems much more probable than June 1820, when he was just beginning to work on the later movements of Op. 109. On the other hand we cannot be certain that these sketches were not made many months later. This ‘next sonata’ begins with an Adagio in C sharp minor, with pedal and marked ‘molto sentimento moltissimo espressione’, which leads into an Allegro in D at major. Further down the page (staves 11–12) is an idea for a completely different ‘sonata’, which would corroborate Beethoven’s claim that he was working on ‘both’ the successors to Op. 109. This sketch is in B at major, and like the ‘next sonata’ it shows no connection with either Op. 110 or 111. Near the foot of the page there is a third idea, a sketch in 8 in C minor that anticipates the key of Op. 111, but it shows little melodic afnity with this sonata. Having set aside any preliminar y work on the two sonatas around September 1820 to continue with the Missa solemnis, it was many months before he returned to work on them in detail, since he was ill for much of the rst half of 1821. It is hazardous to conjecture precisely when he returned to them, and the main evidence comes from a canon (O Tobias, WoO 182) that Beethoven is known to have composed in September 1821. Since sketches for this are adjacent to some detailed work on the second and third movements of Op. 110, the rst move ment may well have been sketched the previous month. August 1821 therefore seems the most likely date for the star t of serious work on the sonata. The main sketches can be found in Artaria 197, pages 64 – 88, and in two contemporary pocket sketchbooks. 45 Work on Op. 110 can be said to begin on page 65 of Artaria 197; it was not unusual for Beethoven to use a right-hand page rst, before adding details on the left-hand page, and this appears to have happened here. The right-hand page was an old leaf dating from 1816, and it already contained pencil sketches for Beethoven’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte from that year. Thus he began work on Op. 110 halfway down the page (staves 9–10). Such a location may seem

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improbable for the rst main sketches, but these are headed ‘neue Sona[te]’, and are on two staves with a clef and key signature (and possibly a time signature), which are characteristic features of an initial sketch establishing key, time and main theme. The opening bars give the impression that Beethoven had already worked on them in his head or at the piano (though he could not hear much by then), for they are fully worked out harmonically and very close to the nal ver sion. The fth bar was initially planned as broken-chord demisemiquavers, but this idea was quickly displaced to bar 12, with an answering theme sketched for bars 5–11; this theme, too, is very close to the nal version. On the rest of this page, and on the opposite page, there appear sketches for almost all the rest of the exposition, though in short, disjointed sections. Many of these are annotated by connective devices (‘Vi=de’, or the gures 2, 3 and 20) to form a nearly continuous draft of the whole of the exposition, written largely in score. Bars 27 and 33 are almost the only bars not represented on these pages by anything similar to the nal version. On the same page-opening Beethoven was already looking ahead to the nale, as he had done at an early stage in several other works. He noted a possible idea for ‘leztes Stück’ (last movement), and an alternative idea (see Examples 11.4(a) and (b)). The rst attempt concludes with a double bar, implying that Beethoven was not planning to proceed fu rther at this stage but just wanted to see how a possible nale theme might look; the alternative is equally self-contained. Neither theme shows much similarity to the main fugue theme of the nal movement, and there is no suggestion here that this movement was to be contrapuntal. Nevertheless the character is already in place by implication – a gentle, serene  rhythm not so very different from the  eventually used. Also noteworthy is the rising fourth, F to B@, in the rst attempt, which is expanded into two rising fourths, E@ to A@, then F to B@, in the second. This shape echoes that of the opening of the rst movement, which after the rst chord also uses two rising fourths a tone apart. Thus the nale theme that eventually appeared, consisting of three successive rising fourths in sequence, was only a short step further in the same direction, and right from the outset was intended as a subtle reminder of the start of the sonata.

(a)

(b)

Example 11.4 (a) and (b) Early sketches for Op. 110.III (Bsb, Ar taria 197, p. 65).


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The following page-opening (66–7) shows Beethoven concentrating on the rest of the movement. The development section, however, must have posed few problems, for it is unusually short and consists of little more than a two-bar phrase t hat appears eight times in sequence. This appears at the top of the left-hand page and is already close to its nal version, allowing the remainder of the space to be taken up with ideas for the recapitulation – especially the digression to E major, which took some working out – and for the coda, plus some preliminary thoughts for an andante theme in common time as a possible second movement. This begins in A at minor and rises up the scale from the tonic to F@, thus echoing the rst-movement theme, which also ranges over a sixth, from the tonic up to F$, as does the fugue theme of the nale, which had apparently not been drafted at this stage. On the next four pages of Artaria 197 Beethoven set aside the rst movement. There is a sketch in C major in  time (page 68) that was perhaps considered as a possible minuet movement; and the A at minor andante theme makes a brief reappearance, after which he turned to the nale, with the fugue theme already in place on page 69, along with some contrapuntal development. He then returned to the rst movement on pages 72 – 3 (and the foot of 71) to sort out some awkward corners, all sketched in pencil, un like the previous ink sketches for the movement. Thus this gentle, unpretentious rst movement was seemingly com posed with little difculty and probably very quickly. One might expect there to be extensive sketching in the contemporary pocket sketchbooks, but there is not. Two books are known that date from around spring to summer 1821, but they contain sketches for the Missa solemnis, not the sonata.46 The rst movement of this sonata makes its only k nown appearances in the pocket sketchbooks on two pages of the next book, known as ‘Late 1821’, which probably dates from around September as it includes sketches for the above-mentioned canon O Tobias. On what was originally page 17 of this book appears a brief sketch for the last three bars of the movement, while on page 24 is an isolated sketch for a group of demisemiquavers from the movement – so isolated that Beethoven had to mark it ‘1tes Stück’ (‘1st movement’) to ensure it was identiable.47 The sketches in Artaria 197 might suggest that the second movement gave similarly few problems, for the minore section appears virtually complete in a single draft on page 74, while much of the trio section in D at can be found in a draft on the following page. The pocket sketchbooks, however, tell a more com plex story, with extensive preliminary sketching for both parts of the movement on pages 19 – 24 of ‘Late 1821’.48 One issue is the supposition by some writers that Beethoven based certain passages in the minore section on one or even two folksongs – ‘Das liebe Kätzchen’ and ‘Ich bin liederlich’. The pocket sketches show conclusively that any resemblance between these songs and the sonata is purely fortuitous and not part of Beethoven’s design.49 Once he had abandoned the idea of an andante in A at minor, he created the theme for the second move ment not from a folksong but by converting the rising scale from those sketches to a descending scale, still with a range of a minor sixth. The pocket sketches also show that Beethoven at one stage envisaged running triplets for the D at section, somewhat akin to those in the trio section of the

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second ‘Razumovsky’ Quartet (Op. 59 No. 2) and the trio section of the Quartet Op. 74. The appearance of triplet quavers means that these passages can easily be mistaken for sketches for the nale, and the similarity of the two metres may be one reason why Beethoven abandoned them for the D at section. 50 The sketches for the reprise of the F minor section indicate broken-octave guration in the left hand, beginning as in Example 11.5 and continuing for at least several bars. This idea was also abandoned and replaced by an almost exact reprise of the initial statement of the minore section. Both the triplets and the broken octaves use such elaborate guration that Beethoven must have envisaged a slower speed for the movement than what Czerny later recommended ( = 112–120).51 It is possible, of course, that Beethoven eliminated the more complex guration during subsequent sketching specically in order to facilitate a faster perfor mance, but his underlying idea of the tempo more probably remained unaltered during these changes.

Example 11.5 Sketch for reprise of minore section of Op. 110.II (‘Late 1821’, p. 20: Pn, Ms 51/3B, recto).

The nale, like that of Op. 101, is a complex movement in several sections and three main tempos. An introduction in the style of an accompanied recitative is followed by a ‘Klagender Gesang’ or ‘Arioso dolente’ in   metre in A at minor, then a  ‘Fuga’ in A at major that is interrupted by a varied reprise of the Arioso before resuming in G major, with some use of inversion, augmentation and diminution of the subject. The genesis of the movement is similarly complex. The main batch of sketches is in Artaria 197, pages 69 – 71 and 82–8, representing two distinct phases. If the order of the pages in Arta ria 197 represents the order of sketching, the rst phase was written before the rst movement had been fully worked out and before the second had even been begun; sketches for these appear on pages 71 – 5. The second phase, however, was not sketched until after several pages (75 – 81) had been devoted to early plans for the next sonata, Op. 111. The rst phase concentrates on the fugue, the rst part of which is worked out in a draft of over 40 bars, plus some variants. There is a brief indication for the Arioso, presumably in A at minor, though there are no accidentals or key signature, and this is followed by a brief statement of the inversion of the fugue theme. Thus at this stage only three sections are apparent, but Beethoven may nevertheless already have planned a slow introduction and a rioso to come before


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the fugue, and the second phase of sketches concentrates almost exclusively on this opening section. It begins with work on the slow introduction, leading from B at minor to A at minor for the Arioso, where the   time signature is already shown. These Arioso sketches display some highly elaborate melodic decoration, much more intricate than in the nal version, with demisemiquaver and even hemidemisemiquaver guration. The nal page of the sketchbook (88) has a continuous draft for the whole of the slow introduction and Arioso. The most signicant omission here is the passage containing pairs of tied notes on a high A (bar 5 of the nal version), which was clearly a late revision after Beethoven had nished using this sketchbook. The Arioso is here shown in  , but this was probably just for notational convenience as a shorthand for  . The draft proceeds into the opening bars of the fugue but no fur ther, apart from a few disconnected fragments. Sketching of the remainder of the movement was done on loose leaves or pocket sketches, for there is virtually no sign of the sonata in the next desk sketchbook (Artaria 201). From the evidence of Artaria 197, therefore, one might conclude that the nale was conceived before the second movement and was initially a tripartite form, with an introduction and rst Arioso added at a later stage, once the second movement had been composed. However, as with the second movement, the pocket sketches present a far more complex and less clear picture. The rst sketches for the nale in ‘Late 1821’ occur on page 5, and show both the slow introduction and the Arioso. They seem more advanced than those on pages 82 – 5 of Artaria 197, and similar to the draft on page 88. Though slightly less developed than this draft, they again show the Arioso notated in  , with the same opening melodic line, complete with the rubric ‘Andante ma non troppo’, thus suggesting that this sketch is closely contemporary with that on page 88 of Artaria 197. This presents a chronological anomaly, however, for these pocket sketches appear well before those for the second movement (pages 19 – 24), which clearly preceded the draft on page 74 of Artaria 197. Thus here, at least, the apparent order of the sketches on paper surely does not represent the chronological order. The nale does not reappear in ‘Late 1821’ until pages 21 – 2, which see Beethoven experimenting with various forms of diminution of the fugue sub ject, alongside some of the sketches for the second movement. Since the nal version does not include any real thematic diminution until after the reprise of the Arioso, one might expect the device to appear fairly late on in the sketching process, but it was there almost from the start, even before he had nished the previous movement, and he was clearly intending to exploit it. Diminution rarely works in triple-time rhythms, since the accents fall in the wrong place if note values are simply halved. Beethoven tried doing this in a sketch in the rst phase in Artaria 197 (page 71), halving the dotted crotchets as dotted quavers, four per bar, but the result looks bizarre and rhythmically uneven, and this version was abandoned. He tried other possibilities in various sketches, one being to shorten the dotted crotchets by unequal amounts, as on page 22 of ‘Late 1821’ and in an inverted version of the theme (Artaria 197, page 83). In the former case he even drafted a possible counter-subject to accompany an answering voice

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(see Example 11.6). This promising idea, giving the theme a slight rhythmic alteration, was not adopted for the nal version (except in modied form in bars 107–8), but he did use other rhythmic alterations for diminution of the theme.

Example 11.6 Sketch for diminution of fugue theme of Op. 110.III (‘Late 1821’, p. 21: Pn, Ms 80, f. 1r).

The next pocket sketchbook, k nown as ‘Paris Ms 51’, includes most but not all the assortment of leaves bearing the number Ms 51, and its possible original state has been worked out by Robert Winter. 52 According to this reconstruction one nds sketches for Op. 110 mainly on the early pages, with Op. 111 on the later ones. Many for Op. 110 still focus on the rst part of the fugue, which clearly gave Beethoven much trouble; but there are a few for the reprise of the Arioso with its fragmented melodic line, and for some of the semiquaver guration near the end of the movement. Sketches for several passages are not found here, however, and are presumed lost – most notably the beginning of the G major section of the fugue and the nal bars. In the autograph score53 the rst movement shows few revisions, although the last ve bars (112–16) were rewritten at a late stage. A sketch for bar 112, among sketches for the nale,54 indicates that the autograph of the rst movement was written out before the nale was fully sketched, and that the nal version of bars 112–16 was not reached until this stage. The second movement required an inserted leaf for a revision to the D at section, but few other changes. The reprise of the minore section was not written out at this stage but indicated by a dal segno sign. When a copy was prepared for Schlesinger, however, Beethoven must have given verbal instructions to the copyist (Wenzel Rampl) to write it out in full, with the appropriate adjustments. The third movement shows major alterations, for Beethoven remained dissatised with it until he had reworked parts of it several times. The biggest prob lem lay in obtaining smooth continuity in the extended contrapuntal passage (bars 85–110) before the reprise of the Arioso. This section had already required much sketching, and several passages of counterpoint in the sketches were discarded. The autograph shows a deleted version of bars 79–87, whose continuation has been lost, and also a deleted version of bars 85–115. It was not deleted until after Wenzel Rampl had copied it, however, for it reappears (deleted) in his copy. Beethoven then drafted a revision of the passage, using the blank nal page of the autograph score (page 52), and afterwards proceeded to write out a fair copy of the entire movement, incorporating this revision.55 The movement had still not


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reached its nal state, however; most notably, the G minor interruption before the reprise of the Arioso – bars 114–15 of the nal version – was still indicated with a gradual slowing down rather than a sudden change in tempo. Further revisions were then entered into the original manuscript, not the fair copy, which therefore constitutes an intermediate rather than nal version. At this stage, Beethoven made yet another attempt at bars 87–115 on loose leaves (now pages 55 – 8 of the autograph score), having restored the original version of bars 85–6. Several bars of this new version were then deleted and revised again, before a nal version was reached and copied into Rampl’s copy for sending to Schlesinger. The result of all these revisions is that this nale is the most convoluted of all Beethoven’s sonata autographs. The main autograph score is dated 25 December 1821, although it is unclear how far Beethoven had reached with the writing out and revising at that date. Since the year is altered from ‘1822’, the date may have been entered retrospectively. Rampl’s copy was delivered to the r m Tendler & Manstein on 11 Januar y 1822,56 for forwarding to Schlesinger, and so all the revisions must have been completed by then. Although Op. 109 had been published in Berlin by Adolph Schlesinger, the publisher arranged that his son Moritz, who had recently set up a branch in Paris, should have Beethoven’s next two sonatas engraved there, before being sold by both publishers. The expectation was that a work produced in Paris would achieve a wider distribution and better appearance. Moritz chose upright format, which was becoming more fashionable for piano music, as opposed to Adolph’s oblong format for Op. 109. Beethoven wrote to Adolph Schlesinger on 1 May 1822 promising to name the dedicatee, but he neglected to do so before the work was published in July or August that year, and so Op. 110 is the only one of his late sonatas that lacks a dedication. Proofreading proved far less of a problem than it had with Op. 109, and Beethoven annotated both autograph scores at places where he suspected the proof copy might be inaccurate, though in many cases they were already correct in Rampl’s manuscript.

Genesis of the nal sonata, Op. 111 Beethoven began working on his nal sonata while he was still midway through the nale of Op. 110. He clearly intended to compose them both more or less together, in contrast to Op. 109, where the sketches in Artaria 195 are not interspersed with ideas labelled as intended for the next sonata. One of the earliest ideas for a successor to Op. 110 is a little-known sketch on page 4 of the pocket sketchbook ‘Paris Ms 51’, where it is surrounded by sketches for the nale of Op. 110, including part of the fugue and the G minor section of the Arioso. 57 This sketch is clearly identied as ‘2te Sonate’ (conrming that he was think ing of his last two sonatas as a pair) and is a striking passage in F sharp minor (Example 11.7). It anticipates several aspects of the rst movement of Op. 111, in addition to the use of a minor key and common time. Noteworthy are the emphasis on a main theme deep in the bass clef (as in the Allegro of Op. 111), and descending diminished-sevenths in bars 1–2 and 3–4 (foreshadowing the

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opening of Op. 111), indicating a generally stormy character similar to that in Op. 111. Features such as the trill, the quavers followed by quaver rests, and the dotted rhythms in bars 2, 3 and 5 are also comparable.

Example 11.7 Sketch for sonata to follow Op. 110 (‘Paris Ms 51’, p. 4: Pn Ms 51/5, verso).

Two further ideas for a successor to Op. 110 appear on pages 75 – 6 of Artaria 197. The rst, again headed ‘2te Sonate’, is a brief theme in B at, later adapted for the rst movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in B at, Op. 130. The second, also marked as a second sonata but much more promising, is a threemovement plan for a sonata in C m inor, which marks the real beginning of what was to become Op. 111. The rst movement here is in , as was an earlier idea in C minor (page 63) that may have been intended for a new sonata, but there is no thematic connection between these two sketches. The second movement is a   Adagio in A at marked ‘sul una corda’, but its theme was left unused. The third movement, ‘presto’, is based on the theme that became the main theme of the Allegro in Op. 111. Just the lower octave is sketched, placing it in the same register as the F sharp minor theme in Example 11.7. It is followed by fugal entries of the theme in G minor and C minor, suggesting that Beethoven was planning yet another fugal nale to follow those of Op. 106 and 110. A sketch for the ‘Ende’, however, shows the theme accompanied by repeated quavers as in bars 29–31 of the nal version, suggesting that the fugal texture was not to be maintained throughout. This theme was not a new one, for an almost identical version had appeared nearly 20 years earlier in the Kessler Sketchbook, folio 37v. 58 At that point, in early 1802, it was apparently considered as a possible slow-movement theme for the Violin Sonata in A, Op. 30 No. 1, and was marked ‘Andante’. Curiously, it was notated in F sharp minor, the same key as Example 11.7, making a possible connection with Op. 111. Whether Beethoven looked through his old sketchbooks in 1821 and spotted it, or half-remembered it and decided to revive it, or sim ply invented it afresh without any recollection of its previous appearance, is unknown. He certainly looked through some of his older sketches in 1822, when he was seeking out half-nished bagatelles and songs that could be completed and published, but there is no proof that he did so in 1821.


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Two further ideas in C minor, both in   metre, appear on pages 77 – 8 of Artaria 197, and are followed by an ‘all[egr]o con brio’ in C major on pages 80 – 1. It is possible that these were envisaged as additional movements to form a ve-movement structure,59 but they were more probably drafted as alternatives to the previously sketched rst and third movements. More signicant than either of these ideas is a short, unobtrusive sketch on page 79, stave 6, headed ‘innocentem[ente]’ (Example 11.8). This already exhibits the character of the opening of the second movement of Op. 111 (which Beethoven headed ‘molto semplice’), and can be regarded as its initial germ or concept. Its   metre was changed to  further down the page, thus matching the nal version. There is also a sketch (stave 12) that shows the  rhythm of the second variation of the nal version, and one that shows triplet demisemiquavers, a prominent feature of the latter part of the nal version. Thus the plan for a triple-time melody with increasingly elaborate variations also using triple rhythms was already heralded at this point, long before the actual melodic line had been created. Several writers have noticed the similarity between the main theme of the movement and that of the Diabelli Variations, which Beethoven was still in the process of composing. This similarity was clearly not part of the original intention but emerged only during later sketching. Whether the movement was at this stage intended as the nal movement, or the middle of three, or even one in a larger structure, cannot be established, though the likelihood is that at this stage Beethoven was still thinking of a three-movement work, since the following two pages appear to contain at least one possible third movement, as indicated above. All these sketches appear in Artaria 197 before the last few pages devoted to Op. 110, though whether they were also written chronologically before them is less certain. If they were, this would conrm a much greater overlap between two consecutive works than was normal, and would suggest that these two sonatas have a particularly close afnity.

Example 11.8 Early sketch for Op. 111.II (Bsb, Artaria 197, p. 79).

By the time Beethoven began his next desk sketchbook, Artaria 201, he had jettisoned most of the possible themes he had considered for the nal sonata, and had decided on just two movements. Two-movement keyboard sonatas had been very common around 1750, and there are several by Haydn (though none by Mozart); and Beethoven himself had already written at least ve (Op. 49 Nos. 1 and 2, Opp. 54, 78 and 90; arguably also Op. 53). The usual pattern was a slow– fast or fast–faster pair, with another possibility being to include a minuet-type movement (as in Op. 49 No. 2). Haydn’s four early two-movement keyboard sonatas (Hob. XVI nos. 18, 25, 30 and 44) conclude with a  movement in minuet

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rhythm, sometimes headed ‘Tempo di menuetto’, whereas his ve later ones (nos. 40, 41, 42, 48 and 51, all from after 1780) conclude with a fast movement. To create a sonata with a fast minor movement followed by just an adagio in the major seems to have been a bold innovation. The nearest precedent for Beethoven was an early piano quartet (WoO 36 No. 1), where an extended slow introductory movement leads straight into a sonata-form allegro and then a set of variations on a medium-paced theme. The structure of this was in turn modelled on a Mozart violin sonata (K. 379). The crucial differences in Op. 111 are that its slow introduction is much shorter than in these works, so that it could not be regarded as a separate movement, and that the theme for the variations is a tr ue adagio. The tantalizing gap between the two desk sketchbooks, where this new structure was established, is partly lled by the pocket sketchbook ‘Paris Ms 51’, the tenth page of which seems to mark the main boundary between Op. 110 and Op. 111. Thereafter there are very few sketches for the earlier sonata. This page is headed ‘Sonate in C’, as if to mark the start of commitment to the next sonata, Beethoven having sketched Op. 110 on the previous page. Both of the movements of the nal version are represented, with no sign of any third movement, and so the decision for a two-movement structure evidently came quite early without being the starting point. Perhaps, then, it was determined by the musical material itself, once Beethoven had considered its possibilities. The theme of the second movement, marked ‘una corda’, is here still far from the nal version, but the  rhythm is clearly in place. Thereafter the pocket-sketch record continues to show a certain amount of intermingling between the two movements, but in Artaria 201 they are kept largely separate.60 Pages 1 – 22 are devoted to the rst movement and 22–62 to the second, and it seems likely that Beethoven deliberately kept these two sections of the sketchbook for separate movements. At any rate, one cannot assume that all 62 pages were lled in chronological order, with no thought for the second movement until the rst was completed. At the beginning of the sketchbook the rst movement was still being regarded as a fugato, and the note values are now doubled for a   metre, though halved note values and  soon returned. The slow introduction was then registered on page 3, as ‘overture vorher Fuga’ (‘overture before fugue’). Although the melodic details still had to be worked out, jagged double-dotted rhythms anticipating those of the nal version were already in place and suggesting a stormy character. The rest of the movement was then worked out in detail on the following pages and in pocket sketches. The idea of a formal fugue was quickly abandoned, but elements of fugal style remained in a few places, such as the two-part i nvertible counterpoint in the transition (bars 36–47) and imitation with augmentation in the development section (bars 76–82). In the early sketches for the second movement in Artaria 201 the character of the theme has been established, along with the intention of a set of variations, but the exact shape of the theme was still not xed. The head motif, which echoes Diabelli’s waltz theme, was in fact one of the last thematic elements to fall into place. Ideas for the variations continued to develop from those entered on page 79 of Artaria 197 (see above), but the very energetic third variation emerged only at


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a relatively late stage. What may be the rst clear signs of it appear eetingly on page 38 of Artaria 201, and on page 1 of Pn Ms 51/7, which has been provisionally identied as belonging to a largely lost ‘Pocket Sketchbook of Early 1822’.61 Not until halfway down page 58 of Artaria 201, however, does an extended sketch for this variation begin, carrying on to pages 59 and 60. This is close to the very last sketches for the work in this sketchbook (page 62 and possibly the top stave of page 63). The rhythm of this variation is particularly noteworthy, since Beethoven has reduced the original rhythmic pattern (quaver plus semiquaver) by a factor of four. Such a procedure would be commonplace in a binary-rhythm set of variations, but in a ternary-rhythm set it produces unprecedented metrical complications that could not be represented in any time signatu re of the period. Beethoven opted for 3 2, but this should mean, by analogy with  , that each bar is divided into four beats that are subdivided into t hree, whereas here we have three beats, each subdivided into four that are further subdivided into three. This is one of several late works where Beethoven applied the principle of diminution (generally a halving of note values) in an unorthodox way within a triple metre. He had used diminution by factors of three and six in the nale of Op. 110, and by a factor of two or by varying values in sketches for it (as noted above). Diminution by a factor of two also occurs in the Credo fugue (‘Et vitam venturi’) of his Missa solemnis, and augmentation by a factor of two in the nale of the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata. All these movements are in triple metre, where diminution or augmentation of any kind will generate rhythmic conict. It is not surprising, therefore, that the rhythms of this third variation in Op. 111 were established only at a relatively late stage, and caused bewilderment in some circles.62

Complications in the publication of Op. 111 Beethoven wrote at the head of the autograph score of Op. 111: ‘am 13ten Jenner 1822’ (‘13 January 1822’).63 This matches a comment on page 21 of Artaria 201, the last complete page of sketching for the rst movement: ‘am 13ten die neue Sonate’ (‘on the 13th the new sonata’). This was only 19 days after the date for Op. 110, and there are various possible reasons for such close proxim ity. The date for Op. 110 might indicate the date of completion while the one for Op. 111 indicates the date that Beethoven began writing out Op. 111; or there may have been considerable overlap in the composing of the two sonatas (as suggested above), so that both were ready or nearly so by the time the rst one was written out; or it was only the rst movement of Op. 111 that was completed on 13 January, with the second still very much under way. If the second movement was still incomplete at this stage, it must have been nished shortly afterwards. The auto graph score soon became so messy with revisions and renements, however, that Beethoven decided to write out a second score of both movements, as he had done with the nale of Op. 110 and apparently some or all of Op. 109. This second autograph is also dated ‘13 January 1822’,64 a date which clearly refers back to the previous manuscript.

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Beethoven then arranged to have the sonata copied neatly by Rampl, so that it could be sent to Adolph Schlesinger in Berlin. Unfortunately, he gave Rampl the original composing score rather than the fair copy, and only realized his mistake after the manuscript had been sent. The two versions of the rst movement were essentially the same, though sufciently different for it to be easy to tell which one was used as Rampl’s model. The versions of the second movement, however, differed signicantly, prompting Beethoven to write to Schlesinger in a letter dated 20 February 1822: You will now already have received the 2nd sonata [Op. 110], and a few days ago I delivered the 3rd to T. and M. [Tendler & Manstein, the dealers] … For the last sonata, which has al ready been sent, I would like just to inform you that I am sending you another copy right away by the next post-wagon, in fact of the last movement with variations. It happened that, with so many different matters to attend to, I gave my copyist just my rst draf t [Konzept], whereby as often happens some things were indicated that were still im perfect and not right. You must therefore not make use of it at all and I also ask you not to show it to anyone, and destroy it at once as soon as you have received the other copy.65 Several things can be deduced from this interesting passage. First, the composing score must have been completed not long after its stated date of 13 January, and the fair copy less than a month after that, to allow time for the manuscript (the wrong one) to be given to Rampl, copied out and corrected by Beethoven before being delivered to Tendler & Manstein in mid-February. Second, the two versions of the rst movement were sufciently similar that Beethoven was not bothered that the wrong one had been copied. Third, the revisions to the second movement were much more substantial, and Beethoven would have felt embarrassed if the rst version were published or even shown to anyone. The rst version of the nale has unfortu nately disappeared. The surviving au tograph of the movement belongs with the second version of the rst movement, and is the source for Rampl’s copy, as is evident in many details. 66 Suggestions made by some writers that either the autograph or both it and Ra mpl’s copy represent the rst version are untenable in the light of the details of the surviving sources.67 The missing autograph, however, was listed in a catalogue of Domen ico Artaria’s collection, compiled between 1838 and 1844.68 It is shown as containing eight folios, whereas the surviving autograph of this movement occupies 12 folios (for the rst movement, both autographs occupy eight folios, though the earlier one has an additional folio containing annotations). Thus, unless the lost autograph was incomplete, it seems that the earlier version of the nale was substantially shorter than the nal version. This would explain why Beethoven was so anxious for it not to be circulated. Although Beethoven promised in his letter of 20 February to send the new version by the next post, there was an unspecied ‘impediment’ and it was not sent until after 9 April, as he indicated in a letter of that date.69 He asserted that


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it would be sent in the next day’s post, and it probably was, since his next let ter of 1 May indicated that the work had been sent some while previously. The reasons for the delay are unclear; Beethoven may have taken the opportunity to make further revisions (there are some alterations in the manuscript), or he or Rampl may have been distracted by other matters. As with Op. 110, Adolph Schlesinger arranged for the sonata to be engraved and published in Paris by his son Moritz, and Rampl’s copy of the two movements was transferred there. Although Beethoven had indicated quite explicitly that the last movement contained variations (see above), both Schlesingers enquired separately whether he had forgotten to send a nal allegro – a query that may now seem absurd to anyone who knows the sonata, but was not unreasona ble at the time. The t wo-movement str ucture concluding with an Adagio was so unorthodox that they evidently had difculty believing t his was what Beethoven intended, whereas a three-movement structure with slow variations in the middle was not unusual (Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ Sonata is an example). Beethoven corrected proofs for the sonata around January 1823, and the Paris edition ap peared near the end of April, followed shortly by one from Adolph Schlesinger in Berlin, using the same plates but with a few slight modications and a revised ti tle page. There were still a few printi ng errors, however, and Beethoven compiled two copies of a correction list, one of which he sent to Paris.70 Moritz Schlesinger incorporated most of the corrections in a new edition with completely fresh plates, but inevitably this also included some fresh errors. As regards dedications of the last two sonatas, Beethoven indicated in his letter of 1 May 1822 that he would shortly send details for Op. 110 but Schlesinger could dedicate Op. 111 to anyone he chose. No details were sent in time for Op. 110, however, as noted above. For Op. 111 he soon changed his mind, instructing on 31 August that the sonata should be dedicated to Archduke Rudolph.71 He then changed his mind again the following February, with the sonata still not published, allocating the dedication to Antonie Brentano, whom he had also intended for Op. 110.72 She is today best known as a likely addressee for Beethoven’s ‘Immortal Beloved’ letter of 1812, but she had also been of considerable assistance in more recent times with his attempts to nd suitable schooling for his nephew, and her daughter Maximiliane had just received the dedication of Op. 109. Moritz Schlesinger, however, ignored this latest request, either because the message arrived too late and the title page was already engraved or because he thought a sonata dedicated to an archduke carried more prestige than one dedicated to a little-known woman. As with several of his previous sonatas, Beethoven attempted to nd an English publisher for Opp. 110 and 111, so as to gain an additional fee. He was feeling particularly impoverished by this time due to his illness of 1821 and his many expenses for his nephew. He informed Ferdinand Ries, in a letter of 6 July 1822, that he had two new sonatas, which he described as ‘nicht gar schwer’ (‘not very difcult’)73 – a judgment that not all pianists m ight accept – and eventually sent manuscript copies in early 1823.74 By this time Schlesinger’s edition of Op. 110 had long been available in London. Thus, although Ries passed the manuscript on

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to Clementi for publication, Clementi’s edition is based mainly on Schlesinger’s; only in a few places does it include a superior reading. 75 Op. 111 was still not published when the manuscripts reached London, however, and so Clementi issued this sonata rst, with a copyright notice that could not have been used for Op. 110. His edition was registered at Stationers’ Hall on 25 April, and its publication is therefore almost exactly simultaneous with Schlesinger’s. The manuscript used for Clementi’s edition is lost, but the edition clearly derives from the second autograph score, in both movements. This provides additional evidence that the nal version of the second movement had duly reached Schlesinger, as proposed above. Had Schlesinger’s edition been based on the composing score, it would have shown signicant variants from Clementi’s, as in the rst movement. Clementi’s edition shows the correct dedicatee, Antonie Brentano, but there was still no dedication for Op. 110. Another edition of both sonatas appeared in Vienna shortly afterwards, published by Cappi & Diabelli (with Op. 111 dedi cated once again to Archduke Rudolph). Beethoven checked the proofs for these editions, and the exemplar with his proof corrections still survives for Op. 111. 76 Despite the strange novelties that so many found in these sonatas, publishers clearly anticipated good sales and were willing to invest in them, with these th ree editions appearing within a year or so.

Epilogue: farewell to the piano sonata After the completion of Op. 111 Beethoven did not start planning any further piano sonatas, as far as is known. With hindsight it is easy to imagine that he intended Op. 111 to be his last sonata and his farewell to the genre, and its ethereal nale can therefore be interpreted as portraying a foretaste of Heaven.77 His remaining ve years were devoted to the completion of the Missa solemnis, the Diabelli Variations and the Ninth Symphony, and the composition of the late quartets, a set of bagatelles and some minor works. He also continued trying to promote the idea of a collected edition of his works, presented genre by genre, and indeed one was started by Tobias Haslinger shortly after Beethoven’s death, using material prepared earlier. Had Beethoven still been alive he might have contributed one new work for each genre, as he had proposed to the publishers Simrock in a letter of 5 August 1820: ‘Regarding the edition of the complete works … it would be good to add a new work to each type of composition – e.g. for the variations a new work of this kind, for the sonatas likewise etc.’ 78 Instead Haslinger’s edition of the piano sonatas was limited to the 35. In its initial run in 1828– c.1832 it included only 30, since he could not obtain permission to publish Opp. 2, 7 and 106, but these other ve were soon added. 79 Beethoven’s proposal to treat each genre separately suggests that he viewed each as a separate oeuvre and tried to create maximum variety within it. His symphonies and concertos were actually numbered to draw attention to their place in the oeuvre. This did not happen with sonatas – all numberings of his piano sonatas, apart from the opus numbers, come from much later and have no authority. Yet some patterns emerge when the piano sonatas are considered as an


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oeuvre. He never used the same key twice in succession (though the two sonatas of Op. 49 use the same keynote, as do Opp. 54 and 57), and usually he did not return to a key until he had composed several sonatas in other keys. The only exceptions are F minor, used in his second ‘Kurfü rsten’ Sonata and rst Viennese Sonata (Op. 2 No. 1), and C minor, which appears in Op. 10 No. 1 and again in Op. 13. Nevertheless, some keys were particularly favoured, notably E at and G: nine sonatas, more than a quarter of the total, are in one or the other of these keys. Conversely some fairly common keys were avoided, including A mi nor and B minor. Whichever key he chose, he made efforts to ensure that each sonata was completely unlike any of the previous ones, and the u nique features of each tend to become even more conspicuous in his later works. Another means of increasing variety was to exploit the different types of sonata in current use. Seven works were labelled ‘grand sonatas’ (Opp. 7, 13, 22, 26, 28, 53 and 106), which were composed on a particularly grand scale and always published separately. Three were particularly short and simple (Op. 49 Nos. 1 and 2, and Op. 79), and he sometimes referred to these as ‘sonate facile’ or sonatina. The two sonatas of Op. 27 were both ‘quasi una fantasia’, indicating a freer structure than usual, while two others depicted a particular character (Op. 13, the Pathétique, which was also ‘grand’, and Op. 81a, Lebewohl, Abwesenheit und Wiedersehn). Other titles sometimes applied to Beethoven’s sonatas, however, such as ‘Moonlight’ and ‘Appassionata’, have no authority, and these are not ‘characteristic’ sonatas. Among the remainder t here were ve sets of three sonatas (WoO 47, Opp. 2, 10, 31, and 109–111). Here variety was maximized by the use of three different keynotes and key signatures, at least one at and one shar p key, and with one of the three sonatas always in a minor key. Yet there were often subtle connections between the three in the group, so that they form a kind of trilogy despite their surface contrasts. He composed only seven sonatas that were not ‘grand’, facile, quasi una fantasia, characteristic, or part of a trilogy: Opp. 14 Nos. 1 and 2, Opp. 54, 57, 78, 90 and 101. Even among these, the sonatas of Op. 14 have the right characteristics to form a trilogy with Op. 13; Opp. 54 and 57 could form a trilogy with Op. 53 (though unconventionally having two sonatas in F and no sharp key); Op. 78 belongs with the fantasia Op. 77 and the sonata Op. 79, all composed for Clementi; and Op. 101, with its unconventional structure, could be regarded as quasi una fantasia, or as part of a trilogy with Opp. 90 and 106. Thus each of his 35 piano sonatas either belongs or could be regarded as belonging in one of these ve categories. Most of the 35 sonatas were composed because of a request or commission from a patron or publisher. The rst two sets, WoO 47 and Op. 2, were most likely the result of Beethoven’s own desire to show his mastery of the sonata genre, but the existence and chronological spread of the remainder are due largely, if not entirely, to specic requests from those around him, and it is salutary to remember how much we are indebted to them. Many were rich, music-loving Viennese patrons, though they are rarely identiable and were usually not the dedicatees, since dedications were often decided at a late stage. An exception is the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, which seems to have been requested by Archduke Rudolph and was

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certainly intended for him throughout its composition. Beethoven lived at a time of social transition, however, where private patronage was gradually giving way to the market-place in the provision of support for composers, with publishers playing an increasingly prominent role. They began making specic commissions only after Beethoven had written more than half his piano sonatas, but in their case documentation usually survives: Op. 31 Nos. 1–3 were commissioned by Nägeli, Opp. 78 and 79 by Clementi, Opp. 109–111 by Schlesinger, and Op. 90 was apparently written to repay a debt to Steiner. Even where sonatas were not commissioned by publishers, Beethoven rarely seems to have had any difculty in nding a suitable publisher, although there were occasional disputes or changes of publisher, as happened with the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. Usually his sonatas proved so popular that they appeared in two or more editions within a short time of their initial publication. No matter who initially requested the works, the content was decided entirely by Beethoven, except in a few cases where he needed to place a limit on technical difculties (Opp. 49, 78 and 79). Each sonata was composed with great care and presumably much sketching. The care he took is evident even in the nal ver sions, where his articulation and dynamic marks tend to be much more detailed than those of his contemporaries; and his autograph scores bear many signs of last-minute revision and renement. Moreover, sketches survive for nearly all his sonatas, and in some cases there are a great many of them – especially for the last three sonatas. Even where sketches do not survive, as with Opp. 14 No. 2 and 78, we may be entitled to presume that this is through loss of source material rather than any absence of sketching, for he made detailed sketches for works far slighter than any of his piano sonatas. Since each sonata was intended to address fresh issues, each possessed unique features that required special attention in the sketches, and so the sketches for one work never follow quite the same pattern as those for another, although there are certain broad similarities. Sometimes the connection between the earliest sketches and the nished work is remarkably tenuous, and perhaps demonstrable only through intermediate sketches. Usually the key was one of the rst ele ments decided, but even here one nds cases where an idea in one key is quickly supplanted by a slightly similar one in a completely different key which is then developed into the sonata, as was seen with the rst movements of Opp. 109 and 111. On other occasions the early sketches show the main theme already more or less in place and quite close to the nal version. Here the role played by pre liminary experimentation at the keyboard was probably a very important one, though its extent cannot be accurately conjectured, and only with the nale of the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata do we have any direct report of a sonata movement being composed in this way. There are also occasions when a sonata takes up a motif sketched many years earlier. The best-known example is the Allegro theme of Op. 111, found initially in F sharp minor among sketches for a violin sonata (see above). Another example is a motif sketched in 1793 and taken up almost note-for-note, in the same key, in the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata in 1801. When sketching for a movement was under way, there was generally progress towards the


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nal version, but Beethoven sometimes tried a very divergent solution before returning to something closer to an earlier sketch, as was seen in Op. 109. The sketches can sometimes reveal thematic connections that are less obvious in the nished work and might otherwise be overlooked. A striking case was the nale theme of the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata, which sketches show to be linked to a pas sage in the development section of the rst movement (see Chapter 8). Some less conspicuous but signicant cases have been demonstrated in Op. 111.80 On other occasions connections that are clear in the nished work can be seen to be built in gradually rather than present from the start, as was seen with the bass line of the rst two movements of Op. 109. Our understanding of particular sonatas can be enhanced by a great many different elements: biographical or contextual elements can help us appreciate why the works were written, while observation and interpretation of elements in the sketches and autograph scores, whether motivic, harmonic or structural, can help illuminate why the sonatas turned out as they did, how else they might have turned out, and how Beethoven succeeded in creating such astonishingly profound, sophisticated and enduring masterpieces. The present study can provide no more than a small contribution in this direction, together with examples of some of the possibilities available. There is ample scope for further study in years to come that will develop yet deeper understanding of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, which will surely continue to form a key element in the repertoire of Western music.

Notes 1 BB-1388; A-1021. 2 BB-1393; summary in A-1024. 3 William Meredith, ‘The Origins of Beethoven’s Op. 109’, The Musical Times, 126 (1985), 713–16. 4 Karl-Heinz Köhler and others, ed., Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, 11 vols (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1968–2001), vol. 1, p. 245. The entry is on f. 33r of the conversation book; its date can be deduced from an entr y on f. 28r, copied by Beethoven from a newspaper advertisement that rst appeared on 4 February, and from a copy on f. 43r of an advertisement that rst appeared on 7 February. 5 LvBWV, vol. 2, p. 355. 6 Bsb, Grasnick 20b; see Nicholas Marston, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 20–2. 7 BNba, BH 107. The sketchbook is published in Joseph Schmidt-Görg, ed., Beethoven: Drei Sk izzenbücher zur Missa Solemnis, I: Ein Skizzenbuch aus den Jahren 1819/20, 2 vols (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1952–68). An additional leaf that was originally situated between pp. 42 and 43 of BH 107 contains one brief sketch for the movement: see Marston, Op. 109, p. 16. 8 The sketch is quoted in Marston, Op. 109, p. 47; Marston quotes many other sketches for the sonata, along with a full discussion of them and of the evolution of the work as a whole. The following paragraphs incorporate some of his ndings. 9 Most of it is quoted in Marston, Op. 109, p. 61. 10 BB-1374; A-1015. 11 BB-1388; A-1021. 12 The date is given in Beethoven’s letter of 23 April to Simrock; BB-1384; A-1019. 13 Köhler and others, ed., Konversationshefte, vol. 2, p. 87. The date can be deduced from surrounding entries that quote material from the newspaper: on f. 40r of the

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book is an entry copied from 22 April and on 51r an entry copied from 24 April; Oliva’s comment is on f. 49r. 14 See Meredith, ‘The Origins’, p. 714. 15 Marston’s suggestion (Op. 109, p. 30) that Oliva’s comment was made before Schlesinger’s letter had arrived, and was therefore the rst suggestion of a new sonata for Schlesinger, seems improbable. 16 Marston, Op. 109, pp. 24–5. 17 Köhler and others, ed., Konversationshefte, vol. 2, p 72. 18 Friedrich Starke, ed., Wiener Piano-Forte Schule, 3 vols (Vienna: Author, D. Sprenger and J. Bermann, 1820–21). 19 JTW, pp. 257–8. The start of each movement is quoted in Marston, Op. 109, p. 32, but each continues for several more bars not quoted. 20 Bsb, Artaria 195, published in facsimile and transcription, with commentary, in William Kinderman, ed., Artaria 195: Beethoven’s Sketchbook for the Missa solemnis and the Piano Sonata in E major , 3 vols (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003). 21 BB-1393; summary in A-1024. 22 BNba, BH 108; see Joseph Schmidt-Görg, ed., Beethoven: Drei Skizzenbücher zur Missa Solemnis II: Ein Skizzenbuch zum Credo SV 82, 2 vols (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1968–70). 23 JTW, pp. 263, 371 and 374–5; BNba, BH 109. 24 The complete sketch is Marston, Op. 109, p. 100, and in Kinderman’s edition of Artaria 195, in a slightly different transcription. 25 See Marston, Op. 109, pp. 81–96 for a fuller account of the sketches for the theme. 26 See William Kinderman, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 13–16. 27 The ones numbered (apart from the rst no. 3) are listed in Marston, Op. 109, p. 192, and their incipits are quoted in his Ex. 8.3. 28 The draft is quoted in Marston, Op. 109, pp. 203–4. 29 There is little evidence for Marston’s suggestion (Op. 109, p. 211) of a possible variation in C sharp minor. 30 BB-1446 (13 Nov. 1821); A-1060. 31 Wgm, A 47. 32 See Marston, Op. 109, p. 43. 33 BB-1397; not in Emily Anderson, trans. and ed., The Letters of Beethoven, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1961). 34 BB-1410; A-1033. 35 The autograph, now in Wc (Whittall Foundation, ML 30.8b. B4 op. 109 1820 Case), is published in facsimile in Oswald Jonas, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 109 (New York: Robert Owen Lehman Foundation, 1965). Jonas discusses seve ral of the alterations in the autograph. An early copy is in Wgm, A 60a. 36 In a letter to Schlesinger of 7 March 1821 (BB-1428; A-1050) Beethoven stated that the publisher must have had the son ata for a long time by then. 37 BB-1431; A-1052 (7 June 1821). 38 BB-1434; A-1053. In the notes to BB-1434, Sieghard Brandenburg states that the list was not sent, but what Beethoven forgot to send was a later list, which had further corrections that needed to be incorporated (see BB-1446). 39 See LvBWV, vol. 1, p, 700. 40 BB-1434; A-1053. 41 BB-1446 and BB-1447; A-1060 and A-1061. 42 BB-1410; A-1033. 43 Kinderman, ed., Artaria 195, vol. 1, p. 30. His evidence is based on paper types and wax stains. 44 William Drabkin, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: A Sketchbook from the Year 1821 (Artaria 197), 2 vols (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2010), vol. 2, p. 14. Drabkin points out


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that sketches for Op. 110 on these pages seem roughly contemporary with those in a pocket sketchbook of late 1821. 45 JTW, pp. 379–87. Both pocket books are in Pn: the rst, known as ‘Late 1821’, has been dismembered and is split between Ms 80, Ms 51/3 and Ms 99; the second is seven other leaves from Ms 51. 46 See Drabkin, ed., Artaria 197 , vol. 2, p. 18. The two books, both very short, have become dismembered and are not listed in JTW. 47 These pages are now Pn Ms 51/3 and Ms 80; the reconstruction is Robert Winter’s in JTW, p. 382. There is also a sketch for the rst movement (bar 112), hitherto appar ently unrecorded, in Pn Ms 51/5, which belongs to the pocket sketchbook after ‘Late 1821’ (see below). 48 All 16 sketches for this movement in ‘Late 1821’ are transcribed in William Drabkin, ‘The Songs and the Sketches for the Allegro molto from Beethoven’s Op. 110’, Beethoven Forum, 14 (2007), 44–72, at 62–6. Heinrich Schenker, unaware of the pocket sketches, believed the minore section to have been composed ‘in a single sweep’; see Heinrich Schenker, Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 110, trans. and ed. John Rothgeb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 68. 49 See Drabkin, ‘The Songs and the Sketches’. 50 Drabkin, ‘The Songs and the Sketches’, p. 68. 51 See Barry Cooper, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 35 Piano Sonatas, 3 vols (London: ABRSM, 2007), Commentaries, vol. 3, p. 62. 52 JTW, pp. 384–7. 53 Bsb, Artaria 196. Facsimile in Karl Michael Komma, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Klaviersonate As-Dur Opus 110, 2 vols (Stuttgart: Ichthus, 1967). Komma includes transcriptions of many of the sketches in Artaria 197, and of the various versions found in the autograph, which is heavily revised in places, but he offers little detailed commentary. 54 ‘Paris Ms 51’, sheet I, p. 4, in Pn Ms 51/5. 55 The fair copy is in BNba, HCB BMh 2/42. A transcription of this version of bars 85–116 is in Cooper, ed., Piano Sonatas: Commentaries, vol. 3, p. 65. A shorter excerpt and some other early versions from this section of the work are in Schenker, Op. 110, pp. 113–19. 56 Alb-283; Rampl’s copy is now in Wgm, A 23. 57 The pagination of the sketchbook used here is based on JTW, p. 387. The actual leaf is Pn Ms 51/5, verso, left side. 58 This was rst pointed out in Gustav Nottebohm, Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, [1865]), pp. 19–20 and 41. 59 See Drabkin, ed., Artaria 197 , vol. 2, p. 29. 60 Almost all the sketches for Op. 111 are transcribed in William Drabkin, ‘A Study of Beethoven’s Opus 111 and its Sources’, PhD diss. (Princeton University, 1977). A detailed inventory of Artaria 201 (in Bsb) is in Hans-Günter Klein, Ludwig van Beethoven: Autographe und Abschriften, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz: Kataloge der Musikabteilung, I/2 (Berlin: Merseburger, 1975), pp. 202–16. 61 JTW, pp. 388–90; another part of the sketchbook is Bsb, Artaria 180. 62 A reviewer in The Harmonicon, 1 (1823), 112–13, asserted that ‘no sphinx ever imagined such a riddle’ as in this variation, and resorted to counting the numbers of demisemiquavers and hemidemisemiquavers in successive bars. 63 BNba, BH 71. 64 Bsb, Artaria 198. 65 BB-1458 (not in Anderson, ed., Letters). 66 Rampl’s copy of both movements, which derives from Schlesinger’s estate, is in BNba, HCB Mh 54. 67 See Cooper, ed., Piano Sonatas: Commentaries, vol. 3, p. 70.

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68 Bsb, Autograph 47a. See Douglas Johnson, ‘The Artaria Collection of Beethoven Manuscripts: A New Source’, Beethoven Studies, ed. Alan Tyson (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 174–236, esp. p. 227. 69 BB-1460; A-1074. 70 BB-1666, BB-1667 (sent to Paris but now incomplete); A-1190a, A-1190. 71 BB-1491; A-1095. 72 BB-1592; A-1118 (misdated). 73 BB-1479; A-1084. 74 They are not mentioned in his letter to Ries of 5 Feb. 1823, but his next letter, 25 Feb. (BB-1580; A-1143), expresses the hope that they had by then arrived. 75 The same applies to an edition of Op. 110 published in Vienna by Cappi & Diabelli, after apparently being checked by Beethoven. For a list of all the main variants between Clementi and Schlesinger, see Alan Tyson, The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), pp. 117–20. 76 Wn, Mus. Hs. 42.072; see Christa Landon and Alexander Weinmann, ‘Beethovens Sonate op. 111: Eigenhändiges Korrekturexemplar der Wiener Ausgabe von Cappi & Diabelli; eine neu aufgefunde Quelle’, Fontes artis musicae, 26 (1979), 281–94. 77 This idea, taken up by more than one writer, is already adumbrated in a review of 1824, where an unidentied speaker referred to as Edward is reported to have com pared the two movements of Op. 111 to Beethoven’s life and death respectively. See Stefan Kunze, Ludwig van Beethoven: Die Werke im Spiegel der Zeit (Laaber: Laaber, 1996), p. 381, cited from the Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung , 1 (1824), 95–9. 78 BB-1403; A-1028. 79 See W.S. Newman, ‘A Chronological Checklist of Collected Editions of Beethoven’s Solo Piano Sonatas since his Own Day’, Notes, 33 (1977), 503–30, at 510. 80 See William Drabkin, ‘Beethoven’s Sketches and the Themat ic Process’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 105 (1978–79), 25–36, esp. 28–31.

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Drabkin, William, ‘A Study of Beethoven’s Opus 111 and Its Sources’, PhD diss. (Prince ton University, 1977). ———, ‘Beethoven’s Sketches and the Thematic Process’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 105 (1978–79), 25–36. ———, ‘The Songs and the Sketches for the Allegro molto from Beethoven’s Op. 110’, Beethoven Forum, 14 (2007), 44–72. ———, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: A Sketchbook from the Year 1821 (Artaria 197), 2 vols (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2010). Drake, Kenneth, The Beethoven Sonatas and the Creative Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). Fecker, Adolf, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Unbekannte Klavierstücke (Wolfenbüttel and Zurich: Möseler Verlag, 1972). Fischer, Edwin, Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, trans. Stanley Godman and Paul Hamburger (London: Faber and Faber, 1959). Fishman, Nathan L., ed., Kniga eskizov Beethovena za 1802–1803 gody, 3 vols [facsimile, transcription and commentary for Wielhorsky Sketchbook] (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe muzykal ńoe izdatels̓ tvo, 1962). Forbes, Elliot, ed., Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, 2nd edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). Forkel, Johann Nikolaus, Musikalischer Almanach für Deutschland auf das Jahr 1784 (Leipzig: Schwicker t, 1784). Frohlich, Martha, Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ Sonata (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). ———, ‘Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F Major, Op. 54, Second Movement: The Final Version and Sketches’, Journal of Musicology, 18 (2001), 98–128. ———, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 28: Facsimile of the Autograph, the Sketches, and the First Edition with Transcription and Commentary (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1996). Gertsch, Norbert, ‘Ludwig van Beethovens “Hammerklavier”-Sonate Op. 106: Bemerkungen zur Datierung und Bewertung der Quellen’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien, 2 (2001), 63–95. Gosman, Alan, ‘From Melodic Patterns to Themes: The Sketches for the Original Version of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, Op. 53’, in Genetic Criticism and the Creative Process , ed. William Kinderman and Joseph E. Jones (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009), pp. 95–107. Green, James F., The New Hess Catalog of Beethoven’s Works (West Newbury: Vance Brook Publishing, 2003); originally published as Willy Hess, Verzeichnis der nicht in der Gesamtausgabe veröffentlichten Werke Ludwig van Beethovens (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1957). Hamilton, Kenneth, ‘Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata in Performance’, in Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata: Perspectives of Analysis and Performance, ed. Pieter Bergé (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), pp. 127–62. The Harmonicon, 1 (London: W. Pinnock, 1823). Hepokoski, James, and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Horst, Inge, ‘3 Klaviersonaten Es-Dur, f-Moll und D-Dur “Kurfürstensonaten” WoO 47’, in Beethoven: Interpretationen seiner Werke . ed. Albrecht Riethmüller, Carl Dahlhaus and Alexander L. Ringer, 2 vols (Laaber: Laaber, 1994), pp. 420–6.

210 Bibliography Jeffery, Brian, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: The 32 Piano Sonatas in Reprints of the First and Early Editions, 5 vols (London: Tecla, 1989). Johnson, Douglas, ‘The Artaria Collection of Beethoven Manuscripts: A New Source’, in Beethoven Studies, ed. Alan Tyson (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 174–236. ———, Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the ‘Fischhof ’ Miscellany: Berlin Autograph 28, 2 vols (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1980). ———, Alan Tyson and Robert Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks, ed. Douglas Johnson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Jonas, Oswald, ed., Beethoven: Piano Sonata Op. 109 [facsimile of autograph] (New York: Robert Owen Lehman Foundation, 1965). Jones, Timothy, Beethoven: The ‘Moonlight’ and Other Sonatas, Op. 27 and Op. 31 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Kagan, Susan, ‘Studies in Textual Criticism: The Second Movement of Beethoven’s Fortepiano Sonata in E minor/major, Opus 90: A Wrong Note?’, The Beethoven Newsletter , 9/2–3 (1994), 128–30. Kerman, Joseph, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Autograph Miscellany from 1786 to 1799, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1970). Kinderman, William, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). ———, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). ———, ed., Artaria 195: Beethoven’s Sketchbook for the Missa solemnis and the Piano Sonata in E major , 3 vols (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003). Kinsky, Georg (completed Hans Halm), Das Werk Beethovens (Munich: Henle, 1955). Kirby, F.E., ‘Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony as a Sinfonia caracteristica’, The Musical Quarterly, 56 (1970), 605–23. Klein, Hans-Günter, Ludwig van Beethoven: Autographe und Abschriften, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz: Kataloge der Musikabteilung, I/2 (Berlin: Merseburger, 1975). Koch, Heinrich Christoph, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3 vols (Leipzig: Friedrich Böhme, 1782–93; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969). Köhler, Karl-Heinz, and others, ed., Ludwig van Beethovens Konversationshefte, 11 vols (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1968–2001). Komma, Karl Michael, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Klaviersonate As-Dur Opus 110, 2 vols [facsimile of autograph and commentary] (Stuttgart: Ichthus, 1967). Kopitz, Klaus Martin, ‘Beethoven as a Composer for the Orphica: A New Source for WoO 51’, The Beethoven Journal , 22/1 (2007), 25–30. ——— and Rainer Cadenbach, ed., Beethoven aus der Sicht seiner Zeitgenossen, 2 vols (Munich: Henle, 2009). Kramer, Richard, ‘Notes to Beethoven’s Education’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 28 (1975), 72–101. ——— , ‘On the Dating of Two Aspects in Beethoven’s Notation for Piano’, in Beiträge ’76–78: Beethoven Kolloquium 1977 Dokumentation und Aufführungspraxis , ed. Rudolf Klein (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1978), pp. 160–73. ———, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: A Sketchbook from the Summer of 1800, 2 vols. (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1996); also a third volume, A Newly Recovered Leaf of Sketches from the Summer of 1800 for Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 18 No. 2 (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1999).

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Kunze, Stefan, Ludwig van Beethoven: Die Werke im Spiegel der Zeit (Laaber: Laaber, 1996). Küthen, Hans-Werner, ‘Pragmatic instead of Enigmatic: “The Fifty-First Sonata” of Beethoven’, The Beethoven Newsletter , 7 (1992), 68–73. Ladenburger, Michael, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Klaviersonate e-Moll op. 90 [facsimile of autograph] (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1993). ———, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Klaviersonate in cis-Moll op. 27 Nr. 2 ‘Mondschein-Sonate’ [facsimile of autograph] (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2003). ——— and Friderike Grigat, Beethovens ‘Mondschein-Sonate’: Original und romantische Verklärung (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2003). Landon, Christa, and Alexander Weinmann, ‘Beethovens Sonate op. 111: Eigenhändiges Korrekturexemplar der Wiener Ausgabe von Cappi & Diabelli; eine neu aufgefunde Quelle’, Fontes artis musicae, 26 (1979), 281–94. Landon, H.C. Robbins, Beethoven: A Documentary Study (London: Thames & Hudson, 1970). Lockwood, Lewis, ‘On Beethoven’s Sketches and Autographs: Some Problems of Denition and Interpretation’, Acta Musicologica, 42 (1970), 32–47. ———, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York and London: Norton, 2003). ——— and Alan Gosman, ed., Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Sketchbook , 2 vols (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013). Loos, Helmut, ‘Beethoven in Prag 1796 und 1798’, in Beethoven in Böhmen, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg and Martella Gutiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1988), pp. 63–90. Macdonald, Hugh, ‘To Repeat or Not to Repeat?’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical As sociation, 111 (1984–85), 121–38. Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm, Abhandlung von der Fuge (Berlin: Haude and Spener, 1753–54). Marston, Nicholas, ‘Approaching the Sketches for Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 44 (1991), 404–50. ———, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). ——— , ‘In the “Twilight Zone”: Beethoven’s Unnished Piano Trio in F minor’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 131 (2006), 227–86. ———, Heinrich Schenker and Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Matthews, Denis, Beethoven Piano Sonatas (London: BBC, 1967). Mauser, Siegfried, Beethovens Klaviersonaten: Ein musikalischer Werkführer (Munich: Beck, 2001). Meredith, William, ‘The Origins of Beethoven’s Op. 109’, The Musical Times, 126 (1985), 713–16. ———, ‘The Westerby–Meredith Hypothesis: T he Histor y of the Eroica Variations and Daniel Steibelt’s Fortepiano Quintet, Opus 28, no. 2’, The Beethoven Journal , 27/1 (2012), 26–44. Mikulicz, K.L., ed., Ein Notierungsbuch von Beethoven aus dem Besitz der Preussischer Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1927) [transcription of Landsberg 7]. Milligan, Thomas B., A Thematic Catalogue of the Works of Johann Baptist Cramer (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1992). Newman, William S., The Sonata in the Classic Era (New York: Norton, 1963; 2nd edn, 1972).

212 Bibliography ———, ‘A Chronological Checklist of Collected Editions of Beethoven’s Solo Piano Sonatas since H is Own Day’, Notes, 33 (1977), 503–30. ———, Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way (New York: Norton, 1988). Nohl, Ludwig, Beethoven’s Leben , 3 vols (Leipzig: E.J. Günther, 1867–77). Nottebohm, Gustav, Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, [1865]). ———, Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig: Peters, 1887). Prod’homme, Jacques-Gabriel, Les sonates pour piano de Beethoven (1782–1823): histoire et critique (Paris: Delagrave, 1937). Reti, Rudolph, Thematic Patterns in Sonatas of Beethoven , ed. Deryck Cooke (London: Faber, 1967). Ronge, Julia, Beethovens Lehrzeit: Kompositionsstudien bei Joseph Haydn, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger und Antonio Salieri (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 2011). ———, ed., Beethoven Kompositionsstudien bei Joseph Haydn, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger und Antonio Salieri, 3 vols, Beethoven Werke Gesamtausgabe, XIII/1 (Munich: Henle, 2014). Rosen, Charles, Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Rosenblum, Sandra P., Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). Rowland, David, ‘Early Pianoforte Pedalling: The Evidence of the Earliest Printed Markings’, Early Music, 11 (1983), 5–17. Sachs, Klaus-Jürgen, ‘Beethovens “Lebewohl” für Erzherzog Rudolph: Zum Kopfsatz der Klaviersonate Es-dur, op. 81a, Les adieux’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien, 4 (2005), 121–47. Schachter, Carl, ‘Beethoven’s Sketches for the First Movement of Op. 14, No. 1: A Study in Design’, Journal of Music Theory, 26/1 (1982), 1–21. Schenker, Heinrich, Piano Sonata in Ab Major, Op. 110, trans. and ed. John Rothgeb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Schindler, Anton, Beethoven as I Knew Him, trans. Constance S. Jolly, ed. Donald MacArdle (London: Faber and Faber, 1966). Schmidt, Hans, ‘Verzeichnis der Skizzen Beethovens’, Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 6 (1965–68 [1969]), 7–128. Schmidt-Görg, Joseph, ed., Beethoven: Drei Skizzenbücher zur Missa Solemnis I: Ein Skizzenbuch aus den Jahren 1819/20, 2 vols (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1952–68). ———, ed., Beethoven: Drei Skizzenbücher zur Missa Solemnis II: Ein Skizzenbuch zum Credo SV 82, 2 vols (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1968–70). Schwarz, Boris, ‘A Little-Known Beethoven Sketch in Moscow’, The Musical Quarterly, 54 (1970), 539–50. Shedlock, J.S., ‘Beethoven’s Sketches Hitherto Unpublished’, The Musical Times, 50 (1909), 712–14. Sisman, Elaine, ‘Pathos and the Pathétique: Rhetorical Stance in Beethoven’s C-minor Sonata, Op. 13’, Beethoven Forum, 3 (1994), 81–105. ———, ed., Haydn and His World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Skowroneck, Tilman, Beethoven the Pianist: Biographical, Organological and Performance Practical Aspects of His Years as a Public Performer (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 2007).

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Smirnov, Dmitri, The Anatomy of Theme in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas (Berlin: Kuhn, 2008). Solomon, Maynard, Beethoven (New York: Schirmer, 1977). ———, ‘Beethoven’s Tagebuch of 1812–1818’, in Beethoven Studies 3, ed. Alan Tyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 193–288. Song, Moo Kyoung, The Evolution of Sonata-Form Design in Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: The Evolution of Sonata-Form Design in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Early Piano Sonatas, WoO 47 to Opus 22 (Saarbrücken: VDM, 2009). Sonneck, O.G., ed., Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries (New York: Dover, 1967). Steblin, Rita, ‘“A dear, enchanting girl who loves me and whom I love”: New Facts about Beethoven’s Beloved Pupil Julie Guicciardi’, Bonner Beethoven-Studien, 8 (2009), 89–152. Staehelin, Martin, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven , Klaviersonate in C-dur op. 53 (Waldstein-Sonate) [facsimile of autograph] (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1984). Stanley, Glenn, ‘Some Thoughts on Biography and a Chronology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, ed. Glenn Stanley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 3 –13. Starke, Friedrich, ed., Wiener Pianoforte-Schule, 3 vols (Vienna: Author, D. Sprenger and J. Bermann, 1820–21). Steinbeck, Wolfram, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven, Klaviersonate f-moll “Appassionata” op. 57: Faksimile nach dem Autograph der Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (Laaber: Laaber, 2011). Stroh, Patricia, ‘Evolution of an Edition: The Case of Beethoven’s Opus 2’, Notes, 57/2 (2000), 289–329. ———, ‘Beethoven Auction Report (2012)’, The Beethoven Journal , 27/2 (2012), 84–5. ———, ‘Evolution of an Edition, Part 3: A Missing Link in the Case of Beethoven’s Opus 2’, Notes, 68/3 (2012), 489–525. Taub, Robert, Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (Portland: Amadeus, 2002). Thayer, Alexander Wheelock (rev. Hermann Deiters and Hugo Riemann), Ludwig van Beethovens Leben, 5 vols (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Här tel, 1907–23). Tovey, Donald Francis, A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, rev. and ed. Barry Cooper (London: ABRSM, 1998). Türk, Daniel Gottlob, Klavierschule, oder Anweisung zum Klavierspielen für Lehrer und Lernende (Leipzig: Schwickert, 1789); translated as School of Clavier Playing, or, In structions in Playing the Clavier for Teachers and Students, trans. and ed. Raymond H. Haggh (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1982). Tyson, Alan, ‘Beethoven in Steiner’s Shop’, The Music Review, 23 (1962), 119–27. ———, The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven (London: Faber and Faber, 1963). ——— , ‘Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata and its Publication’, The Musical Times, 104 (1963), 333–4. ———, ‘Beethoven to the Countess Susanna Guicciardi: A New Letter’, in Beethoven Studies, ed. Alan Tyson (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 1–17. Uhde, Jürgen, Beethovens 32 Klaviersonaten (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1968, repr. 2012). Volek, Tomislav, and Jaroslav Macek, ‘Beethoven’s Rehearsals at the Lobkowitz’s’, The Musical Times, 127 (1986), 75–80. Wallace, Robin, Beethoven’s Critics: Aesthetic Dilemmas and Resolutions during the Composer’s Lifetime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Waltz, Sarah, ‘In Defense of Moonlight’, Beethoven Forum, 14/1 (Spring 2007), 1–43.

214 Bibliography Warner, Michael Allen, ‘A Little Prelude and the Scherzo that Almost Wasn’t: Beethoven’s “New Path” and the Early-Nineteenth-Century Bach Revival’, Journal of Musicological Research, 32 (2013), 83–115. Wegeler, Franz, and Ferdinand Ries, Remembering Beethoven [originally published 1838 as Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven], trans. Frederick Noonan (London: André Deutsch, 1988). Websites

The Beethoven Gateway website: http://mill1.sjlibrary.org:83/record=b1023138~S0 Bonn, Beethoven-Haus, Digital Archive: http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/sixcms/ detail.php?template=startseite_digitales_archiv_en Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Catalogue général: http://catalogue.bnf.fr/index.do. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Library, Digital Library: http://pudl. princeton.edu Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Digitalisierte Sammlungen: http://digital.staatsbibliothek berlin.de The Unheard Beethoven website: http://unheardbeethoven.org

Index of original sources

Named sketchbooks Artaria see Berlin Boldrini (lost) 167 – 9 Dessauer see Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, A 40 ‘Early 1822’ (pocket sketchbook) 7, 197 ‘Eroica’ see Kraków, Landsberg 6 Fischhof Miscellany see Berlin, Autograph 28 Grasnick see Berlin and Kraków Kafka Miscellany see London, Add. 29801 Kessler see Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, A 34 Landsberg see Berlin and Kraków ‘Late 1821’ (pocket sketchbook) 7, 189 – 92 ‘Paris Ms 51’ (pocket sketchbook) 192 – 4, 196, 205 ‘Pocket Sketchbook of Early 1822’ (largely lost) 197 Sauer (composite) 7, 84, 89, 100 Scheide see Princeton ‘Summer 1800’ (composite) 7, 67 – 71, 75, 76 Wielhorsky see Moscow Wittgenstein see Bonn, HCB BSk 1/49 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Musikabteilung (Bsb), published in microfiche in Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Munich: Saur 2002–5). Artaria 180 (part of pocket sketchbook) 205 Artaria 195 (sketchbook) 7, 181 – 4, 186, 193, 204 Artaria 196 (Op. 110 autograph) 192 – 3

Artaria 197 (sketchbook) 7, 8, 187 – 91, 194 – 6 Artaria 198 (Op. 111 second autograph) 197 – 8, 200, 205 Artaria 201 (sketchbook) 7, 191, 195 – 7, 205 Autograph 11/1 (sketchbook) 7, 161 – 3, 167, 174 Autograph 19e (remnants of sketchbook ‘Summer 1800’) 75 Autograph 23 (Op. 22 corrected copy) 72 Autograph 28 (Fischhof Miscellany) 6, 7, 32 – 3, 34 – 5, 40, 46 – 50, 54, 56, 58 – 9, 61 – 5, 74 Autograph 35,8 (Clementi contract) 140, 151 Autograph 47a (catalogue of Artaria collection) 198, 206 Grasnick 1 (sketchbook) 60 – 1, 64, 67, 74 Grasnick 20b (sketch leaves) 178 – 80, 203 Landsberg 5 (sketchbook) 7, 141 – 4, 146 – 7, 149, 151 Landsberg 7 (sketchbook) 7, 8, 61, 76 – 80, 82 – 4, 96 Landsberg 9, pp. 1 – 16 (sketch leaves) 169 – 70 Landsberg 12, pp. 23 – 34 (sketch leaves) 154 – 6, 174 Mendelssohn 15 (sketchbook) 7, 126 – 30, 132, 138 N. Mus. ms. 304 (Op. 2 corrected proof) 37 – 8, 41 Bonn, Beethoven-Haus (BNba), published online in Digital Archive: http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de/ sixcms/detail.php?template=startseite_ digitales_archiv_en BH 60 (Op. 27 No. 2 autograph) 91 – 7

216

Index of original sources

BH 61 (Op. 28 autograph) 91 – 6, 98 BH 71 (Op. 111.I first autograph) 197 – 8, 205 BH 107 (pocket sketchbook) 7, 178 – 9, 203 BH 108 (pocket sketchbook) 181, 204 BH 109 (pocket sketchbook) 181, 204 C81a/22 (Op. 81a, first printing) 150, 152 HCB BMh 1/41 (Op. 79 autograph) 146, 148, 152 HCB BMh 2/42 (Op. 110.III second autograph) 192 – 3, 205 HCB BMh 11/51 (WoO 52 autograph) 47, 56 HCB BSk 1/49 (Wittgenstein Sketchbook) 7, 178 HCB BSk 10/58 (sketch leaf) 98 HCB BSk 13/61 (sketch leaf) 159, 174 HCB BSk 25/73 (2 sketch leaves from ‘Summer 1800’) 75 HCB Mh 7 (Op. 53 autograph) 123 – 5, 135, 138 HCB Mh 9 (Op. 78 autograph) 146, 148, 152 HCB Mh 54 (Op. 111 corrected copy) 198 – 9, 205 HCB Mh 66 (sketch leaf) 87, 97 HCB Mh 68 (sketch leaf) 90 HCB Mh 71 (sketch leaves) 138 NE 91 (sketch leaf) 61, 63 NE 147 (sketch leaf) 144, 152 NE 189 (Op. 90 autograph) 155 – 8, 174 NE 193 (sketch leaf) 175 NE 219 (Op. 101 autograph) 163 – 4, 174 NE 274 (Op. 81a.II-III, Archduke Rudolph’s copy) 145, 152 Wegeler Collection, W 1 (WoO 50 autograph) 26 ———, W 2 (WoO 51 autograph) 26 ———, W 3 (abandoned sonata sketches) 24, 26

Mendelssohn 1 (pocket sketchbook) 162, 174 Mendelssohn 2 (pocket sketches) 162 – 3, 167, 175

Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska (Kj), published in microfiche in Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Munich: Saur 2002–5). Grasnick 12 (Op. 26 autograph) 91 – 6, 98 Landsberg 6 (‘Eroica’ Sketchbook) 7, 118 – 23, 126, 137, 138

Vienna (Wien), Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Wgm) A 1 (Op. 81a.I autograph) 142, 151 A 23 (Op. 110 corrected copy) 192 – 3, 205 A 31 (sketch leaf) 28 – 31, 35 – 6, 40 A 34 (Kessler Sketchbook) 7, 100 – 8, 116, 194 A 36, pp. 57 – 60 (sketch bifolio) 154, 174 A 40 (Dessauer Sketchbook) 7, 154, 173

London, British Library (Lbl) Add. 14396, f. 30 (sketch leaf) 169, 175 Add. 29801, ff. 39–162 (Kafka Miscellany) 6, 7, 28, 35, 40, 48, 50 – 6, 57 – 66, 74, 85 Add. 41631 (WoO 47 first edition, Beethoven’s annotated copy) 21 Moscow, Glinka Museum (Mcm) F. 155 no. 1 (Wielhorsky Sketchbook) 7, 100, 109 – 10, 113, 116, 117 – 18 F. 155 no. 4 (sketch leaf) 30 – 1, 35 – 6, 40 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Pn), published online and available through Catalogue général : http:// catalogue.bnf.fr/index.do Ms 20 (Op. 57 autograph) 133 – 4, 136, 139 Ms 29 (WoO 56 autograph) 123 Ms 51 (parts of three pocket sketchbooks) 7, 187, 190, 192, 194, 201, 205 Ms 71 (sketch leaf) 68 – 71 Ms 78 (pocket sketches) 7, 162 – 3, 174 Ms 80 (part of pocket sketchbook) 187, 205 Ms 99 (part of pocket sketchbook) 187, 205 Ms 103 (pocket sketches) 7, 162 – 3, 174 Rés. Vm.7 537, f. 49 (sketch leaf) 160, 174 Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Library (PRu), published online in Digital Library: http://pudl. princeton.edu Scheide MA130 (Scheide Sketchbook) 7, 159 – 61, 174

Index of original sources A 44 (pocket sketchbook) 167, 175 A 45 (pocket sketchbook) 167 – 8, 175 A 47 (Op. 109 draft fragment) 185, 204 A 60a (Op. 109 Archduke Rudolph’s copy) 204 Brahms Nachlass VII.45363 (Op. 57 corrected proof) 136, 139 Vienna (Wien), Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek (Wn) Mus. Hs. 16.570 (Op. 90 Archduke Rudolph’s copy) 158, 174 Mus. Hs. 42.072 (Op. 111 Cappi & Diabelli edition, corrected proof) 200, 206

217

Washington , Library of Congress (Wc) Whittall Foundation, ML 30.8b. B4 op. 109 1820 Case (Op. 109 autograph) 184 – 6, 204 Privately owned J.W.R. Dreesmann (2 sketch leaves from ‘Summer 1800’) 75 Matthew Malerich (Op. 2 corrected proof, currently loaned to the Beethoven Center, San Jose) 36 – 7, 40 André Meyer Collection (sketch leaf known as SV 361, sold at Sotheby’s, Paris 2012) 129, 132, 139

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Index of Beethoven’s works

Canons O Tobias (WoO 182) 187, 189 Chamber music (i) with wind Clarinet Trio (Op. 11) 11, 58 – 9 Folksong Variations (Opp. 105, 107) 11, 170, 179 – 80, 184 Octet (Op. 103) 27 Quintet in E flat (Op. 16) 5, 45, 80 Septet (Op. 20) 46, 67, 71 – 2 Sextet (Op. 81b) 148 Trio in G (WoO 37) 62

(ii) for piano and strings 2 Cello Sonatas (Op. 102) 158 – 9, 162, 165 – 6, 169 3 Quartets (WoO 36) 29 – 30, 33 – 5, 62, 196 Rondo in G (WoO 41) 23 3 Trios (Op. 1) 27, 28, 30, 32, 36, 42, 51, 84 Trio in B flat (‘Archduke’, Op. 97) 103 Variations for Piano Trio (Op. 44) 114 3 Violin Sonatas (Op. 12) 55, 59 Violin Sonata in A minor (Op. 23) 76 Violin Sonata in F (Op. 24) 49, 76 – 7 3 Violin Sonatas (Op. 30) 48, 81, 100, 114, 115, 194 Violin Sonata in A (‘Kreutzer’, Op. 47) 117 – 18, 139 Violin Sonata in G (Op. 96) 153 – 4 (iii) for strings alone Fugue for String Quintet (Op. 137) 167 6 Quartets (Op. 18) 32, 43, 61, 64, 67, 68, 136 3 ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets (Op. 59) 62, 106, 134, 151, 160, 190

Quartet in E flat (Op. 74) 143, 190 3 ‘Galitzin’ Quartets (Opp. 127, 130, 132) 20, 43, 62, 103, 109, 166, 194, 200 Quartet in F (Hess 34) 63, 66 Quintet in E flat (Op. 4) 64 Quintet in C (Op. 29) 43, 99, 103, 114 Trio (Op. 8) 45 3 Trios (Op. 9) 45, 55, 58, 60, 72 Choral music Christus am Oelberge 101, 115, 117 – 18 Elegischer Gesang 154 – 5 Mass in C 43 Mass in D (Missa solemnis) 4, 172, 177 – 8, 181, 187, 197, 200 Un lieto brindisi 154 Composition exercises for Albrechtsberger 30 for Haydn (Hess 233) 27, 40 for Salieri 99 Folksong settings Scottish Airs (Op. 108) 179 – 80, 183 Orchestral music Military March (WoO 24) 160 Piano Concerto No. 1: 30, 36, 40, 80 Piano Concerto No. 2: 27, 49, 64, 71 – 2 Piano Concerto No. 3: 81, 120 Piano Concerto No. 4: 141, 151 Piano Concerto No. 5 (‘Emperor’) 113, 120, 141 Romance in G (Op. 40) 99 Rondo in B flat (WoO 6) 27 Symphony No. 1: 49, 51, 67, 71 – 2, 90 Symphony No. 2: 51, 76 Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) 43, 61, 80, 117 – 18, 123, 125, 130, 134 – 5

220

Index of Beethoven’s works

Symphony No. 4: 43, 133, 151 Symphony No. 5: 43, 133 Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral ) 89, 143 Symphony No. 7: 153, 156, 164 Symphony No. 8: 153, 156 Symphony No. 9: 48, 62, 103, 170, 172, 177, 200 Triple Concerto 126, 134 Violin Concerto 151 Wellingtons Sieg 156

Op. 106 (‘Hammerklavier’) 1, 4, 51, 103, 123, 125, 133, 153 – 76, 186, 197, 200, 201 Op. 109: 1, 109, 164, 177 – 206 Op. 110: 4, 51, 62, 109, 125, 177 – 206 Op. 111: 1, 4, 103, 109, 177 – 206 WoO 47 No. 1: 10, 15 – 22, 34, 201 WoO 47 No. 2: 10, 15 – 22, 60, 201 WoO 47 No. 3: 10, 15 – 22, 201 see also: Unfinished and projected works

Piano, piano duet, orphica (i) sonatas Op. 2 No. 1: 10, 27 – 41, 45, 51, 200, 201 Op. 2 No. 2: 10, 27 – 41, 45, 49, 51, 200, 201 Op. 2 No. 3: 10, 27 – 41, 45, 51, 200, 201 Op. 6 (piano duet) 43, 45 Op. 7: 10, 42 – 56, 61 – 2, 200, 201 Op. 10 No. 1: 42 – 56, 57 – 8, 66, 67, 70, 72, 78, 123, 201 Op. 10 No. 2: 42 – 56, 57, 67, 70, 72, 78, 201 Op. 10 No. 3: 42 – 56, 57, 67, 69, 72, 201 Op. 13 (Pathétique) 10, 19 – 20, 48, 57 – 75, 112, 143, 201 Op. 14 No. 1: 10, 51, 57 – 75, 181, 201 Op. 14 No. 2: 10, 57 – 75, 201 – 2 Op. 22: 10, 49, 51, 57 – 75, 99, 201 Op. 26: 10, 49, 51, 76 – 98, 115, 201 Op. 27 No. 1: 10, 28, 51, 62, 76 – 98, 115, 134, 201 Op. 27 No. 2 (‘Moonlight’) 10, 14, 18, 28, 49, 51, 76 – 98, 115, 127, 134, 201 – 2 Op. 28: 10, 76 – 98, 114, 201 Op. 31 No. 1: 99 – 116, 118, 165, 201 – 2 Op. 31 No. 2: 1, 10, 62, 81, 99 – 116, 118, 201 – 2 Op. 31 No. 3: 51, 99 – 116, 118, 123, 140, 201 – 2 Op. 49 No. 1: 18, 42 – 56, 135, 195, 201 – 2 Op. 49 No. 2: 18, 42 – 56, 135, 195, 201 – 2 Op. 53 (‘Waldstein’) 4, 10, 11, 103, 115, 117 – 39, 195, 201 – 3 Op. 54: 81, 117 – 39, 195, 201 Op. 57 (‘Appassionata’) 1, 62, 81, 117 – 39, 199, 201 – 2 Op. 78: 81, 140 – 52, 195, 201 – 2 Op. 79: 18, 140 – 52, 178, 201 – 2 Op. 81a (Lebewohl ) 2, 140 – 52, 159, 180, 201 Op. 90: 14, 153 – 76, 195, 201 – 2 Op. 101: 4, 10, 11, 28, 51, 91, 153 – 76, 201

(ii) variations Op. 34 in F 100, 106, 115, 184 Op. 35 (Prometheus) 81, 100, 109, 115 Op. 120 (Diabelli) 48, 177, 184, 195, 196, 200 WoO 63 (Dressler) 15, 16 WoO 66 (Dittersdorf) 23 WoO 71 (Wranitzky) 43 WoO 77 in G 71 (iii) bagatelles and miscellaneous Andante favori (WoO 57) 10, 120, 124 – 6 7 Bagatelles (Op. 33) 78, 124 11 Bagatelles (Op. 119) 48, 91, 124, 180 – 1, 186 6 Bagatelles (Op. 126) 200 Bagatelle in C minor (WoO 52) 47, 57, 78, 124 Bagatelle in C minor (WoO 53) 49, 57, 65, 78 Bagatelle in C (WoO 56) 123 – 4 Fantasia (Op. 77) 146 – 8, 201 3 Marches for piano duet (Op. 45) 44, 114 2 pieces (‘sonatina’, WoO 50) 23 2 pieces for orphica (WoO 51) 23, 46 Rondo in G (Op. 51 No. 2) 88 – 9 Songs ‘Abendlied’ (WoO 150) 178 ‘Andenken’ (WoO 136) 135 An die ferne Geliebte (Op. 98) 160, 187 ‘Ruf vom Berge’ (WoO 147) 163 Stage music Coriolan Overture (Op. 62) 151 Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus 72, 76 – 7, 83 – 4, 90, 120, 128 Egmont 8, 77 Fidelio (or Leonore) 117, 126, 127 – 8, 138, 153 – 5 Leonore see Fidelio Leonore Prohaska 82

Index of Beethoven’s works Unfinished, lost and projected works Allegretto in C minor (1797) 57 – 9 Fantasia-Sonata in D for piano (Unv 12, Biamonti 213) 28, 40 2 Melodies (Hess 327) 118 Oboe Concerto (Hess 12) 27 Piano Concerto in A (c. 1791) 85 Piano Sonata in A (1800) 68 – 9 Piano Sonata in B flat (1821) 194 Piano Sonata in C (Hess 52) 13 Piano Sonata in C minor or major (1809) 143 Piano Sonata in C sharp minor (1821) 187 Piano Sonata in D flat (1815) 160

221

Piano Sonata in D (1800) 68 – 9 Piano Sonata in E flat (c. 1790) 23 – 4 Piano Sonata in E flat (c. 1798, Unv 13) 61 – 3 Piano Sonata in E major (1809) 143 Piano Sonata in E minor (c. 1790) 23 – 4 Piano Sonata in F sharp minor (1821) 193 – 4 Piano Trio in F minor (Unv 10) 161 Symphony in C (Unv 2) 45, 49, 51 Symphony No. 10 (Unv 3) 172 Vestas Feuer 117 – 18 ‘Vivat Rudolphus’ 167

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General index

accidentals 38, 96, 123, 125, 129, 135, 171, 185 Adorno, Theodor 9 Alberti, Domenico 2 Alberti bass 20, 87 Albrecht, Theodore 12, 139 Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg 3, 30 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 67, 74, 88, 98, 111, 116, 158, 174 Anderson, Emily 12, 115 André, Johann 4, 46, 117 Apponyi, Count Anton von 42 arrangements 63, 66, 82 Artaria, Domenico 198 Artaria & Co. 36 – 9, 45, 170 – 1, 173 articulation 21 – 2, 37, 41, 73, 92, 94 – 5, 112, 155, 202 artistic aims 3 – 4, 11, 16, 17, 28, 39, 61, 95, 165, 201 Asioli, Bonifazio 25 autograph scores 8, 44, 91 – 6, 202; see also Index of original sources Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel 2, 19; sonatas 2, 62; Versuch über die wahre Art 3 Bach, Johann Christian 2 Bach, Johann Sebastian 165; Das wohltemperirte Clavier 5; Prelude in C (BWV 933) 116 Baden 131 Beethoven, (Caspar) Carl van (brother) 4, 42, 46, 99 – 100, 111 – 12, 133 – 4, 153 – 4 Beethoven, Johann van (father) 3, 15, 17 Beethoven, Karl van (nephew) 172, 178, 199 Beethoven, Louis (Ludwig) van (grandfather) 15, 17

Beethoven-Haus see Bonn Berlin 36, 44, 48, 186, 193 Bernard, Carl 177 Bernhard, Elisabeth 39 Bigot, Marie and Paul 133, 135 Birchall, Robert 164 Birkenstock, Johann Melchior von 89 Bonaparte see Napoleon Bonn 15, 21, 36, 135; Beethoven-Haus 145, 174 Bossler, Heinrich 16; Blumenlese für Klavierliebhaber 25 Brandenburg, Sieghard 9, 12, 98, 100, 152, 159, 175, 204 Braun, Baron Peter von 67 Braun, Baroness Josephine von 67 Breitkopf & Härtel 2, 4, 46, 100, 111, 115, 128 – 9, 132 – 5, 140, 146 – 51, 158 – 9, 161 Brentano, Antonie 89, 199 – 200 Brentano, Maximiliane 199 Breuning, Eleonore von 23 Breuning, Lorenz von 23 Bridgetower, George 117 Broadwood see instruments Browne, Count Johann Georg von 10, 43, 44, 72 Browne, Countess Anna Margaretha von 43, 72 Broyles, Michael E. 74 Brunsvik, Count Franz 136 – 7 Brunsvik, Countess Therese 67, 81, 149 Bureau des Arts et d’Industrie see Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir Burstein, L. Poundie 151 Bursy, Karl 14 Buurman, Erica 174 – 5

224

General index

Cappi, Giovanni 82, 112 – 14 Cappi & Diabelli 200 ‘characteristic’ music 60 – 1, 79, 86 – 7, 89, 99, 108, 128, 143 – 4, 150, 201 Chopin, Fryderyk (Frédéric) 86 Clementi, Muzio 140, 143, 146 – 50; influence on Beethoven 2 – 3, 97; publisher 113 – 14, 134, 148 – 50, 200, 201 – 2, 206; sonatas 2, 27, 32, 110 Cocks’s Musical Miscellany 114 codas 19, 31, 82, 126; coda sketches 50, 54 – 5, 58, 61, 70 – 1, 77, 79, 87, 89, 91, 104, 106, 120, 141, 163, 179, 189 commissions 27, 42 – 4, 72, 78, 99 – 100, 157, 159, 201 – 2; by publishers 100, 141, 146 – 7, 177, 202 concerts 10, 36 conversation books 108, 177, 180, 203 copies 8, 18, 43, 148; for publishers 72, 164, 170 – 1, 185, 192, 198, 200; for Rudolph 145, 157 – 8 copyists 8, 134, 142 correspondence: editions of 12, 98; personal 23, 44, 88, 112, 142, 157, 167; publication business 42, 46, 63, 71 – 3, 99 – 100, 111, 115, 117, 128, 133 – 5, 146, 148, 150 – 1, 164 – 5, 171 – 2, 177, 179 – 81, 185, 198 – 9 Cramer, Carl Friedrich: Magazin der Musik 15, 16 Cramer, Johann Baptist 81, 97, 110 Czerny, Carl: commentary on sonatas 18, 53, 55, 81, 86 – 7, 127 – 8, 137, 190; recollections 5, 10, 17, 39, 55, 67, 80, 81, 88, 97, 108, 114 – 5, 124 – 5, 133, 173 Dahlhaus, Carl 9, 64 deafness 10, 101, 108, 170 dedications 16, 38, 43, 44, 67, 72, 82, 84, 87 – 9, 135, 136 – 7, 142, 145, 149, 157, 159, 167, 193, 199 – 200, 201 Dent, Edward 84 Derry, Siân 138 Deutsch, Otto Erich 25 Deym (née Brunsvik), Countess Josephine 81, 113, 137, 149 Diabelli, Anton 158 diaries see Tagebuch Döbling 131 – 2 Drabkin, William 187, 204, 205 Dresden 44 Duncker, Friedrich 82

Dussek, Jan Ladislav 110, 113 dynamics 20, 85, 92, 94, 134, 155, 168, 202 Ebelsburg, Battle of 141 Eberl, Caspar Josef 72 Ebner, Wolfgang 165 Eder, Joseph 67 editions, collected 18, 23, 200 editions, first 9, 13, 16, 36 – 8, 45 – 6, 67, 73, 82, 95, 110 – 13, 134 – 7, 147 – 51, 157 – 8, 164 – 6, 170 – 3, 185 – 6, 193, 198 – 200 editions, other 39, 112 – 14, 200, 202 education, musical 17, 27, 30, 38, 39 Eggmühl, Battle of 141 Erard, Sébastien 117, 137 errors 9, 144; Beethoven’s 10, 92, 135, 136, 149, 198; in copies 73, 171; printer’s 37 – 8, 73, 95 – 6, 111 – 13, 136, 148, 151, 158, 185, 186, 199 Ertmann, Baroness Dorothea 10, 159, 166 Esterházy, Princess Maria 44 extemporization 6, 15, 19, 29, 55, 80, 110, 119, 131 – 2, 202 extramusical influences see ‘characteristic’ music Fecker, Adolf 40 Field, John 86 finale problem 49 finances see income fingering 21, 37, 40, 91 Fischer, Edwin 125 folksong, use of 189 Forkel, Nikolaus: Musikalische Almanach 25 form 3, 31, 47, 66, 79, 82, 183 – 4, 190 – 1; minuet-and-trio form 35, 49, 51, 65, 80; rondo form 57 – 8, 68, 126, 155; sonata form 3, 19, 33, 43, 50, 55, 61 – 2, 64, 70, 106, 179 Fries, Count Moritz von 43 Frohlich, Martha 129, 138 fugue, fugato 158 – 9, 169, 189 – 91, 194, 196 Galitzin, Prince Nikolas 43 Gallenberg, Count Wenzel 88 Galuppi, Baldassare 2 Gertsch, Norbert 175 – 6 Gosman, Alan 118, 137 – 8

General index Guicciardi, Julie (Giulietta) 82, 87 – 9 Guicciardi, Susanna 88 – 9 Hamilton, Kenneth 14 handwriting 21, 28, 37, 40, 44, 47, 59 Harmonicon, The 205 Härtel, Gottfried 111, 139, 146, 148 Haslinger, Tobias 18, 164, 200 Haydn, Joseph 10, 19, 25, 27, 30, 36, 38, 81, 117; influence on Beethoven 2 – 3, 38; sonatas 2, 27, 32, 40, 126, 195 – 6; Symphony No. 49 (‘La Passione’) 32; Symphony No. 103 (‘Drum Roll’) 20 Hebenstreit, Wilhelm 164 Heiligenstadt 101, 108 Heiligenstadt Testament 4, 17, 101 Hepokoski, James, and Warren Darcy: Elements of Sonata Theory 13, 26 Hoffmeister, Franz Anton 67, 71 – 2, 99 Holsbergen, Willem 40 Horner, Johann Jakob 100 Hummel, Johann Nepomuk 165 humour 165 illnesses 167, 185, 187, 199 ‘Immortal Beloved’ 199 improvisation see extemporization income 137, 153 – 4; from patrons 9, 42, 99; from publishers 72, 100, 117, 134 – 5, 139, 140 – 1, 146, 159, 177 influences, see models innovations in style see originality instruments 10 – 11, 18, 21, 44, 81, 91, 117 – 18, 120, 136, 170 Jahn, Otto 114 Johnson, Douglas 7, 8, 44, 55, 56, 63, 74, 206 Jonas, Oswald 204 Jones, Timothy 97 Kagan, Susan 174 Keglevics, Countess Babette von 43 Kerman, Joseph 59, 74 keyboard compass 11, 120, 163 – 4, 170 key relationships (in group of works) 19, 32, 67, 166, 201 key scheme (for movements) 33, 50, 51, 52 – 3, 54 – 5, 61, 65 – 6, 70, 102 – 3, 106 – 7, 119, 144, 169 – 70, 182, 184, 189 key scheme (for works) 28, 29, 58, 83, 102, 106, 120, 146, 180, 181

225

Kielmansegge, Countess Auguste Charlotte von 99 – 100 Kinderman, William 40, 187, 204 Kirnberger, Johann Philipp 3 Klein, Hans-Günter 205 Koch, Heinrich 3, 12 Komma, Karl Michael 205 Kopitz, Klaus Martin 26 Kramer, Richard 12, 68, 97 Krumpholz, Wenzel 10, 114 Kübeck, Carl Friedrich 45 Kühnel, Ambrosius 71, 99 Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir 46, 89, 135, 137, 140 Küthen, Hans-Werner 137 Lauska, Franz 185 Leipzig 44, 71 – 2 Lenz, Wilhelm von 86 letters see correspondence Lichnowsky, Count Moritz 157 Lichnowsky, Countess Henriette 88 – 9 Lichnowsky, Prince Karl 10, 36, 39, 67, 82, 88, 133, 157 Liechtenstein, Princess Josephine von 82, 84 Lobkowitz, Prince Franz von 43, 68 Lockwood, Lewis 74, 98, 118, 137 – 8 London 81, 140, 143, 170 – 2, 199 – 200 Lucerne, Lake 86 Macdonald, Hugh 56 Maelzel, Johann 171 Malerich, Matthew 36 Mannheim style 19, 25, 39, 106 – 7 Marpurg, Friedrich Wilhelm 169, 176 Marston, Nicholas 175 – 6, 203 – 4 Mattheson, Johann 3 Matthews, Denis 1 Mauser, Siegfried 1 Maximilian Friedrich, Elector 15, 16, 17 Mengersen, Henrietta 88 Meredith, William 96, 177 metronome marks 127 – 8, 171 – 2, 190 Milligan, Thomas B. 97 mistakes see errors models 2, 3, 19, 81, 125 Mödling 167 – 8, 173 Mollo, Tranquillo 67 Moscheles, Ignaz 67 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 19, 28; Don Giovanni 84 – 6; influence on Beethoven 2 – 3; Piano Sonata in B flat (K. 282)

226

General index

125; Piano Sonata in A (K. 331) 80; Serenade in D (K. 320) 19; sonatas 2, 18, 27, 32, 195; Violin Sonata in C (K. 303) 19; Violin Sonata in G (K. 379) 196 ‘murky bass’ see pedal-points Nägeli, Johann (Hans) Georg 4, 100, 110 – 14, 202; Répertoire des clavecinistes 100, 110, 112 – 13, 165 Napoleon 99, 141, 155 Neefe, Christian Gottlob 15 Newman, William S. 1, 8, 12, 97 ‘new path’ 114 – 16, 118 notation 130 – 1, 138, 144, 197 Nottebohm, Gustav 47, 64, 154, 167, 175, 205 Odescalchi, Prince Innocenzo 43 Oliva, Franz 180 – 1, 204 Oppersdorff, Count Franz von 43 (as) organist 17 originality 19, 24, 28, 62, 76, 80, 115, 126, 141, 165, 173, 196 ornamentation 21 – 2, 53 Oxford University 38 Paer, Ferdinando: Achilles 80 Paraquin, Johann 23 Paris 133, 193 pedal-points (including with ‘murky bass’) 24, 60, 70, 90, 163, 169 pedals 11, 80 – 1, 96 – 7, 138, 163 – 4, 187; una corda 91, 194, 196 performance practice 3, 5, 22, 53, 54, 56, 82, 131 performances 9 – 10 periods see stylistic periods Philharmonic Society (London) 172 (as) pianist 9, 10, 36 pianos see instruments Pleyel, Ignaz 39 politics 141 – 2, 155 – 7 Prague 10, 36, 44, 45 Prod’homme, Jacques-Gabriel 25 proofreading 9, 36 – 8, 41, 72 – 3, 136, 156 – 8, 171, 185, 193, 199 – 200 Rampl, Wenzel 192, 198 – 9 recitative 62, 107, 115, 190 Regent’s Harmonic Institution 170, 172 register 20, 119, 125, 137, 160, 179, 193 Rellstab, Ludwig 86 – 7, 131 – 2

repeats 51, 82, 93, 123 – 4, 143, 168 rests, see silences Reti, Rudolph 1, 125 – 6 reviews 17, 67, 82, 88, 158, 164, 205, 206 Ries, Ferdinand 111 – 12, 118, 170 – 2, 199; recollections 5, 38, 46, 61, 80, 111 – 12, 124, 131 – 3 Ronge, Julia 40 Rosen, Charles 1, 127 Rowland, David 96 Rudolph, Archduke of Austria 2, 6, 140 – 2, 145 – 8, 151, 153, 157, 159, 164, 166 – 7, 172, 199 – 200, 201; Forty Variations 165; manuscript collection 142, 146, 152, 158 Sachs, Klaus-Jürgen 141, 151 Sauer, Ignaz 84 Scarlatti, Domenico 2 Schachter, Carl 74 Schenker, Heinrich 205 Schindler, Anton 108 Schlemmer, Wenzel 72 Schlesinger, Adolph 177, 179 – 81, 185 – 6, 193, 198 – 9, 202, 204 Schlesinger, Moritz 193, 199 – 200, 206 Schönfeld, Johann von 39; Jahrbuch der Tonkunst von Wien und Prag 39, 42 Schubert, Franz 97, 165 Schulz, Johann Adolph Peter 3 Schwarz, Matthias 18 Shakespeare, William: The Tempest 108 Shedlock, J. S. 146 silences 34 – 5, 48, 54, 60, 69 Silesia 133, 135 Simrock, Nikolaus 3, 39, 111 – 14, 139, 148, 158, 179 – 80, 200 Sisman, Elaine 74 sketches see Index of original sources Skowroneck, Tilman 137 slow introductions 19 – 21, 59 – 60, 196 Smirnov, Dmitri 1 Solomon, Maynard 17 Song, Moo Kyoung 1, 13 Sonnenfels, Baron Joseph von 89 Starke, Friedrich 91, 177 – 8, 180 – 1 Stationers’ Hall 173, 200 Steblin, Rita 88 Steibelt, Daniel 11, 80, 110 Steiner, Sigmund Anton 153 – 4, 157 – 9, 165, 173 Streicher, Johann Andreas 39 Stroh, Patricia 40

(Ashgate Historical Keyboard Series) Barry Cooper-The Creation of Beethoven’s 35 Piano Sonatas-Routledge (2017).pdf

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