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Is There Any Scope for Another Edition of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas?

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Ludwigvan Beethoven, Drei Sonaten in Es, f, D für Klavier / Three Sonatas in E-flat major, F minor, D major for Pianoforte, WoO 47, Urtext, edited by Jonathandel Mar (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2018). BA 11801. xi + 54pp. € 13.95.
Ludwigvan Beethoven, Drei Sonaten in f, A, C für Klavier / Three Sonatas in F minor, A major, C major for Pianoforte, op. 2, Urtext, edited by Jonathandel Mar (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2016). BA 10859. xix + 93pp. € 25.95.
Ludwigvan Beethoven, Grande Sonate in Es für Klavier / in E-flat major for Pianoforte, op. 7, Urtext, edited by Jonathandel Mar (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2017). BA 11802. xix + 37pp. € 7.95.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2019

Marten Noorduin
Marten Noorduin*
Affiliation:
University of Oxfordmarten.noorduin@music.ox.ac.uk
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Extract

Beethoven's piano sonatas have appeared in innumerable editions – most of them in more than one hundred, as the collection in the library of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn reveals. The sources for these works have also never been as readily available as they are now, as most first editions can be viewed on the Beethoven-Haus website, which also hosts scans of many important manuscript sources, as well as links to images of source materials on the websites of other archives. Thus, the question must be asked: Is there any scope for another edition of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas?

Type
Review Essay
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , August 2020 , pp. 329 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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References

1 Cooper, Barry, ed., The 35 Piano Sonatas, 3 volumes (London: The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, 2007)Google Scholar. The three volumes have undergone some minor revisions since they first appeared, with the first volume being most recently revised in 2017, and the other two in 2018.

2 Some of Czerny's performance suggestions included in Cooper's ABRSM edition were probably not intended to preserve Beethoven's intentions, as I have recently shown, and some of them have been wrongly attributed to Czerny. Nevertheless, they still provide valuable information about historical performance. See Noorduin, Marten, ‘Re-examining Czerny's and Moscheles's Metronome Marks for Beethoven's Piano Sonatas’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review 15/2 (2018): 209–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Cooper, Barry, The Creation of Beethoven's 35 Piano Sonatas (New York: Routledge, 2016)Google Scholar.

4 These tweaks include accidentals, instrumentation, added thirds, ornaments, and octave changes. For example: op. 1 no. 1 I 146–147 = 144–145 + @; IV 196–199 = 192–195 + Vc; no. 3 I 202–205 = 198–201 + 3rd; op. 2 no. 1 I 85–88 = 81–84 + tr.

5 Mar, Del, ed., Drei Sonaten in f, A, C für Klavier / Three Sonatas in F minor, A major, C major for Pianoforte, op. 2, (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2016), 91Google Scholar.

6 Cooper, ed., The 35 Piano Sonatas, vol. 1: 9.

7 del Mar, Jonathan, ‘Concerning the Review of the Urtext Edition of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony’, Beethoven Forum 10/1 (2003): 102–10, at 102Google Scholar.

8 It appears in all Bärenreiter editions listed at the start of this review, excepting WoO 47 and op. 13.

9 Deas, Stewart, ‘Beethoven's “Allegro assai”’, Music & Letters 31/4 (1950): 333–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Philip, Robert, Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also amongst others da Costa, Neal Peres, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

11 Noorduin, ‘Re-examining’, 214

12 See for instance Harrison, Max, Rachmaninoff: Life, Works, Recordings (London: Continuum, 2005): 244 and 324–5Google Scholar.

13 Tovey, Donald Francis, ed., Beethoven: Complete Pianoforte Sonatas, vol. 2 (London: ABRSM, 1931), 187Google Scholar.

14 For a discussion of the supposed impossibility of Beethoven's fingering, see András Schiff, ‘Piano Sonata in A major Op. 2 No. 2’, Beethoven Piano Sonatas Lecture Recitals, https://wigmore-hall.org.uk/podcasts/andras-schiff-beethoven-lecture-recitals (accessed 2 January 2019). I have personally observed Christina Kobb playing the passage as indicated with one hand in tempo during a lecture recital at the conference Perspectives on Historically Informed Practices in Music, 10–12 September 2018, Oxford, so it is certainly possible.

15 www.wiener-urtext.com/en/wiener-urtext-edition (accessed 27 August 2018).

16 Tyson, Alan, The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 102Google Scholar.

17 Nevertheless, at least one slipped through the net, between notes 2 and 3 in the alto voice of bar 242 of the first movement.

18 Badura-Skoda, Paul, ‘Noch einmal zur Frage Ais oder A in der Hammerklaviersonate op. 106 von Beethoven’ in Musik, Edition, Interpretation. Gedenkschrift Günter Henle, ed. Bente, Martin (Munich: Henle, 1980), 53–81Google Scholar.

19 Badura-Skoda, Paul, ‘Should We Play A$ or A# in Beethoven's “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Opus 106?’, Notes 68 (2012): 751–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Talsma, Willem Retze, Wiedergeburt der Klassiker, vol. 1: Anleitung zur Entmechanisierung der Musik (Innsbruck: Wort und Welt Verlag, 1980)Google Scholar. The most thorough rebuttal is found in Miehling, Klaus, Das Tempo in der Musik von Barock und Vorklassik: Die Antwort der Quellen auf ein umstrittenes Thema, rev. 3rd ed. (Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel, 2003)Google Scholar.

21 Tovey, Beethoven: Complete Pianoforte Sonatas, vol. 3: 136.

22 See for instance Stephan Möller, Beethoven – Klaviersonaten 1, Z-Mix, B00367Q04O, 2009.

23 Noorduin, ‘Re-examining’: 217–18.

24 Mobbs, Kenneth, ‘A Performer's Comparative’, The Galpin Society Journal 54 (May 2001): 16–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 See Cooper, Barry, ‘Beethoven's Appoggiatura's: Long or Short?’, Early Music 31/2 (2003): 165–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.