Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T19:59:43.416Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beethoven Sketchbooks in the British Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Joseph Kerman
Get access

Extract

The Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum owns an appreciable number of Beethoven letters and also of musical manuscripts from his hand. These comprise holographs of finished compositions, sketchbooks and sketch sheets, corrected printer's copy, and the like. At one period, from around 1870 to 1895, the Museum would appear to have been in the market for Beethoven material, in a small but discriminating way; and its holdings have been augmented by occasional gifts and bequests, from the time of Vincent Novello (1843) to E. H. W. Meyerstein (1952).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 93 , 1966 , pp. 77 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Shedlock, J. S., ‘Beethoven's Sketch Books’, Musical Times, xxxiii (1892), 331, 394, 461, 523, 589, 649 et seq.Google Scholar

2 Information about the Kafka Sketchbook, for example, has to be asembled from nineteen separate entries.Google Scholar

3 Beethoven. Ein Skizzenbuch zur Pastoralsymphonie Op. 68 und zu den Trios Op. 70, 1 und 2. Vollständige, mit einer Einleitung und Anmerkungen versehene Ausgabe, ed. Dagmar Weise (Veröffentlichungen des Beethovenhauses in Bonn. Neue Folge, general editor, Joseph Schmidt-Görg. Erste Reihe. Skizzen und Entwurfe: Erste kritische Ausgabe [III]), Bonn, 2 vols., 1961. I say ‘should be the best known’, but in fact the lack of interest in this publication has been extraordinary, both in and out of England.Google Scholar

It is true that certain features of the publication have the effect of militating against easy use. These features are discussed with great care and understanding by Lewis Lockwood in The Musical Quarterly, liii (1967), 128–136, and I should certainly like to associate myself with his views and suggestions. Professor Lockwood's review is, I believe, the first in English to call attention to the great importance of this sketchbook edition.Google Scholar

4 In spite of what might be suspected from an irregular alternate foliation on the bottom right-hand corners of the sheets. Several sketches run from verso to recto across a page-opening.Google Scholar

5 A few unidentified notes in ink on ff. 10v–11r.Google Scholar

6 Cecilio de Roda, ‘Un Quaderno di Autografi di Beethoven del 1825’, Rivista Musicale Italiana, xii (1905), 63–108, 592–622, 734–767.Google Scholar

7 See Kinsky-Halm and Thayer-Forbes, p. 957.Google Scholar

8 Beethoven-Zentenarfeier, Internationaler Musik-historischer Kongress, Referate, Vienna, 1927, pp. 88–90; Melos, vii (1928), 407–414; Muzykalnoye Obrazovanie (Musikalische Bildung), Moscow, Nos. 1/2 (1927), 9–91. These publications are very scarce, and I am greatly indebted to Professor Gerald Abraham for lending me his copy of the last one—which includes a complete transcription of the sketchbook with Boretsky's attempted identification of all the material, line by line.Google Scholar

9 The words ‘Allegro appassionato’ written on f. 11r presumably also refer to the Quartet in A minor.Google Scholar

At bar 18 of the first movement, the referent for two of these notations, the holograph of Op. 132 was indeed erased and altered. I was able to consult the Bonn Beethoven Archive photograph of this holograph—the MS itself has disappeared—as well as other material, referred to in notes 15 and 16, thanks to the courtesy of the Director, Professor Joseph Schmidt-Görg, and Dr. Hans SchmidtGoogle Scholar

On the transcriptions, see the note on p. 81.Google Scholar

∗∗ Note on the Transcriptions. Material not in the source is shown by means of square brackets or dotted lines. Sometimes Beethoven appears to have paid little attention to specifying the exact pitches that he must have meant; when an interpretation has been made in such cases, the literal MS reading is given above the note, as a letter. Readings that are seriously in doubt are indicated by question marks, but the attempt has not been made to list all the arguable alternative readings.Google Scholar

10 First movement: 1r—3v (except 2r/1–2), 5r/6–12, 5v/3–12, 8r/1–2, 15r/11–12.Google Scholar

Second movement: 4v/1–4, 8r/8—9v/5, 9r/4–12.Google Scholar

Third movement: 5v/1–2, 5v/5, and perhaps 4v/4–11, 6r/4—6v, 7r/8–12, 7v/3–8Google Scholar

Fifth movement: 7v/9–12, 8r/12, 9v—10r/4, 10v/8–12, 11v/3–9, 12v/7—13v, 14r/11—16v (except 15v/11–12).Google Scholar

11 Beethoveniana, ii, 2.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 550–551.Google Scholar

13 All that is really known about this comes from a conversation-book entry transcribed by Thayer and dated by him in November. Beethoven wrote ‘Title for the Quartet’; a strange hand (‘des Neffens?’, asks Kinsky) wrote out a suitable formal inscription; and then Beethoven initialled it. From this Kinsky-Halm infers that the piece was ‘ended’ in November. Thayer-Forbes infers that it was ‘not completed before November’. Thayer-Riemann infers that in November the piece was ready to be sent to the copyist—or had already been sent.Google Scholar

14 See Nohl, Ludwig, Beethovens Brevier, Leipzig, 1870, p. 25. On pp. 19–20, footnote, Nohl draws attention to another project to write a canon on words from the Odyssey.Google Scholar

15 See Joachim von Hecker, Untersuchungen an den Skizzen zum Streichquartett cis-moll op. 131 son Beethoven, unpub. diss., Freiburg, 1956. He is inclined to leave the Egerton sketch out of consideration for Op. 131. An origin for the sketch may perhaps be traced early in the year, at the top of a sheet which also has sketches for the finale of the Quartet in E flat, Op. 127: see the facsimile opposite p. 108 of the Sotheby auction catalogue for 11 June, 1963.Google Scholar

16 Unnumbered, unpaginated. The only printed description of these sheets is apparently Mandyczewski's laconic ‘Skizzen zum Bdur-Quartett op. 130. 34 Bl.’ in the Zusatz-Band zur Geschichte der K. K. Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien: Sammlungen und Statuten, Vienna, 1912, p. 88.Google Scholar

17 All but one have been preserved, and have been identified by Josef Braunstein, Beethovens Leonore-Ouvertüren, Leipzig, 1927, pp. 38–39, and more completely by Weise, Ein Skizzenbuch zur Pastoralsymphonie …, pp. 10 and 12.Google Scholar

18 See footnote 20.Google Scholar

19 Die Musikforschung, xvii (1964), 333.Google Scholar

20 Sketch A: 13r/10–11, 13v/9–13.Google Scholar

Sketch B is a composite: 19v/1–6 repeats and expands upon 19r/11–14.Google Scholar

Sketch C: 20v/8–13, 21r/1.Google Scholar

Sketch D: 21v/2–8.Google Scholar

Sketch E: 23Av/1–12.Google Scholar

Sketch F: 23Av/13–16, 24r/4–8, 25r/9.Google Scholar

Sketch G: 22v/5–12.Google Scholar

Sketch H: 23r/4–8.Google Scholar

It must be concluded that Sketches G and H were written after E and F, even though they come earlier in the sketchbook. This is indicated by the relative state of the recapitulation and coda as well as the development.Google Scholar

‘23A’ designates a sheet that was cut out of the book and that now forms pages 151–152 of the sketch miscellany Landsberg 10 T 78 (cf. footnote 17). The sheet appears to belong between folios 23 and 24, since sketches read continuously (with the aid of signs) from the end of 23Av/16 to the beginning of 24r/5, and from the end of 23Av/12 to the beginning of 24r/11. The sign at the beginning of 24r/11 (×) has been misread in the published transcription as ♀Google Scholar

I am grateful to the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Depot der Staatsbibliothek, Tübingen, Dr. Wilhelm Virneisel, Director, for a microfilm of Landsberg 10 and for permission to print a transcription of page 152 made from the film (Appendix, p. 94).Google Scholar

1 F. 19/9–15.Google Scholar

2 Ff. 23r (Sketch H) and 27r.Google Scholar

During the lecture, sketches were played on the piano at a and b, and at c the development section of the Andante of the Sixth Symphony was played on the gramophone.Google Scholar