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Beethoven's Operatic Plans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1961

Emily Anderson
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Extract

When I was invited two years ago to read a paper on some subject connected with the research work on which I was then engaged, I felt a certain hesitation about doing so. For I naturally assumed that in the case of Beethoven a good deal of ground must have already been covered by earlier contributors. But on looking up the records of the Royal Musical Association I discovered to my surprise that since 1874, the year of its foundation, only six papers had been read on subjects closely relating to Beethoven (and in one of these he shares the honours with Mozart). Six papers in 88 years! And, what is even more startling, not one has been read since 1927, the centenary of Beethoven's death, that is to say, for the last 35 years. I need hardly add that such an apparent lack of interest in the life and work of this composer prompted me to make some amends, however small, for an indignity amounting almost to lèse-majesté.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 88 , 1961 , pp. 61 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1961

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References

1 First published with a facsimile in an article by Hubert Daschner in the Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 1957/58, pp. 32–7; then in English in The Letters of Beethoven, tr. and ed. Emily Anderson, London, 1961, Letter 87a, pp. 105–6.Google Scholar

2 Nottebohm, G., Beethoveniana I, Leipzig, 1872, pp. 82–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Raoul Biberhofer discusses this discovery in Die Musik, xxii (1929–30), 409–14. See also Willy Hess, Beethovens Oper Fidelio, Zürich, 1953, pp. 156–8.Google Scholar

4 Published by Willy Hess in the Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 1957/58, pp. 63–106.Google Scholar

5 Nottebohm, G., Zwei Skizzenbücher von Beethoven aus den Jahren 1801 bis 1803. Neue Ausgabe von Paul Mies, Leipzig, 1924, pp. 56–7.Google Scholar

6 In 1953 by the Bruckner Verlag, Wiesbaden, now Alkor Edition, Kassel.Google Scholar

7 The vocal score was published in 1957 by Alkor Edition, Kassel.Google Scholar

8 See The Letters of Beethoven, op. cit., iii. 1,444–46.Google Scholar

9 Nottebohm, G., Beethoveniana, II, Leipzig, 1887, pp. 225–7.Google Scholar

10 Max Unger, Ein Faustopernplan Beethovens und Goethes, Regensburg, 1952.Google Scholar

11 Treitschke had also revised the libretto of Beethoven's Fidelio for the 1814 production.Google Scholar

12 See The Letters of Beethoven, op. cit., Letter 1,240, iii. 1,088–90.Google Scholar