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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2012
In October 1799 Beethoven delivered manuscript copies of three new quartets (Op. 18 Nos 1–3) to Prince Lobkowitz. The following year, however, he revised Nos 1 and 2, writing a new slow movement for No. 2 in which little of the original material was retained. The original slow movement was discarded and is now lost, but many sketches for it survive in the sketchbook Grasnick 2. Although these sketches seem disjointed and fragmentary, they represent all seventy-four bars of a complete movement, with some lower parts also indicated for more than half the bars, enabling the movement to be reconstructed in much detail. This lost movement is of great interest, with some striking imitation and modulations in the two contrasting episodes, and an ending that reconciles the opening theme with the stormy second section. The movement is of particular importance since no other lost works completed by Beethoven that are of such substance are known from such a late date.
1 See, for example, Kinsky, Georg (completed Hans Halm), Das Werk Beethovens: Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner sämtlichen vollendeten Kompositionen (Munich: Henle, 1955), 43Google Scholar. The set of parts is now in the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, BH 84. A modern edition can be found, for example, in Beethoven: Supplemente zur Gesamtausgabe, VI: Kammermusik für Streichinstrumente, ed. Hess, Willy (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1963), 74–120Google Scholar.
2 See van Beethoven, Ludwig, Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, volume 1, ed. Brandenburg, Sieghard (Munich: Henle, 1996), 86 (No. 67)Google Scholar. My translations throughout.
3 Levy, Janet, Beethoven's Compositional Choices: The Two Versions of Opus 18, No. 1, First Movement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982)Google Scholar. Weill, Hanna, ‘The Two Versions of the Adagio of Beethoven's String Quartet, Opus 18 No. 1: Revisions in Dynamics, Harmony, and Rhythm’, The Beethoven Journal 10/1 (1995), 60–65Google Scholar. Smyth, David H., ‘Beethoven's Revision of the Scherzo of the Quartet, Opus 18, No. 1’, Beethoven Forum 1 (1992), 147–163Google Scholar.
4 See Johnson, Douglas, Tyson, Alan and Winter, Robert, The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inventory, ed. Johnson, Douglas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 81–98Google Scholar. All three sketchbooks are preserved in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung. Grasnick 2 and Autograph 19e have been published in modern editions in facsimile and transcription: Virneisel, Wilhelm, ed., Beethoven: Ein Skizzenbuch zu Streichquartetten aus Op. 18, two volumes (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1972–1974)Google Scholar; Kramer, Richard, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: A Sketchbook from the Summer of 1800, two volumes (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1996)Google Scholar. The latter edition includes not only Autograph 19e itself but all other leaves that were identified by the editor as having formerly belonged to the sketchbook.
5 Nottebohm, Gustav, Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig: Peters, 1887), 487–488Google Scholar.
6 See Johnson, ed., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 90–99.
7 Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, 60–61.
8 Brandenburg, Sieghard, ‘The First Version of Beethoven's G major Quartet, Op. 18 No. 2’, Music and Letters 58/2 (1977), 127–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Brandenburg, ‘The First Version’, 143, 147, 148.
10 Johnson, ed., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 99.
11 Kramer, ed., A Sketchbook from the Summer of 1800, volume 2, 65.
12 Brandenburg, ‘The First Version’, 152.
13 See Brandenburg, Sieghard, ‘Beethovens Streichquartette op. 18’, in Beethoven und Böhmen, ed. Brandenburg, Sieghard and Gutiérrez-Denhoff, Martella (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1988), 259–310Google Scholar. The receipt is reproduced on page 276 and transcribed on page 275.
14 The receipt is reproduced in Brandenburg, ‘Beethovens Streichquartette’, 287 (transcription on 286).
15 Brandenburg, ‘Beethovens Streichquartette’, 297–298.
16 Brandenburg, ed., Briefwechsel, volume 1, 139 (No. 119).
17 See Volek, Tomislav and Macek, Jaroslav, ‘Beethoven's Rehearsals at the Lobkowitz's’, The Musical Times 127 (1986), 75–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18 Brandenburg, ‘The First Version’, 143–152.
19 When the La Scala leaf came to light, it was published in facsimile and transcription in a supplementary third volume of Kramer's edition of Autograph 19e: Kramer, Richard, ed., A Newly Recovered Leaf of Sketches from the Summer of 1800 for Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 18 No. 2 (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1999)Google Scholar.
20 Kramer, ed., A Newly Recovered Leaf, 7.
21 Brandenburg, ‘The First Version’, 147–148.
22 Donald Greenfield, ‘Sketch Studies for Three Movements of Beethoven's String Quartets, Opus 18 Nos. 1 and 2’ (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1983), 335–396.
23 See Cooper, Barry, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 114Google Scholar, and numerous individual sketch studies.
24 Klein, Hans-Günter, Ludwig van Beethoven: Autographe und Abschriften (Berlin: Merseburger, 1975), 150Google Scholar.
25 See Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process, 84–85.
26 Virneisel, ed., Ein Skizzenbuch, volume 2, 88.
27 An attempt at a full reconstruction by the present writer was performed by the Quatuor Danel in Manchester on 29 September 2011 and broadcast by the BBC.
28 A list of Beethoven's ‘lost works’ is given in Green, James F., ed., The New Hess Catalog of Beethoven's Works (West Newbury: Vance Brook, 2003), 221–224Google Scholar.