Beethoven Scholars

Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven's SketchesAuthor(s): Douglas JohnsonSource: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jul., 1978), pp. 3-17Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746188Accessed: 21/06/2010 16:44

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Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven's Sketches

DOUGLAS JOHNSON

Serious study of Beethoven's sketches, now more than a century old, has never been more robust than in the past decade. Signs of life have appeared in unexpected places. The Bonn Beethovenhaus has responded to criticism with radical changes in the editorial policies of its ongoing sketch edition. The British Museum has independently issued a large and lavish edition of one of its own sketchbooks. Two volumes of Beethoven Studies, a new -occasional publication with a special sensitivity to source studies, have reinforced material in the regular musicological journals-which have found themselves, if anything, over- stocked with Beethoven articles. And no fewer

than eight American dissertations involving first-hand study of the manuscript sources have been written or are now in progress.

This activity has been generated in part by the demands of the anniversary years 1970 and 1977; the special Beethoven issues, the congresses, and the British Museum's edition are the serum injected every fifty years to keep an aging discipline healthy. The rash of dissertations can be seen as one reaction. A prolifera- tion of doctoral candidates in search of chal- lenging topics emerged just as the extent and the accessibility of Beethoven's sketches began to be publicized. Beyond this quantita- tive response to favorable circumstances, however, are some complex qualitative questions. At issue is the relationship of recent to past scholarship: do the new contributions fill old scholarly needs? or do they subvert traditional assumptions about the sketches? A lack

0148-2076178/0700-0003 $0.25 @ 1978 by The Regents of the University of California.

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19TH CENTURY

MUSIC of general agreement may be conceded in ad- vance. But it seems certain that interest will not be sustained at present levels unless some sort of consensus is reached about basic goals and acceptable results. The alternatives will emerge more clearly if we consider the historical context.

In the beginning was Gustav Nottebohm-or so it seems. Nottebohm's virtual identifica- tion with the Beethoven sketches has spread obscurity as well as light. Lost in that obscurity, for example, are those scholars of his own generation and the next whose work was superseded by his. Thayer, better remembered for other things, wanted his own biography to note that he was "the first person ever to use Beethoven's Sketch Books for chronology,"1i and Ludwig Nohl's later writings on Beet- hoven are filled with references to the sketches, many of them formulated to establish his independence of (and superiority to) both Thayer and Nottebohm.2 It was the fate of these two men, and of the following generation, to be eclipsed (at any rate in this area) by Nottebohm's thoroughness and expertise. And by the extent of his published transcriptions: Thayer and Nohl, concerned with biographical narrative, made use of the sketches but did not attempt to publish them. Ironically, the obscurity did not spare Nottebohm himself; in the eyes of posterity, his avocation has all but eclipsed his vocational activities as composer, pianist, theorist, and editor. And perhaps more important, his very authority in all matters involving the sketches has led us often to expect more of his work than he ever intended to convey.

Nottebohm's published work on the sketches is too well known to require detailed description. The two longer monographs on the Kessler sketchbook (1865) and the "Eroica" sketchbook (1880) frame loosely the extensive series of articles for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung and the Musikalisches Wochenblatt which were collected in edited form in Beethoveniana (1872) and Zweite Beethoveniana (1887).3 As the survey gradually grew to encompass all the sketches then accessible, his treatment of them changed little. Nottebohm sought two things in the sketches. He used them first of all to establish the chronology of Beethoven's works and to supplement the known canon with projects that were planned but not completed. Since this involved only the broadest sort of musical distinctions, there was nothing much to be gained by actual illustration; hence the typical article mentions the location of the sources, makes its chronological point, and escapes with a few examples to satisfy the reader's curiosity and earn his trust. Nottebohm's other concern was with the musical content of the sketches. He was at some loss to explain this concern, but it found expression in the two monographs and even in certain of the shorter articles where we find more extensive transcriptions than the context required. He was fond of pointing out that Beethoven's thought could not be followed where the source was incomplete (completeness was one of the attractions of the Kessler and "Eroica" sketchbooks). But the glosses he supplied for even the thorough transcriptions of the monographs now seem curiously devoid of musical insights.

It is tempting to suggest that Nottebohm lacked the technical vocabulary with which to provide an analytical commentary on the sketches. He himself saw the problem differ- ently: the sketches, while offering us a glimpse of the way Beethoven worked, reveal little of the organic genesis of the work:

1From a letter to his translator Deiters of 1 August 1878; quoted by Elliot Forbes in his preface to Thayer's Life of Beethoven (Princeton, 1970), p. viii. 2Ludwig Nohl, Beethovens Leben (3 vols.: Vienna, 1864, Leipzig, 1867 and 1877) and Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner (Vienna, 1874). In the first two volumes of the biography there are only a few references to sketches, but the third volume and Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner contain extensive descriptions of sketchbooks, usually in long footnotes or appendices. By the 1870s Nohl was clearly competing with the recent work of Thayer and Nottebohm.

3See Lewis Lockwood, "Nottebohm Revisited," Current Thought in Musicology, ed. John W. Grubbs (Austin, 1976), pp. 139-91.

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If we perceive it [the work] as an organic structure, then we must also assume that it came into being in an organic manner and developed from within into a unified whole. Now it is no doubt true that the sketchbooks, in which everything fixed and un- alterable in the finished work appears hesitant and more or less labile, do reveal certain procedures relevant to origins, invention, organization, and the like. But in this regard we must accept that they also conceal a great deal, and that we learn least of all from them about those things we call organic. The impulse missing in them can be grasped only by abstraction. We seek it in the artist Beethoven himself-in the unity of his entire character and in- tellect, in the harmony of his spiritual powers.4

Hence the sketches belong exclusively in the realm of biography and are irrelevant to analysis.

Sleight of hand? Perhaps. But Nottebohm clung tenaciously to the distinction, and his classic formulation of it, reprinted in the introduction to the posthumous Zweite Beet- hoveniana, is still accepted uncritically by a great many scholars, especially in Germany:

Without betraying the secret of genius, Beethoven's sketches provide some idea of his method. They illustrate the fragmentary conception and slow growth of a composition-a manner of composing that seems somewhat enigmatic to us. The enigma lies first and last in Beethoven's struggle with his demon, the wrestling with his own genius. The demon has dwelt in these sketchbooks. But the demon has vanished; the spirit that dictated a work does not appear in the sketches. The sketches do not reveal the law by which Beethoven was gov- erned while creating. They can provide no conception of the idea that emerges only in the work of art

itself; they reveal to us not the entire creative process, but only single isolated incidents from it. What we term the organic development of a work of art is far removed from the sketches.

This means that the sketches do not contribute to the understanding and actual enjoyment of a work. They are superfluous to the understanding of a work of art, certainly-but not to the understanding of the artist, if this is to be complete and comprehensive. For they assert something that the finished work, where every trace of the past has been shed, suppresses. And this extra something that the sketches offer belongs to the biography of Beethoven the artist, to the history of his artistic development. 5

Two points need to be emphasized concerning Nottebohm's work with the sketches. First we must remember the scholarly atmosphere in which it was done. This was a pro- digious time for German musicology, when the basic tools of modern scholarship were forged-the collected editions, thematic catalogues, and critical biographies of the major German composers from Bach to Men- delssohn. In Beethoven's case, one incredible

DOUGLAS JOHNSON Beethoven Scholars

4"tFassen wir es als eine organische Bildung auf, so miissen wir auch vorraussetzen, dass es auf organischem Wege entstanden sei und sich von innen heraus zu einem einheitsvollen Ganzen entwickelt habe. Es ist nun wohl wahr, dass die Skizzenbiicher, wo alles schwankend und gleichsam beweglich erscheint, was im Tonstiick fest und unveriinderlich dasteht, manchen Vorgang in Bezug auf Entstehung, Erfindung, Gestaltung u. dgl. enthiillen. Aber dariiber muss man klar sein, dass sie auch manches ver- schweigen und dass wir von allem, was organisch heisst, aus ihnen am allerwenigsten erfahren. Das ihnen fehlende Moment l~isst sich nur durch Abstraction gewinnen. Wir suchen es in Beethoven, dem Kiinstler, selbst; in der Einheit seines ganzen Wesens und Geistes; in der Har- monie seiner Seelenkriifte." Ein Skizzenbuch von Beet- hoven [Kessler] (Leipzig, 1865), pp. 7-8.

5"Ohne das Geheimniss des Genius zu verrathen, geben die Skizzen Beethoven's eine Vorstellung von seinem Pro- duciren. Sie veranschaulichen das bruchstiickweise Ent- stehen und langsame Heranwachsen einer Composition. Fir uns nun hat diese Art des Schaffens etwas Riithselhaftes. Das Rithselhafte liegt in erster und letzter Instanz in dem Kampf Beethoven's mit seinem Damon, in dem Ringen mit seinem Genius. In diesen Skizzen- buchern hat der Damon gehaust. Der Damon aber ist entwichen. Der Geist, der ein Werk dictirte, erscheint nicht in den Skizzen. Die Skizzen offenbaren nicht das Gesetz, von dem sich Beethoven beim Schaffen leiten liess. Von der Idee, die nur im Kunstwerk selbst zur Er- scheinung kommt, k6nnen sie keine Vorstellung geben. Nicht den ganzen Process des Schaffens, sondern nur ein- zelne, unzusammenhiingende Vorgange daraus k6nnen sie vor Augen legen. Was man organische Entwicklung eines Kunstwerkes nennt, liegt den Skizzen fern. Damit ist gesagt, dass sie zum Verstindniss und rechten Genuss eines Kunstwerkes nicht beitragen. Gewiss, zum Ver- stiindniss eines Kunstwerkes sind sie iiberfliissig, aber nicht zum Verstiindniss des Ktinstlers, wenn dieses ein vollstiindiges, umfassendes sein soll; denn sie sagen etwas aus, was das fertige Kunstwerk, in dem jede an die Ver- gangenheit erinnernde Spur abgestreift ist, verschweigt. Und dieses Etwas, dieser Ueberschuss, den die Skizzen bieten, fillt der Biographie des Kiinstlers Beethoven, der Geschichte seines kiinstlerischen Entwicklungsganges anheim." Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig, 1887), pp. viii- ix.

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19TH CENTURY

MUSIC decade saw the appearance of the Breitkopf & Hirtel Gesamtausgabe (1866-68), Thayer's Chronologisches Verzeichnis (1865), Notte- bohm's Thematisches Verzeichnis (1868), and the first two volumes of Thayer's biography (1866 and 1872), not to mention two volumes of the Nohl biography (1864 and 1867) and Nottebohm's Beethovens Studien (1872). There was lively competition-not always good-natured-among Thayer, Nohl, and Nottebohm to establish authority on certain fine points of Beethoven research. And beyond Nottebohm's critical scrutiny of the work of his contemporaries, his own revision of the Breitkopf & Hirtel thematic catalogue gave him good cause for precision in his approach to matters of chronology. The pursuit of precision emerges clearly in the articles of Beet- hoveniana and Zweite Beethoveniana.

A more elusive point, but one with special relevance to the sketches, concerns the image of Beethoven in the nineteenth century. Ec- centricity and artistic conscience, the two qualities that transformed the Romantic artist into a high priest, were possessed by Beet- hoven in superabundance. And the sketches provided impressive testimony to both. On the one hand they were a sign of great eccentricity; even Beethoven's contemporaries were perplexed by the way his inspiration translated into chaos on the page, the more so because it was apt to happen at any moment. At the same time the sketches preserve a record of the artist's heroic struggle with intractable material. It was especially the Wagnerians who insisted on the moral nature of this struggle and who established Beethoven's role as prophet and guardian of the "die heil'ge deutsche Kunst." Nohl, an ardent champion of this view, used it shamelessly to exclude foreigners such as Thayer from the ranks of the initiated.6 Nottebohm's own experience with the sketches (and his general tempera- ment) made him more objective, but he too al- lowed the ethical aspects of Beethoven's method to color his treatment of them. This is explicit in his metaphorical evocation of the

"Damon" to personify the resistance of raw musical material to the workings of Genius. And it is implicit, I think, in his willingness to confront the reader with lengthy transcriptions and little commentary. In essence he was portraying the demonic opposition and leaving us to marvel at the spiritual power which eventually subdued it.'

At this distance, it may seem that Notte- bohm failed to confront the basic musical problem of the sketches, that this has slipped from the page along with the demon. A passage like "Von der Idee, die nur im Kunstwerk selbst zur Erscheinung kommt, k6nnen sie keine Vorstellung geben" suggests a distinction between the sketches and the completed work which on reflection seems rather slip- pery. Could Nottebohm have clarified the Idea in the work itself? One suspects not. The distinction is really between abstract form and matter-Schoenberg's Idee and Wort--and this applies equally to the work and the sketches. We shall have occasion to return to it again.

As long as the sketches remained symbols of Beethoven's eccentricity and artistic conscience, there was little pressure to find purely musical significance in them. Nottebohm's easy control over the sources and his casual disdain of the basic orthographic problems quickly secured his reputation as the ultimate authority. In very obvious ways he completely dominated the scholarly use of the sketches for fifty years. Respected scholars were content to use his transcriptions and his conclusions as a substitute for first-hand study. Thus, for example, the later editions of Thayer's biography were strongly influenced (through Deiters and Riemann) by his findings; the young Paul Mies could write an entire book on the sketches without looking at any for himself; and even as self-conscious a scholar as Schenker borrowed heavily from Nottebohm's transcriptions when citing the sketches (although Schenker did manageto

6See for example his review of the second volume of Thayer's Ludwig van Beethovens Leben in the Neue Zeit- schrift fiir Musik 67 (1871), 477-79, 489-93.

7The metaphor has both a positive and a negative aspect as Nottebohm uses it; although the "D~mon" as Genius is something to be wrestled with, it ultimately dictates the progress of a work. The sketches are artifacts of the struggle.

6

find fault with his commentary). Those few scholars who chose to challenge his authority have fared badly with posterity.

It was safer to supplement Nottebohm's work. He had not seen everything, despite his most determined efforts, and his articles and monographs provided convenient models for the description of additional sources as they emerged. In 1905, Cecilio de Roda described a sketchbook in his own possession in a series of installments in the Rivista Musicale Italiana which together comprised a monograph on the scale of the two major sketchbook studies by Nottebohm, and a few years later a more modest series by Georg Schiine- mann appeared in Die Musik, this time on a sketchbook that Nottebohm had treated only briefly.8 This sort of monograph was a dying species, soon to be supplanted by a more radical approach-the publication of full sketchbooks. The shorter article which aims to present circumscribed items of "neue Beet- hoveniana" has continued to flourish up to the present time, however. Facsimiles and a full- er descriptive apparatus have added a bit of weight but not much substance to the model created by Nottebohm.

The period dominated by Thayer, Notte- bohm, and the Gesamtausgabe culminated after World War I in the publication of the third edition of Thayer's biography (1917-23) by Riemann. The larger issues of Beethoven's life and musical development having been set- tled temporarily, there was a shift of scholarly attention toward refinement of detail. The shift had been heralded before the war by the activities of Theodor von Frimmel, who had edited two volumes of Beethoven-Studien (1904-6) and two more of a Beethovenjahr- buch (1908-9). It achieved a broader base in the 1920s with the publication of a new series of scholarly monographs (Verbffentlichungen des Beethovenhauses in Bonn) under the general editorship of Ludwig Schiedermair, the

first six volumes of which appeared between 1920 and 1930, and the creation of a Neues Beethoven-Jahrbuch, of which ten volumes appeared between 1924 and 1942. In addition to these ongoing series a number of larger studies of circumscribed problems were written, including three on Beethoven's early years (by Hans Gal, J.-G. Prod'homme, and Schiedermair9) and others on his scherzos (by Gustav Becking1o), his songs (by Hans Boettcher"l), and the overtures to Leonore (by Joseph Braunstein12). Frimmel's own Beethoven-Handbuch appeared in 1926, and this sort of specialized activity reached a natural climax in the congresses and Beet- hoven issues of the centenary year 1927.

How were the sketches treated in this new scholarly atmosphere? Certainly there was no popular surge of interest in them; for most musicians they remained an exotic enigma. But a few scholars began, very cautiously at first, to test their usefulness as evidence in discussions of Beethoven's style and even as support for specific analytical points. Refer- ences of this kind are found in the stylistic studies of Gal (1916) and Becking (1921) and in the Erliiuterungsausgaben of the late sonatas by Heinrich Schenker (1913-20). Finally Paul Mies was bold enough to suggest that a primer of Beethoven's melodic style could be based on the content of the sketches. His Die Be- deutung der Skizzen Beethovens zur Erkennt- nis seines Stiles, published in 1925, is a very curious piece of scholarship. Although one would expect the first work of this scope on this topic to come from someone with an in- timate first-hand knowledge of the sources, Mies was content to rely almost exclusively on the transcriptions published by Notte- bohm. This is already an indication that his


8Cecilio de Roda, "Un Quaderno di Autografi di Beet- hoven del 1825," Rivista Musicale Italiana 12 (1905), 63-108, 592-622, and 734-67; Georg Schiinemann, "Beethovens Skizzen zur Kantate 'Der glorreiche Augen- blick' zum ersten Male mitgeteilt," Die Musik 9 (1909- 10), Heft 1, 22-35, Heft 2, 93-106.

9Hans Gal, "Die Stileigentiimlichkeiten des jungen Beet- hoven," Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 4 (1916), 58-115; J.-G. Prod'homme, La Jeunesse de Beethoven (Paris, 1920); Ludwig Schiedermair, Der junge Beethoven (Leipzig, 1925). loGustav Becking, Studien zu Beethovens Personalstil. Das Scherzothema (Leipzig, 1921). 11Hans Boettcher, Beethoven als Lieder-Komponist (Augsburg, 1928). 12Joseph Braunstein, Beethovens Leonore-Ouvertiiren (Leipzig, 1927).

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19TH CENTURY

MUSIC conclusions preceded his study of the sketches and to some extent dictated his selection of them. On the other hand, whether intentionally or not, Mies was forcing the issue of their musical relevance. To be sure, the possible relevance of the sketches to certain traits of style does not challenge Nottebohm's dictum that they are irrelevant to the analysis of specific works, for description of style is still to be accommodated within a broad definition of biography. But it was certainly implicit in Mies's approach that the sketches will repay study on purely musical grounds.

There was a built-in contradiction between Mies's methodology and the implications of his study, for a musical interest in the sketches could not be sustained on the basis of the Nottebohm transcriptions, which had been intentionally excerpted to make a different sort of point. Despite his warning that Beethoven's musical thought could only be followed where the sketches were not inter- rupted, Nottebohm himself had provided something like an uninterrupted sequence of sketches only once-in the celebrated series of first-movement drafts at the beginning of his monograph on the "Eroica" sketchbook. Thus although Mies and others could raid the published transcriptions for material with which to illustrate their judgements about style, it was apparent that any increase in the degree of sophistication in discussions of the sketches as music would require a fresh examination of the manuscript sources.

This was spelled out explicitly in 1927 by Karl Lothar Mikulicz, who in that year published a complete transcription of a 91-leaf sketchbook from the years 1800-1 (Landsberg 7). To a world which still viewed sketch transcription as a magical rite, with Notte- bohm as its high priest, this must have seemed an astonishing accomplishment. And Mikulicz extended the provocation by calling for a Gesamtausgabe of the sketches, confronting the heritage of Nottebohm with this direct challenge:

The value and abundance of Nottebohm's works were enormous; a surfeit of new knowledge was made available through them. Just within the last

years, about half a century after their appearance, they have been newly assessed and subjected to systematic investigation [a reference to Mies] . . . But it is imperative now that the material be supplemented; we must go beyond Nottebohm, in- sofar as that is possible. It is not a question of searching for hitherto unknown sketchbooks and sketchleaves or of waiting for them to become available to us by chance: the existing sketches must be worked over again and their contents thoroughly comprehended and published.... I consider this the largest, and also the most significant, problem facing Beethoven scholarship in the twen- tieth century. Only then will a relatively secure foundation have been laid for all studies having to do with Beethoven's output.13

This passage appears in the preface to Mikulicz's edition. Later the same year, in a lecture at the Beethoven centennial congress in Vienna, he spelled out the ideal shape of his proposed Gesamtausgabe:

The ideal solution of this problem, which can obvi- ously not be the work of one person, would be an arrangement in three series: facsimiles; editions similar to that of a large sketchbook in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek which I have recently prepared (among other things, complete and literal transcription-in format and sequence as well!); and finally, editions arranged separately by work and provided with aids for the reading. All of the sketches for a particular work would be lifted from their sur- roundings and put as far as possible into an organic sequence, so that the growth of a work is made di- rectly perceptible.14

Was Mikulicz serious? He had made no attempt to provide a model with his own edition, which offered only a "vollstaindige und getreue Wiedergabe in Format und Anord- nung," that is, a faithful transcription with no editorial additions. But of course he was aware of alternative methods of presenting the

13Karl Lothar Mikulicz, Ein Notierungsbuch von Beet- hoven ... vollstiindig herausgegeben und mit Ammer- kungen versehen rLandsberg 7] (Leipzig, 1927), pp. 3-4. 14K. L. Mikulicz, "Skizzen zur III. und V. Symphonie und fiber die Notwendigkeit einer Gesamtausgabe der Skizzen Beethovens," Beethoven-Zentenarfeier. Wien, 26. bis 31. Mijrz 1927: Internationaler Musikhistoriker Kongress (Vienna, 1927), p. 95. The article in this congress report has only excerpts from Mikulicz's paper.

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sketches. By 1927 two smaller sketchbooks had been made available in facsimile only. One was a 19-leaf sketchbook for the "Diabelli" Variations and the Ninth Sym- phony, owned by Wilhelm Engelmann and published in a limited edition by his firm in 1913.1' The other was a 25-leaf pocket sketchbook in a Moscow library, with sketches for the String Quartets in A Minor and Bb, op. 132 and op. 130, published with a commentary by M. Ivanov-Boretzky in a Russian journal in 1927 (a brief description of this edition appears along with Mikulicz's remarks in the Vienna congress notes).16 The more exotic notion of editing transcriptions and rearranging them by work also had a precedent. In his 1909 articles on the sketchbook for Der glorreiche Augen- blick, Schiinemann had done just that with the sketches for the first two numbers, defend- ing the innovation in language similar to that used by Mikulicz:

First I shall deal with the sketches for [op. 136] nos. 1 and 2..., and in a manner, moreover, which differs from previous publications of such sketches. My basic principle is to present not only the most important variants, but whenever possible all of them. Moreover, the related sketches will be jux- taposed, even though they are often separated in the book. I must also ask the reader to supply a few obvious accidentals and clefs himself. All the uncertain places, as well as a few additions of my own, have been identified.17

And in 1924, in a controlled experiment involving three early leaves in the Beethoven- haus, Arnold Schmitz had self-consciously ap- pended both facsimiles and carefully edited transcriptions to a substantial commentary.18

Whether or not a Gesamtausgabe of the

sketches was a practical possibility in 1927, then, several roads to completeness had been explored and Mikulicz seems to have seen some attraction in each. Presented with a choice of facsimile or transcription, however, his preference was for the latter; he emphasized that a facsimile alone was not worth much, that the sketches could become accessible to the average musician only after Beethoven's hand had been translated into "bequem lesbare Druckschrift." If proof were needed, witness the absence of scholarly reaction to Engelmann's facsimile.

In fact, Mikulicz's transcription too seems to have met with apathy, and the general issue of publication format failed to arouse much partisanship. By the 1930s an impasse of sorts had been reached in the study of the sketches. Nottebohm's impact had begun to wear off,19 and the reverence with which the sketches had initially been treated had begun to give way to a more objective view of their actual musical content. Analysts with new points to make found it convenient to quote them as confirmation. But no one had emerged to challenge Nottebohm's magisterial command of the sources, and the available catalogues of some of the important library and archive col- lections were inadequate to provide an up- dated overview. The twin necessities of a new survey and comprehensive publication (in some format) had been articulated by Mikulicz,20 but a start had hardly been made-one volume in transcription, two more in facsimile, and a laconic checklist of the surviving sketchbooks tucked away as an ap- pendix to Braunstein's monograph. And there was certainly no popular rush to support the projects. Perhaps there was not time; the


'5Beethovens eigenhdindiges Skizzenbuch zur 9. Sym- phonie (Leipzig, 1913). Engelmann himself had died several years earlier. 16M. Ivanov-Boretzky, "Ein Moskauer Skizzenbuch von Beethoven," Musikalische Bildung 1-2 (1927), 9-58 (facsimile) and 75-91 (commentary). The summary appears on pp. 88-90 of the Beethoven-Zentenarfeier report. 17Schiinemann, "Der glorreiche Augenblick," pp. 23-24. 18Arnold Schmitz, Beethoven. Unbekannte Skizzen und Entwiirfe. Untersuchung, UJbertragung, Faksimile, Ver6ffentlichungen des Beethovenhauses in Bonn, III (Bonn, 1924).

19Braunstein, Beethovens Leonore-Ouvertiiren, devotes a lengthy section to Nottebohm's handling of the chronology of the Leonore No. 1 Overture, criticizing both his conclusions and his methods. Although Braunstein appears to have been wrong and Nottebohm right on this point (see fn. 27), the criticism is symptomatic of a new independence. 201t is probably worth pointing out that Guido Adler had anticipated Mikulicz's call for an edition of the sketches (see Braunstein, Beethovens Leonore-Ouvertiiren, pp. 30-31) and that the call was subsequently echoed by Os- wald Jonas (see fn. 35). There were undoubtedly others.

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19TH CENTURY

MUSIC Third Reich disrupted scholarship along with everything else.

When the effort was resumed after World War II, it was still almost exclusively German and for practical reasons it became increasingly centered around the Beethovenhaus and the associated Beethoven-Archiv in Bonn. Sig- nificantly, the leadership there was that of an older, pre-war generation. The director, Joseph Schmidt-G6rg, had been associated with the previous director Ludwig Schiedermair since the formation of the Beethoven-Archiv in 1927. Schmidt-G6rg now became the general editor of four new series of Veriffent- lichungen:

1) Skizzen und Entwiirfe 2) Beethoven-Jahrbuch 3) Ausgewihlte Handschriften in Faksimile-

Ausgaben 4) Schriften zur Beethovenforschung

The Jahrbuch, now "Zweite Reihe," resumed publication in 1954 under the joint editorship of Schmidt-G6rg and Mies. The first of the new Schriften (monographs after the fashion of the original Ver6ffentlichungen of the 1920s and 1930s) appeared in 1957.21

The most ambitious, and to us the most relevant, plans of the rejuvenated Beethoven- haus involved publication of the sketches. Although not planned as a Gesamtausgabe, this new series was modeled on Mikulicz's edition of 1927--transcriptions of complete sketchbooks aimed at translating Beethoven's hand as faithfully as possible into "bequem lesbare Druckschrift," an easy-to-read printed text. This method of transcription without editorial additions was called "diplomatic." No facsimiles were contemplated. The first three sketchbooks to be issued in this format appeared in 1952, 1957, and 1961, the first edited by Schmidt-G6rg and the latter two by his assistant Dagmar Weise.22 Several more

were assigned for transcription to other Ger- man scholars.

Thus the debate about the sketches had been reopened. In retrospect, the Kinsky-Halm thematic catalogue, published in 1955, appears now as a last great monument to Nottebohm, while the sketchbook editions followed Mikulicz's cautious first step beyond him. At the time, of course, no one viewed the new editions as breaking new ground; the excite- ment that Mikulicz had felt in confronting the Nottebohm tradition was lost in the me- chanics of producing more volumes of the same sort. And if the new editors envisaged how the sketches would now be used, they did not articulate their vision in provocative terms. No major and remarkably few minor interpretive studies appeared in the secondary literature. Even two contemporary German dissertations (1951 and 1956) on other sketch materials remained unpublished.23 Schmidt- G6rg, in charge of both the edition and the Jahrbuch, functioned as a sieve for new work on the sketches and little got through. Now, twenty years later, the debate has finally been engaged, but the principals belong to a younger generation and most of them speak another language.

The absence of a continuing tradition in England and the United States, where much recent Beethoven scholarship has been done, may account for the uninhibited approach to old problems that has characterized the new work. It was inevitable that as the scholarly community grew larger each new segment would have to be persuaded anew to accept the traditional assumptions concerning the sketches. And so it was probably also inevitable that some of those assumptions would have to be re-evaluated. The contributions of recent scholarship to the study of the sketches can be divided, at least for discussion, into three general areas: their publication, their relevance to biography, and their relevance

21This was vol. II of the series (Paul Mies, Textkritische Untersuchungen bei Beethoven); for some reason vol. I (by Schmidt-G6rg) was not published until 1964. 22J. Schmidt-G6rg, Drei Skizzenbiicher zur Missa Sol- emnis: I. Ein Skizzenbuch aus den Jahren 1819/20 (Bonn, 1952); Dagmar Weise, Ein Skizzenbuch zur Chorfantasie op. 80 und zu anderen Werken (Bonn, 1957), and Ein

Skizzenbuch zur Pastoralsymphonie op. 68 und zu den Trios op. 70, 1 u. 2 (Bonn, 1962). 23Erna Szabo, Ein Skizzenbuch Beethovens aus den Jahren 1798-99 [Grasnick 1] (Ph.D. dissertation, Bonn, 1951); J. v. Hecker, Untersuchungen an den Skizzen zum Streichquartett cis-moll op. 131 von Beethoven (Ph.D. dissertation, Freiburg, 1956).

10

to analysis. We can consider these areas separately.

It was the intention of the Beethovenhaus editions to make the sketches available to the non-specialist, and the purpose of "diplomatic" transcription was to eliminate the need to struggle with the original sources. Ideally the editor was a copyist rather than an interpreter, rendering the sketches legible without ques- tioning what he saw. In practice, however, Beethoven's sloppiness involved more than penmanship; it extended to the placement of notes, their rhythm, and even such seemingly basic information as clefs and accidentals. Diplomatic transcription reproduced his inac- curacies, relegating interpretative aids to a separate commentary. The alternative--transcriptions edited to make musical sense, with clefs and accidentals supplied and pitches adjusted to reflect Beethoven's presumed intentions-was rejected, since it risked substi- tuting the editor's interpretation for the composer's intention. Diplomatic transcription at least left each reader to interpret for himself where the musical sense was obscure.

Compromises were available. If a facsimile could be included with the transcription, it would reduce the need for editorial diplomacy. This was the solution adopted in two publications from unexpected sources: a Russian edition of the Wielhorsky sketchbook by Nathan Fishman in 1962 and a British edition of the Kafka sketch miscellany by Joseph Kerman in 1970. Both of these editions com- bined carefully edited transcriptions with a complete facsimile and commentary. As Western reviewers, and gradually even some German scholars, expressed a preference on the grounds of utility for the Fishman-Kerman approach, Bonn began to reconsider. Four more editions in the Beethovenhaus series were issued between 1970 and 1974, three of them by Schmidt-G6rg and the last by Wilhelm Virneisel;24 all four retained dip-

lomatic transcription. But sometime around 1970 a decision was made to add facsimiles to the new publications.25 The combination of a diplomatic transcription and a facsimile was more or less redundant, of course, but these transcriptions had been in preparation under the old guidelines long before the decision to add facsimiles was made. With the retirement of Schmidt-G6rg in 1972, the general editorship of the Bonn sketch edition passed to Sieghard Brandenburg, who has adopted the principle of combining edited transcriptions with facsimiles. This new policy brings the Beethovenhaus series into general conformity with the Fishman-Kerman procedures. Bran- denburg's own edition of the Kessler sketchbook is scheduled to appear in 1978, and future volumes are in preparation by a number of Anglo-American scholars.

The second area in which recent scholarship has made significant contributions in- volves the use of the sketches for biographical purposes, Nottebohm's home ground. Notte- bohm had shown that the sketches could de- cide points of chronology, indicate projects left unfinished, and provide a general idea of Beethoven's approach to composition and the genesis of specific works. His command of the sources was such that, except in isolated in- stances, no one had seriously challenged either his methods or his results (this depen- dence is still evident in Kinsky-Halm).26 On the other hand, some new sources had emerged since Nottebohm's death and important new techniques for studying them had evolved. A century after he began his work the time was ripe for a second look.

Nottebohm had based his findings very largely on the content of individual sources. Although he was able to note where something was missing from a sketchbook or where foreign leaves had been added, he had little success in demonstrating that two distinct sources belonged together or were roughly


24J. Schmidt-G6rg, Drei Skizzenbiicher zur Missa Solem- nis II and III (both Bonn, 1970), and Ein Skizzenbuch zu den Diabelli-Variationen und zur Missa Solemnis [Witt- genstein] (Bonn, 1972); Wilhelm Virneisel, Ein Skizzen- buch zur Streichquartetten aus op. 18 [Grasnick 2] (Bonn, 1974).

25Although the facsimiles of the three sketchbooks edited by Schmidt-G6rg bear the date "1968," they were not ac- tually available until several years later. The facsimile ac- companying Virneisel's edition is dated 1972. 260ne such isolated instance was mentioned in fn. 19.

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MUSIC contemporary where there was no direct over- lap in content. A more methodical approach to the description of manuscripts has greatly in- creased the sophistication with which they can now be related or differentiated. The new methods are not themselves very sophisticated: observation of watermarks, staff-ruling, blotting, stitch holes, the profiles of torn edges, etc. And they have been developed in innocent ways; it became a scholarly duty to note the watermark and the number of staves as part of a thorough description, even when no use for the information immediately suggested itself. To a considerable extent, then, it was the desire to re-evaluate Notte- bohm's work which led to the combination and use of these techniques, not vice versa.

The work that is now being done in this area is quite varied. It will suffice here to mention two lines of inquiry which have pro- duced interesting results. First, the pos- sibilities for associating distinct sources on the basis of shared physical relationships, especially watermarks, have substantially broadened the application of Nottebohm's procedure for relating works chronologically. A leader in the exploitation of these pos- sibilities is Alan Tyson, who has been able on the one hand to expose some weaknesses in Nottebohm's work (e.g., on the genesis of Leonore) and on the other to reaffirm some provocative conclusions of his that had been doubted by others (e.g., the date of the Leonore No. 1 Overture).27 On a much larger scale, the new techniques form the basis for most of the redating of Beethoven's early works proposed in my own dissertation.28

Besides the direct application of new descriptive techniques to the dating of sources, the same techniques have made possible the reconstruction of dismembered manuscripts. In many cases we can now identify leaves

which were removed from sketchbooks and establish their original locations; even loose leaves from the same gathering outside the context of a sketchbook can sometimes be associated. Again the most active scholar in this area has been Alan Tyson. An article written in 1972 by Tyson and myself, "Reconstructing Beethoven's Sketchbooks,"29 summarized the principles and illustrated their use, and Tyson has subsequently demonstrated the procedure in separate articles on two sketchbooks.30 One important result of this new work is the adop- tion of the principle of reconstruction as a requirement for future volumes in the Beet- hovenhaus series. In more general terms, reconstruction of damaged sources has become recognized as a necessary prerequisite to serious study of their musical content.

In these two areas the issues are relatively easy to formulate and recent achievements easy to evaluate. I think it is true, however, that the treatment of the sketches as documents in Beethoven biography is unlikely to attract a wide public, since the obvious difficulties they pose may seem out of propor- tion with the nature of the results they yield. If interest in the sketches is ever to reach the non-specialist, it will have to be stimulated by faith in their relevance to the study of Beet- hoven's completed works. In this regard it is surely symptomatic that the topics of so many of the doctoral dissertations undertaken recently are defined by works rather than by sources: the sketches for op. 30 (Richard Kramer), op. 111 (William Drabkin), op. 131 (Robert Winter), op. 18 (Donald Greenfield), op. 92 (John Knowles), and op. 93 (Kathryn John). This emphasis contradicts both the accepted approach to the publication of sketchbooks and the discussion of their content for biographical purposes.

27"Das Leonoreskizzenbuch (Mendelssohn 15): Probleme der Rekonstruktion und Chronologie," Beethoven Jahr- buch 9, Jg. 1973/77 (1977), 469-500; "The Problem of Beethoven's 'First' Leonore Overture," Journal of the American Musicological Society 28 (1975), 292-334. 28Douglas Johnson, Beethoven's Early Sketches in the "Fischhof" Miscellany, Berlin Autograph 28, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1978.

29Journal of the American Musicological Society 25 (1972), 137-56. 30o"A Reconstruction of the Pastoral Symphony Sketch- book," Beethoven Studies, ed. Alan Tyson (New York, 1973), I, 67-96, and the article on Mendelssohn 15 cited in fn. 27.

12

At issue here is the purely musical significance of the sketches. The subject left smoldering by Nottebohm and fanned lightly after World War I has now burst into flame. Although more heat than light has been generated thus far, the very quantity of recent work seems bound to determine whether or not a consensus can be reached on this issue. Certainly there is none at present.

Indeed it is difficult even to formulate the issue in simple terms. A preliminary distinction must be made between the possible relevance of the sketches to an understanding of Beethoven's stylistic development and their possible relevance to an analysis of specific works, as has already been suggested. Whether or not the evolution of Beethoven's style can be chronicled by compositional choices documented in the sketches, such a chronicle itself belongs ultimately to the realm of biography and has only indirect implications for our study of individual works. Nottebohm was surely right on this point ("...dieser Ueberschuss, den die Skizzen bieten, fillt der Biographie des Kiinstlers Beethoven, der Ge- schichte seines kiinstlerischen Entwicklungs- ganges anheim"),31 and the use of the sketches by Mies, Gal, Becking, and others earlier in this century, while drawing attention to their musical content, remained clearly within the scope of musical biography. Despite the title of Mies's book, it seems obvious that in most cases the sketches were adduced to support conclusions already reached.

But what of the sketches in relation to analysis? Are there problems in the completed works which can be elucidated by the sketches? If so, why would someone as capa- ble as Nottebohm have not seen the possibility? Advocates of the analytical relevance of the sketches would probably have the least difficulty with the last question; after all, although nineteenth-century scholars, including Nottebohm, spoke a great deal about the art- work as an organism, their analytical vocabulary now seems scarcely adequate to the task of articulating organic relationships. If Notte-

bohm was unable to describe organic relationships in the first place, small wonder that he found no help in the sketches. The great growth of analytical technique in our own century (so the argument continues) has led to a far more sophisticated discussion of internal relationships than was hitherto possible, and as our questions have become more sophisticated, so too must our resources. Analysis has admittedly become difficult. It would be foolish to reject help from any quarter. So, then, we take another look at the sketches.

The results thus far are disappointing. Is there a single important analytical insight de- rived from the sketches which has become common knowledge among musicians? None that I am aware of; and the reasons are perhaps not so complex as the above discussion may seem to suggest. Since the same analytical tools can be trained on both the works and the sketches, and since the sketches, to be interesting, must be different in some respect from the finished work, a rather simple question arises: how shall we interpret events in the sketches which differ in some potentially instructive way from their counterparts in the work? It might be instructive here to see some precedents.

Let us look first to Heinrich Schenker, whose analytical technique dwarfed that of his contemporaries and who was among the few to supplement Nottebohm's published transcriptions with his own. On the face of it, Schenker's distinction of structural layers would seem like fertile ground in which to cultivate the sketches. One might legitimately expect those principles of voice leading which govern the completed work to emerge with some clarity in the less embellished material of the sketches. But there is a complication: for Schenker, voice-leading principles pre- determine the course of the work, and the further one proceeds into the background, the smaller the scope for significant divergence from them. Hence the process documented in the sketches becomes one in which undesira- ble alternatives yield to the appropriate solution. Since the latter is necessarily present in the completed work, the sketches can at best confirm what we find there.


31Zweite Beethoveniana, p. ix.

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Thus when Schenker discusses a sketch, it is usually to demonstrate the progress of Beet- hoven's thought:

Right away on folio 3 there is a sketch clearly intended for the development:

#! f r T .and: . Is

Furthermore, Beethoven attempts already on the same leaf to combine the principal motive with a counterpoint in half notes:

At the same time, the too-closely-parallel motion between the half notes and the essential outline of the motive must have eventually caused him second thoughts, since it is really in fundamental contradiction to the true requirements of proper counterpoint, which should rather serve to set off the principal motive through rhythmic contrast. And so Beethoven achieved something close to the definitive version already on folio 12 (incidentally, after several experiments with stretto had failed). But if we bear in mind that even here he first sketched the following:

then we have the best evidence of how little Beet- hoven himself must have been thinking of an actual augmentation of the principal motive in his original conception of the half notes. For the construction of such an augmentation would certainly have been easy for him had he intended one from the beginning.32

This example is taken from the Er- liiuterungsausgabe of the Sonata in C Minor, op. 111, published in 1915. Since the theory of layered analysis was not developed until the

1920s, after the editions of the late sonatas, it might be objected that this passage is unrepre- sentative. But in fact there are few references to the sketches in Schenker's later essays. Whereas in the sonata editions they seemed to belong to the documentation, Schenker must have come to feel that they were largely superfluous to a thorough analysis. Despite the development in his own technique during the last twenty years of his life, the sketches remained essentially a source of didactic material:

The sketches-which, as the explanation will show, offer a really valuable contribution to the artistic understanding of the master's compositional technique, and hence of composing in general-are from the collection of Artaria in Vienna. .. (1914)33

Anyone who has seen sketches of the great masters must have come across voice-leading progressions that, far from merely having the character of momentary inspirations and suggestions, present goals and directions of a sort that could have origi- nated only from the farsighted inspiration that is given to genius-genius which, taking root in the relationship of background, middleground, and foreground, is able to create a purely musical continuity even in haste.

And so a thorough and profound study of the surviving sketches of the great composers is strongly recommended: for they show a masterfully conceived musical continuity in the course, as it were, of achieving itself (1935).34

Provocative ideas, but even Schenker was not about to taunt Mies with a Kornpositionslehre based on the sketches.35

Except in its potential sophistication, Schenker's view of the sketches really differs little from Nottebohm's. The new techniques might find more of the mature organism there than Nottebohm was willing to admit, but a sophisticated analysis of the sketches-even to Schenker-did not mean an improved anal-

32Beethoven: Sonata C moll op. 111. Kritische Einfiihrung und Erliauterung von Heinrich Schenker, ed. Oswald Jonas (Vienna, 1971), p. 33 (original edn. 1915).

33Beethoven: Sonate As dur op. 110. Kritische Einfiihrung und Erliiuterung von Heinrich Schenker, ed. Oswald Jonas (Vienna, 1972), p. 3 (original edn. 1914). 34Der freie Satz (Vienna, 1935), p. 33. 3"The didactic function of sketch study is strongly echoed in Oswald Jonas, "Beethovens Skizzen und ihre Gestalt- ung zum Werk," Zeitschrift fiir Musikwissenschaft 16 (1934), 449-59 (see especially pp. 449 and 459).

14

ysis of the works. The natural tendency, in fact, was to proceed in the opposite direc- tion-from the work to the sketches (as was true on another level in Mies's work). At least one recent theorist, Allen Forte, has recognized this and proceeded frankly from a Schenkerian analysis of a completed work (the Sonata in E, op. 109) to a study of the sketches for it. In the preface to The Compositional Matrix (1961), Forte spells out his approach as follows:

In the following, which constitutes the central part of this study, I have undertaken to interpret certain of the sketches with reference to the final version of the appropriate movement. Accordingly, I shall begin by presenting an analysis of the first movement, section by section, using an analytic synopsis in order to achieve an efficient over-view. I will then present sketches of selected passages in what I assume to be correct chronological order with respect to each other and to the finished work.36

The first paragraph of sketch analysis illus- trates the procedure:

In almost every respect this ink sketch matches the final version. However, closer examination reveals an interesting discrepancy in the voice-leading: the descending octave line from G# to G# does not oc- cur; instead the line proceeds only as far as B (in the third complete measure). This suggests that only after working out the entire movement in some detail did Beethoven realize the significance of the descending tetrachord in relation to the thematic third.37

If, as I have suggested, the codification of Schenkerian principles eliminated the need to consider alternative solutions to analytical problems-rejected the problems themselves, some skeptics would say-then the sketches could be safely characterized as failed experiments. Forte's dissection merely dramatized the view of them as a branch of pathology.

This created a pretty paradox for the younger analysts of the 1960s and 70s, for it now appeared that only a more pessimistic view of analysis could accommodate a more optimistic role for the sketches. The pes-

simism was duly forthcoming. A necessary first step was the circumscription of the Schenkerian achievement. If one accepts that there is more to the finished work than meets the Schenkerian eye, the door opens to other, less systematic methods and the products of analysis seem less comprehensive. In this context it becomes easier to justify a re-appraisal of the sketches. The new humility has en- couraged a faith that the analytical process might yet work both ways.

A great deal of sketch analysis has been done in the past decade, and a great deal more is now in progress in several unfinished dissertations. Perhaps it is premature to speculate about its significance. But what are we to think when Richard Kramer, after 260 pages of analysis of sketches for the op. 30 violin sonatas, concludes:

The creative act (the point needs restressing) is mysterious. If that puts it too romantically, it is an act that is so complex, motivated by so many im- pulses-as remote and impersonal as the entire web of knowable history, and as remote and intensely personal as the sum of one man's experience-that the material evidence (records of the act) are little more than occasional memos of a deeper, continual process.38

This is virtually a paraphrase of Nottebohm. The quotation is not really a fair one, perhaps, since Kramer is concerned throughout his lengthy work with the sketch process rather than the product, and he says so quite straightforwardly in his own introduction. Nevertheless, the possible relevance of the sketches to an analysis of the work is too obvious an issue to have escaped an analyst of Kramer's sophistication. His caution in this area is discouraging, and certainly dampens the ammunition for the salvo of dissertations yet to come. But by stressing the complexity (not to say the mystery) of the creative act, Kramer is at least implicitly inviting us to view the work from many perspectives. Be- tween the lines of his conclusion one seems to detect an indictment of the New Criticism, a


36The Compositional Matrix (Baldwin, N.Y., 1961), p. 11. 37Ibid., p. 29.

38Richard Kramer, The Sketches for Beethoven's Violin Sonatas, Opus 30: History, Transcription, Analysis (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton, 1973).

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plea that the composer's experience-repre- sented here by his sketches-be admitted to the discussion of completed works.

Philip Gossett has attempted to formulate the new position in more explicit language than was ever adopted by Kramer. Rejecting the "intentional fallacy" as inapplicable to the sketches because they share material with the art-work, Gossett suggests that we accept help wherever we find it:

Our understanding of a work of art is constantly in flux. Each analysis will focus on different aspects or qualities, and none can hope to "explain" exhaus- tively even a relatively simple work. Whether or not we wish to invoke for a specific analysis information garnered from the sketches, they affect our more general understanding of the work and the kinds of questions we ask about related works. That an omniscient critic might perceive without assistance everything of significance knowable about a given work, whatever such knowledge might consist in, is irrelevant until such a critic appears.39

And he goes on to classify the contribution of the sketches to our understanding of Beet- hoven's intentions in three rough categories:

The first category is "confirmatory": sketches provide evidence for compositional intent with respect to relationships perfectly obvious to us before.

A second category is "suggestive": sketches provide evidence for compositional intent with respect to relationships which, while present, we may have overlooked or undervalued.

A third category is "conceptual": sketches provide evidence for compositional intent behind relationships which seem remote in the piece.40

What are we to make of this? From the analyst's point of view, the first two categories are useless; if we have observed relationships in the piece, we hardly need the gratification of observing them in the sketches. But whereas gratification of this sort seems innocent enough, Gossett's third category is a good

deal more self-indulgent. To enhance concep- tually a relationship that the composer has gradually weakened is to reverse the compositional process and substitute the sketches for the work-in short, to contradict his intentions. In the abstract it would seem axiomatic that any analytical technique is powerless to discover something in the sketches that it cannot discover in the work. But analysis is not done in the abstract, of course. None of us is Gossett's omniscient critic, and it is surely easier to discover tracks if we have seen the beast go by. In practice, one suspects, "conceptual evidence" is an artificial term (and category). Where such evidence is persuasive, we are likely to view it as "suggestive" or "confirmatory"; where it is unpersuasive, we are likely to ignore it.

If I have overstated the case concerning analysis of the sketches, it is because their biographical interest, though broad, seems to me insufficient to warrant the scope of the recent literature, much of which is frankly analytical. For whom are the editions and the analyses intended? All this activity will have been a vacuous exercise indeed if the product turns out to be a luxury, created for its own sake by the Beethovenhaus and American doctoral programs and applauded reflexively with bicentennial and sesquicentennial enthusi- asm. It would be foolish to deny that institu- tional scholarship creates its own inertia, tolerating description and explanation where they serve no real critical goals. Although aimed at another medium, the following sour remarks apply equally well to our own:

The act of elucidation is satisfying, it gives the critic a feeling of having achieved something. Energy spent on the elucidation seems to verify the poem. The fact that the argument of the poem is as un- convincing after the elucidation as before, if rea- sonably tough criteria of sense are applied, is easily dispelled by the unbroken circuit of interest between poem and elucidation. So commentaries proceed. They are not good enough.41

39Philip Gossett, "Beethoven's Sixth Symphony: Sketches for the First Movement," Journal of the American Musicological Society 27 (1974), 261. 40Ibid., pp. 261, 263, and 268.

41Denis Donoghue, "A Hard Look at Yeats," The New York Review of Books, 26 May 1977, p. 4.

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Granted that it is not always easy to distin- guish between description for its own sake and elucidation in the service of a persuasive argument. But how will time treat passages like these?

Beethoven was still dissatisfied with the much- revised codetta. The very last measure on stave 9 is his final word on the subject of the motive that had also troubled him in revision (e) of the previous draft. This was simply another matter of contra- puntal inversion, for in the score the motive occurs both ways simultaneously... Other problems with the coda were more important. After working on various melodic details within the draft, Beethoven decided to scrap the little cadential extension he had added to Draft 3 in revision (g); this he did by cancelling the last three staves of the present draft and directing a "Vi::de" to stave 10, where a new ending (ultimately adopted) is provided. The sequential ascending figure, corrected so many times in the various drafts, has been given up in favor of a direct stepwise ascent to the top of the register. Beethoven vacillated briefly, however, trying the older figure one more time (stave 12) while retain- ing the new melodic peak.42 From the beginning, Neapolitan neighbors lace the theme at critical points. Now, their larger implications are exploited in a monstrous revision to the draft that in effect cancels all the previous thinking about the second limb of the theme. Evidently, the seed of the digression was sown in an isolated en- try, after the draft, at 127/7: the idea is concise and sharply drawn, opening from a fifth which pins two of those early Neapolitans, C-flat and G-flat.43

To solve his predicament, Beethoven again wrote out the two versions, side by side, on folios 8v and 9r, as if to weigh their relative advantages. In the "normal" version, however, with the sequential passage in the retransition, he approaches the re- capitulation from a dominant harmony, though without the extreme prolongations of earlier sketches. In the "alternative" version, the subdom- inant is implied, the dominant being reserved for

the sequential passage now firmly within the re- capitulation. It leads to a strong tonic arrival in the upper octave, as already hinted in Example 4, but an arrival within the first group and hence indepen- dent of the real tonal motion of the piece.

One might consider this a momentary lack of nerve. The earlier continuity draft, Example 7, is formally much bolder. But faced with the differing demands of the Pastorale world and the conven- tions governing symphonic sonata movements, Beethoven felt compelled to experiment with alternative solutions.44

One hopes the tedium is not the message. Skepticism about the role of analysis in

the study of the sketches need not be consid- ered subversive to the discipline as a whole. The sketches are central documents in the history of Beethoven's creative life, even if we must concede that at present we have no efficient way of appraising them. It is inevitable that concise conclusions about their im- port be preceded by a good deal of unfocused preliminary activity, like a public health pro- gram in which millions are immunized to save a few lives. Thus the history of scholarship in this area, as outlined briefly here, may be called unfocused. Its goals have shifted perceptibly over the years, and its impact on Beethoven biography in general has been dif- fuse. To an extent, no doubt, the sketches have been assimilated into our larger picture of the man, but the process of assimilation has been so gradual as to defy formulation in terms that would suggest the appropriate channels for further study. And while the recent concern with musical analysis may perhaps effect some changes in our view of Beethoven's works, it seems safe to say that the changes will not altogether conform to present expectations.


42Douglas Johnson, "Beethoven's Sketches for the Scherzo of the Quartet Op. 18, No. 6," Journal of the American Musicological Society 23 (1970), 402. 43Kramer, The Sketches for Op. 30, p. 373. 44Gossett, "Beethoven's Sixth Symphony," pp. 259-60.

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Article Contentsp. 3p. 4p. 5p. 6p. 7p. 8p. 9p. 10p. 11p. 12p. 13p. 14p. 15p. 16p. 17

Issue Table of Contents19th-Century Music, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jul., 1978), pp. 1-91Front Matter [pp. 1-2]Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven's Sketches [pp. 3-17]Schubert's Sonata Form and Brahms's First Maturity [pp. 18-35]The Historical Structure: Adorno's "French" Model for the Criticism of Nineteenth-Century Music [pp. 36-60]A New Source for "Carmen" [pp. 61-71]Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era [pp. 72-81]Performers and InstrumentsReview: Zwirnknulerl: A Note on the Performance of Johann Strauss et al. [pp. 82-84]

ReviewReview: untitled [pp. 85-87]

Comment & Chronicle [pp. 88-91]Back Matter

Documents

Beethoven Scholars