Beethoven's Unfinished Piano Concerto: A Case of Double Vision?

Beethoven's Unfinished Piano Concerto: A Case of Double Vision?Author(s): Nicholas CookSource: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer, 1989), pp.338-374Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831659 .

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Beethoven's Unfinished Piano Concerto: a Case of Double Vision?*

By NICHOLAS COOK

I

4---HE COMPOSITION UNDER DISCUSSION here would have been the

1 Sixth Piano Concerto if it had been brought to completion, and although it is one of the longest and most developed of Beethoven's unfinished works, it has had surprisingly little notice in the vast Beethoven literature." So Lewis Lockwood (x97oa, 624) began his article on Hess 15,' the movement for piano and orchestra which Beethoven sketched during 1814-15, and the situation has changed little since then. The work is now and then cited2 as an instance of Beethoven's practice of going into full score at a surprisingly early stage in the compositional process, and as an example of his use of what Lockwood called the "cue-staff" (an abbreviated summary of the music found at the bottom of the score). It has also found some place in the stylistic history of Beethoven's concertos through John Meyer's observation in the New Oxford History that "a further variant on the use of the soloist at the beginning of a work may be seen in the sketch for the unfinished Concerto in D, in which an initial orchestral statement of the first subject is followed by a brief cadenza-like elaboration of the theme by the piano. This introductory section returns in a modified form at the outset of the recapitulation, just as the corresponding section of the E flat major recurs at the same point in that work."3 But

* I would like to thank Dr. Clemens Brenneis, Dr. Alan Tyson, Dr. Barry Cooper, Professor Douglas Johnson, Professor Basil Deane, and Malcolm Butler for their help and advice. I am also grateful to the following libraries for supplying microfilm materials: Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin/DDR-Musikabteilung; Staatsbibliothek Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Berlin/BRD-Musikabteilung; Biblioteka Jagiellofiska, Krakow; Scheide Library, Princeton; British Library, London. A shortened version of this paper was presented at the IMS Symposium held at Melbourne, Australia, in August/September 1988.

See Hess 1957, no. 15 (p. 18). 2 See Tyson 1973, 457; Greenfield 1983, 196; Wolff 198o, 267; and Winter 1984,

226.

3 Meyer 1982, 225. Charles Rosen has also made references to this introductory section (1971, 391 and 198o, 95).



BEETHOVEN'S UNFINISHED PIANO CONCERTO 339

no facsimile of the autograph score of the work has been published, and there has been no detailed examination of the music from a stylistic viewpoint. This is perhaps surprising, for as Lockwood reads it the work exhibits a number of peculiar-not to say unsatisfactory- stylistic features. In this article I argue that some of these problems are the result of a questionable interpretation of the autograph; others, however, seem to reflect an indecision on Beethoven's part as to what sort of movement he was writing-an indecision which perhaps explains the work's eventual abandonment.

It is an obvious limitation of this article, as it was of Lockwood's, that neither facsimile nor complete transcription of the autograph score and sketches has been published. But the excerpts given below, when taken together with those that appeared in Lockwood's article, should furnish the reader with at least a general impression of the music, while detailed references to the original materials are given for the benefit of those who have access to them. A more detailed appraisal of the work must await the publication of all the autograph sources.

II

As Lockwood explained, the so-called "autograph score," MS Artaria 184 in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (D-Bds), is as much a sketch as an autograph. It is laid out as a full score, using thirteen staves; Figure i shows the first page.4 Clefs are given together with time and key signatures, in the manner of an autograph score, though the instruments are not labelled, nor is there a title. As the autograph proceeds the scoring becomes increasingly fragmentary. Corrections, changes of mind, and cancellations multiply, and eventually the score peters out altogether.

Lockwood described Artaria 184 as "a fully consecutive orchestral score that breaks off suddenly at a point some twenty-five measures into the recapitulation of the movement" (i97oa, 629). In saying this he was assuming that the score is to be read as it is currently bound,

4 Reading from top to bottom, the instruments appear in the following order: violin I, violin II, violas, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in D, 2 trumpets in D, timpani (D, A), piano, celli and basses (one stave). Figures 1-4 are reproduced by kind permission of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin/DDR-- Musikabteilung.



340 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

•~ ? ~ liai~;k !Iro: ?I?s~i ,ii?• ,:'-~~~: c. ii iic-:'::?i:

.. ..._ ~ ;-:il :,:~_:- ::i:::::: :-

:-'-':'-~---ii ~ii::-~::i~~~li~~'-~i-- ~ ;:~;-- l~~~i.i

~:iii~ii--i: I.;.i~:i~:-iii::i-::--: i ii''-::?:: ? .. ......i?iii:-~:xi~ s:i-i-i~iii-erii

Figure i. MS Artaria 184, p. I (see Example i).

that is to say in accordance with the page numbers written in pencil at the top right-hand corner of each recto; this gives the formal plan shown in Table I.5

If we read the score this way, we find a concerto movement in which the soloist enters near the beginning, as in the G-Major and

F1-Major Concertos, and plays a cadenza-as in the E,-Major

Con- certo. But in the 1815 movement this is preceded by an abbreviated version of the main theme in the winds (Example i). There is then a lacuna; the cadenza is incomplete in the score, and the first half of the following page has been left blank. The tutti exposition begins after this blank half page (Example 2), and as in the G-Major and Eb-Major Concertos it remains essentially in the tonic throughout, ending with the repeated V-I cadences of the second Concluding Figure (Example

s Table I is derived from Lockwood 197oa, 627, with the addition of a harmonic outline, and of details regarding pagination and number of staves. I have also labelled the transitional and concluding materials individually, and added references to examples in the present article; references preceded by the letter "L" are to examples in Lockwood's article. In the harmonic outline, the notation V(V-I) is to be read as V-I of V.




TABLE I

Page Sequence Staves Ex. Harmony Segment Top Bottom

Introduction 1-3 16 I D: I Tutti 3-4 if V Solo

Exposition Tutti

5-8 2 I-V Group I 8-*1 *L. Ib I-V(V-I) Transitional Figure I I -12 VI= Transitional Figure 2

SIII(IV-V)-V 12-13 *L. ic I Group 2 14 5 d: I-V it 15 *L. Id V Extension i6-1i9 , D: I . .V Concluding Figure i 19-21 3 V/I alternations Concluding Figure 2

Solo 22-24 I-V Dovetailed entrance

and preparation of I 24-26 V Group i 27-28 (Blank pages) 29 I 3 4 Group i (continued) 30-34 14-18 , I. ..V(V) Transitional Figure i 34-37 18(= 34), A:

, VI= Transitional Figure 2

19(=37) , III(IV-V)-V

38-39 20-21 I Group 2 39-40 2 1-22 a: I

,,

4'-46 V-X 14 9 (mainly D) Extension Development

47-52 XI-XII, (mainly D) Solo & tutti elaboration I-IV of i and 2

53-56 5-8 I6 6 D: V Solo cadenza (sketched)

Recapitulation 57-58 9-1o 14 io I Tutti introduction in

modified form (begins in b.5)

59 11 " V Solo

60 12 it I Tutti Group i

*L. = Examples in Lockwood 1970a,

3). The piano enters with a long trill superimposed over the final cadence of the tutti exposition, in a manner reminiscent of Mozart's




Example i Reduction of MS Artaria i84, pp. 1:1-4:3 (page:bar). In this and the following examples, editorial additions are enclosed in square brackets, except in the case of

ties, rests, beams and dots.

p. 1 p. 2 Ob.

Fg., Cb. Timp.

Fl.

_ AM .

do

[8] loco p 4

p. 8

[81-ocop.




Example 2

MS Artaria 184, pp. 5: I-8:3 (Tutti Exposition, first subject).

p. 5 (second half)

VI. I, II 6

Vle.V Vie.

I I r F Vlc., Cb.

AFg cresc r

' , inV!1"-I

Eb-Major Concerto K. 271,6 and this leads to a free solo passage which is overlapped with the beginning of the first theme, so that the theme's opening fanfare-like figure is omitted. Apart from this, however, and from the adaptation of the transitional material so that it modulates to the dominant, the solo exposition follows a course that is virtually

6 This is the concerto that may have provided the model for Beethoven's introduction of the piano at the outset of the G-Major and E'-Major Concertos: see for instance Rosen 197 I, 198, 391. The trill in Hess 15 is not actually marked as such.




Example 3 MS Artaria 184, pp. 19:4-21:3 (Tutti Exposition, Second Concluding Figure).

VI., Vle. p. 2 Ob.l ?n;

"C. .- . ,. -• -. - fJ

p. 21

i A-etc.

identical to that of the tutti exposition, as far as the beginning of its closing section (that is, up to the end of p. 40).

Such parallelism between tutti and solo expositions is of course a

recognized feature of Beethoven's concertos; Charles Rosen's description of the solo exposition in the C-Minor Concerto as "a decorated form of the tutti instead of a new and more dramatic conception of the material" (0971, 390) applies equally well to Hess 15. And it is a feature that is in effect built into the thematic material of the 1815 movement. The first subject consists of the opening fanfare-like figure, a central section on the dominant and a closing motto; of these elements it is only the last that is really pianistic and lends itself to being exchanged between soloist and orchestra, as happens in the solo exposition where the soloist takes the falling scales (Example 4). The double-dotted transitional material that follows-itself a derivative of the opening fanfare-has a massiveness that is almost redolent of the opening of the Ninth Symphony, and that reduces the piano part to




Example 4

MS Artaria 184, pp. 29:1-31:3 (Solo Exposition, end of First Group and First Transitional Figure). On p. 30, bar i, sixteenth-note figuration is indicated in the left hand of the piano part, but it is not clearly legible. Parts missing in the original have been added, in brackets, by analogy with the tutti exposition.

p. 29

Vel.,.Cb. qop

,a I

Vcl., Cb.

p. 30 [83 ..?~. _•J?? ??

11 111

,,,.1? Vcl., Cb.

p. 3o 1813

TII

Vcl., Cb. p. 31 p. 32

"v , lz wj

• '# r'Vl' ' RI r a

r I

I.IV ? •I I' A I Ii




little more than a series of decorative doodles.7 And the second subject is even more symphonic in style: though its opening lends itself well

enough to statement by the piano, the ensuing material is sustained and contrapuntal in nature, with frequent overlapping between parts (Example 5). There is no indication of its being assigned to the piano at any point.

Example 5

MS Artaria 184, pp. 14:1-15:2 (Tutti Exposition, repeat of second subject).

p. 14 Ob., C1.

V1. I

V1. II

Iff

L*.

IL I I

.,li 1 i l , it 1 1 -

Fg. d [J

Stp. 15

Fl.

.. . . . .I.. . V-.... . do Pj J

The result of the movement's basic material being symphonic rather than pianistic in character is to diminish the structural importance of the solo part. The I815 movement shows little of the interplay between soloist and orchestra that contributes to the richness of form of the classical concerto. Rather than being pitted against the orchestra in dramatic confrontation, the piano in Hess 15 is reduced to a function almost analagous to the obbligato part in a concerto grosso; the piano writing creates an impression of thinness that comes not so much from the texture as such as from the role the solo part plays within the movement as a whole.8 Even after due allowance has been made for the

7 An extensive continuity draft on pp. 6-7 of the Scheide sketchbook suggests that Beethoven at one time considered giving the piano a more thematically distinctive role at this point than is the case in the autograph score.

8 Beethoven no doubt intended to thicken out the piano writing of Artaria 184. But the impression of thinness remained in a performing edition which I prepared in conjunction with my student Kelina Kwan, even though the piano part had been




drastic changes that Beethoven would no doubt have introduced had he completed the work, an impression of stiffness remains that seems distinctly out of place in a concerto. Indeed it is an indication of the style of the I815 movement that one is led to compare it with Beethoven's symphonies rather than his concertos. The opening theme, for instance, represents a throwback to the heroic mold of the Third Symphony; in this it is comparable to other works of this period, in particular Wellingtons Sieg and Der glorreiche Augenblick.

Despite this oddly symphonic character, the reading of Artaria 184 shown in Table I makes good musical sense up to the end of p. 40, a point near the end of the solo exposition. From then on problems abound. As will be explained later on, pp. 41-52 hardly constitute a score in the sense of pp. I-40, and the fact that the music is predominantly in the tonic, D Major, makes it hard to accept Lockwood's designation of them as the final section of the exposition, followed by the development. And if an exposition that returns to the tonic seems contrary to the dramatic balance of the classical style, the same applies to the elegant but undramatic piano arabesque of pp. 53-56 (Example 6) that precedes what Lockwood calls the recapitulation (pp. 57-60).

Example 6

MS Artaria 184, pp. 53:1-56 (cadenza). The score contains a number of variants; the continuity of the figure marked 'N.B.' (p. 55) with what precedes and what follows it is conjectural. From this point on the transcription is taken from the bottom (correction) stave.

p. 53 8 loco p. 54

for

elaborated in accordance with Beethoven's normal concerto style. This reconstruction had its first professional performance at Shanghai Conservatory in October

I987.




Example 6, continued

p. 55

L N.B.

p.56 8------------1

Such peculiarities naturally lead to the suspicion that Artaria 184, in its present form, should not in fact be read as a fully consecutive score. Indeed this suspicion has already been voiced by Douglas Johnson (i973, 226) and Robert Winter (1982, 364), though neither author enters into details. In order to throw further light on the matter we need to consider the evidence of the sketches for the work, and the physical structure of the autograph.

III

Table 2 lists the known sketches for Hess I5. In his article Lockwood gave details of the sketchbooks in which they are to be found,9 except in the case of the two Mendelssohn sketchbooks. These

9 But note that MS Grasnick 20ob is in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, not the Staatsbibliothek Preussicher Kulturbesitz.




TABLE 2

Mendelssohn i (pp. 4-9) Biblioteka Jagiello6iska, Krakow (PL:Kj) Mendelssohn 6 (pp. 114-133) Biblioteka

.agiello6iska, Krakow

Scheide MS I30 Scheide Library, Princeton (US:PRscheide) Landsberg 10o (pp. 79-82) Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz

(D-brd:B) Grasnick 2ob (fol. 21 r-23r) Deutsche Staatsbibliothek (D-ddr:Bds) Add. MS 29997 (fol. 4ir-42v) British Library (GB:Lbl)

are among the large group of Beethoven sketchbooks that disappeared after the Second World War and were rediscovered only in 1977,some years after Lockwood's article on Hess 15 was published. Men- delssohn i, the earliest of the pocket sketchbooks to have survived, contains little more that relates to Hess 15 than a probably late draft for the closing section of the tutti exposition, together with brief sketches of the thematic materials in C Major and B? Major that were possibly intended for the development. Mendelssohn 6, which like Scheide is a desk sketchbook, contains a comprehensive record of the earlier stages in the work's evolution, much as Scheide does of the later stages. The first pages in Mendelssohn 6 that concern the 1815 movement recall Donald Greenfield's concept of the "motivic pool", in that several of the characteristic melodic and rhythmic features of the work appear, but do so in contexts quite different from those within which they will subsequently be used. ,o In the following pages the materials that make up the first subject emerge and are tried out in a large number of different variants; and this leads to the first of a number of extended drafts in which aspects of the work's formal evolution achieve their definitive form even while their thematic details are still fluid or schematic (Example 7).

It is notoriously hard to reconstruct the internal chronology of Beethoven's use of his sketchbooks on the basis of short jottings, because he was liable to turn back a few pages to find an empty space, or to leave a space where he thought an idea might be worth returning to at a later stage. In his article, Lockwood (197oa, 642-43) cited a number of variants of the second subject from the Scheide sketchbook, as well as from the other sources available to him, and argued that their chronological sequence is likely to have been quite different from the order in which they appear in the sketchbook. However, the

1o See Greenfield 1983, 224ff., 274ff. There is, however, the difference that the "motivic pools" Greenfield describes take the themes as their starting point, whereas the themes are rather the outcome of the less systematic "pool" in Mendelssohn 6.




Example 7

Mendelssohn 6, p. I24, staves 3-8. Notes cancelled in the original have been omitted.

st. 3

st. 4 st. 5

s 6

Tut st. 7

Crs: st. 8

pt . etc. lt)

division between the sketches for the second subject that appear in Mendelssohn 6 and those that appear in Scheide does seem to be a chronologically valid one. Example 8 presents a number of entries from Mendelssohn 6 that look as if they predate the earliest entries in

Scheide;" it shows how the Mendelssohn 6 sketches try out several variants of the opening of the second subject, while Scheide contains only its final form (that is to say, the form in which it appears in the autograph score). In the case of the more extended drafts, it would be reasonable to expect the sequence in which they appear in the sketchbooks to represent more or less the order in which they were written, simply because they would have been too long for Beethoven to have squeezed them in between existing entries. 12 Table 3 collates

" As it happens, the first entry in Mendelssohn 6 that clearly refers to Hess 15 (P-. 114, stave I) controverts Lockwood's suggestion that the imitative working of the second subject may have been worked out for the first time in the autograph (197oa, 644). This particular entry may quite possibly be out of sequence chronologically, but the imitation appears elsewhere in Mendelssohn 6 as well (p. 122, st. i, shown in Example 8, and p. I29, st. 9).

12 In defense of this perhaps rather simplistic argument one might quote Winter's statement that "in the last few years a number of us have put forward the thesis-rather at odds with Nottebohm--that the sequence of entries in the standard-



BEETHOVEN'S UNFINISHED PIANO CONCERTO 35 I

the various drafts; Beethoven seems to have worked through Men- delssohn 6 and Scheide in a more or less systematic order, in accordance with the work's formal plan.

TABLE 3 Distribution of Longer Drafts for Hess I5

Introduction Mendelssohn 6, p. i2 x Tutti Exposition

Group I 122, 124 Transition 127 Group 2 128

Concluding figures 133 (fragments) Solo Exposition

Dovetailed entry Scheide, p. 4 Group I

Transition 6-8 Group 2 Concluding figuresj

Development (fragments) Recapitulation(?)

Group 1 13-14, 17, 18, 20, 24, 26-7, 28 Transition J Group 2 28, 29 Concluding figuresj

The remaining sketches are all described in some detail in Lock- wood's article,'3 and they consist principally of two continuity drafts of the tutti exposition. Lockwood suggests that the three-stave drafts in Landsberg io and B.M. Add. MS 29997 may have originally formed part of the same gathering and the rastrology appears to support this hypothesis.'4 Lockwood also suggests that these three- stave drafts predate the two-stave draft in Grasnick 20ob; this too is confirmed by a detailed comparison between them, which brings to light a number of minor but cumulatively compelling points leading to

format and, to a large extent, the pocket sketchbooks represents the order of their writing down. At least when we begin with this premise there are almost always plausible results" (in Wolff 1980, 271).

3 Lockwood also gives transcriptions of the openings of the Landsberg Io and Grasnick 2ob drafts.

4 Though I do not have stave or total span measurements for Add. 29997, the inter-stave and inter-line spacing of these papers are sufficiently variable for a provisional identification to be made by means of the visual matching of photographic prints. The procedure adopted is to align the two prints to be compared, rotating the one against the other in order to compensate for differences in the scale of reproduction. I am indebted to Malcolm Butler for his help in this.



Example 8

Variants of the second subject from Mendelssohn 6, with the corresponding passage from MS Artaria 184. This chart should be read in

conjunction with Lockwood 197oa, Example 5-

p. 122 St. St. . I

p. 123 st. 15

p.126 r

I I I[

p. 127 st. 9 st. 10

st. 16 p. 127

p. 128 st. 4 st.5

128t. 6

F. '"-"• ' ..... . . . . ' ' Ir 1 l l i i i i i

I'A



p. 129

p. 131 st. 1

p. 131 st. 4

p. 132 st. 15 st. 16

f-~ ~f1 FOE" ____ _____

Autograph cue-staff

p" 1 2

p. 13 17 0p.

14

____.._ ____,_, _ _.. _etc.. -MELl,




this conclusion.'5 Indeed, Grasnick 2ob gives the appearance of having started as a fair copy of the Landsberg o/Add. 29997 draft, in that it presents the results of the deliberations and revisions evident in the three-stave draft. The two-stave format of Grasnick 2ob-without the extra stave allowed for corrections in Landsberg to and Add. 29997-implies that Beethoven did not expect to revise it further; that this expectation was not realized will surprise nobody who has studied Beethoven's sketches. When the various corrections and "Vi=de" markings of Grasnick 2ob have been unravelled, however, a complete draft of the tutti exposition is revealed which accords closely with the corresponding section of the autograph score. It would make sense to suppose that Grasnick 2ob summarizes what Beethoven had achieved in Mendelssohn 6, and that it was on the basis of this that he felt ready to move on from the tutti exposition (which is virtually the sole subject of the Mendelssohn 6 sketches) to the remainder of the movement, with which the Scheide sketches are principally con- cerned. And it is worth observing that the Grasnick 2ob draft appears to be rastrologically identical, not only with the Scheide sketchbook, but with the greater part of the autograph score itself.

Table 4 summarizes the suggested sequence of the sketches.'6

15 For instance Landsberg to, p. 79, st. 1, bar 2 has a variant of the opening theme which is found in Mendelssohn 6, p. 123, St. 6, but is eliminated in Grasnick 2ob, Scheide, and Artaria 184. Again, the beginning of the second subject in Landsberg 10, p. 82, st. 1, looks as if it originally took the form of an earlier version found in Mendelssohn 6, but was later changed to the final version which alone appears in Grasnick 2ob. And Landsberg to does not contain the second half of this subject in its final version at all; it appears as a correction in Grasnick 2ob, p. 21, St. 15 (as noted by Lockwood), and is retained in Scheide and Artaria 184, as well as in Mendelssohn 6 (p. 4, st. 3)- Such examples could be multiplied, and consistently tend towards the conclusion that these continuity drafts occupy a position intermediate between the sketches in Mendelssohn 6 and those in Scheide.

16 The references to Artaria 184 will be explained later on. The late date for the Mendelssohn 1 sketches is suggested on the basis of, first, the similarities between the Mendelssohn 1 draft of the latter part of the tutti exposition and the corresponding passages in Grasnick 2ob and Artaria 184 (e.g. the second half of the second subject, mentioned in the previous footnote); and, second, the common appearance in Mendelssohn 1 and Scheide of two variants of the opening theme-a rhythmic one in Bb Major (Mendelssohn 1, p. 9, st. 7; Scheide, p. 19, st. 1; p. 22, St. 5; and p. 31, st. 1), and a modulating one beginning in C Major and moving towards A-Major harmony (Mendelssohn 1, p. 7, st. 6-7; Scheide, p. 16, st. 2; p. 25, st. 7).

In his article, Lockwood (197oa, 642-45) argues that there may have been extensive overlapping between the Scheide sketches and the Grasnick 20ob and Landsberg lo drafts; but I suspect that many of the monolinear sketches in Scheide date from a later stage than Lockwood thought, and that their purpose was to explore the developmental possibilities of the materials rather than to define the form the materials would take in the exposition (this had already been achieved in the




TABLE 4

Mendelssohn 6 -- Landsberg io -> Grasnick 2ob - Scheide Add. 29997

Artaria 184, Mendelssohn I PP. 41-52, 57-60 (pocket)

What is the relationship between the work that emerges from these sketches and the one that Lockwood read in the autograph score? The first forty pages of the autograph, comprising the introduction, the whole of the tutti exposition, and the first part of the solo exposition, correspond well enough to the sketches. But thereafter the two

diverge. On pp. 6-7 of the Scheide sketchbook there is a two-stave draft of the solo exposition, which follows more or less the same course as the tutti exposition from the first subject up to (and including) the first Concluding Figure, except that it modulates to the dominant; but pp. 41-46 of the autograph, which Lockwood read as the second subject extension, are quite different. As for the development, though there are no extended drafts, there are a considerable number of sketches for it in Scheide (and a few in Mendelssohn i) showing developmental and modulatory variants of the thematic materials, many of them in C Major, F Major or Bb Major. This section cannot be reconstructed in any continuous form, but one can at least say that what is indicated in the sketches has little affinity to the tonic-hugging materials in pp. 47-52 of the autograph. And as for the curiously static cadenza-like passage leading to what Lockwood called the recapitulation (pp. 53-56), there is no sign of this in the sketches at all. The sketches, in short, suggest that Beethoven had in mind an altogether more conventional concerto form than the one Lockwood read in Artaria I84.

IV

Lockwood described Artaria 184 as "an integral manuscript of sixty pages . . . using sixteen-staff oblong paper. The manuscript is entirely uniform in its layout" (i97oa, 629). In fact Artaria 184 is made up of two different papers, one ruled with sixteen and the other

Mendelssohn 6 sketches, which Lockwood was unable to examine). If this is the case, then the degree of overlap between Scheide and the preceding drafts may be small.




TABLE 5

Make-up Chart of MS Artaria 184

Page sequence Sheet Staves Top Bottom Quadrant

I 16 4 3 I

II 16 4 [7

I

III i6 9 3 II 2

'3 4 15 I

I 6 7, 3 19 2

IV 16 21 4 [23 I

25 3 27 2

V 6 29,

I3 3

31 15 2

33 17 4 35

I

16 '37 9 3 39 21 2

14 r4 1 V i

L43, VII 4 45, IX 4

L47 XI I 49, I 2

51 III 3

II i6 53 5 3 55 7 2

14 57 9 I 59 1I 4

*Leaves linked by inkblot.




with fourteen staves; Table 5 is a make-up chart of the manuscript. 17 In itself the use of different papers would not necessarily invalidate the description of the autograph as an "integral" manuscript, if what is meant by this rather problematical term (Johnson et al. 1985, xii) is simply that Artaria 184 retains the sequential organization that it had when Beethoven used it. There are, however, other factors which indicate that the paper types correspond to distinct phases in the compositional process. One of these is that, whereas all the sixteen- stave pages are used in the same format, with a brace joining the upper thirteen staves,'8 there is considerable variation in the format of the fourteen-stave pages. On pp. 42, 49, 51-52 and 57-60 the upper thirteen staves are connected with a brace, though on pp. 59-60 this is a correction of what was first written; but on p. 45 (which is reproduced in Figure 2) the brace allocates only three staves, while on

pp. 47-48 it allocates all of them. This makes it likely that the fourteen-stave sheets belong to an earlier stage in the compositional process than the sixteen-stave ones, before a definite decision had been made as to the layout of the score; and examples will be given below of thematic materials that are found on the fourteen-stave sheets in what looks like an earlier form than that in which they appear on the sixteen-stave sheets.

As the evidence of the musical continuity and the sketches might lead one to expect, there is a change of paper type between pp. 40 and 41. Moreover, as Table 5 shows, there are two sequences of numerals to be found at the bottom right-hand corners of some of the rectos: a

"7 The paper itself is type 42 (Johnson et al. 1985, 558) throughout; the TS of the 16-stave leaves is 195-96 mm. and of the 14-stave leaves 92.5-93.5 mm. The molds of paper-type 42 are unusually hard to distinguish, and its watermarks are in any case rather variable (see Johnson et al. 1985, 242); Table 5 is based on the matching of profiles as well as on watermarks. Most of the bifolia shown in the Table have been separated in a library binding process. Bifolia are indicated by solid brackets when they are still intact (pp. 21-24, 37-40); when they can be shown to be derived from a single sheet; or, in the case of pp. 49-52, because Beethoven has written across the center fold. Table 5 is the work of Dr. Clemens Brenneis of the Deutsche Staatsbib- liothek. I have been unable to inspect Artaria 184 in person, and I am extremely grateful to Dr. Brenneis for examining it on my behalf. Dr. Alan Tyson also generously made information concerning Artaria 184 available to me.

"8 The only exception is p. 5, where the celli and basses have been written in the fourth stave, instead of the thirteenth. This is presumably a simple error, since the following page starts the same way but is then corrected. There is also a bass-line note in the fourth stave of p. 22, but this is merely a substitute for the heavily amended bass line in the thirteenth stave.




% :-"i-:::: :!, ., . :.

: . . .:: .

• .- i: .

-7 --,7-

IIV

7,.. t-:,>

Figure 2. MS Artaria 184, p. 45=IX (see Example 9).

Roman sequence from I to XII and an Arabic sequence from 5 to 22.19 These can hardly be regarded as evidence of the score's original structure; Beethoven was not in the habit of numbering the pages of his scores as he worked on them. But it is worth giving some consideration to these sequences, because both of them make sense in terms of musical continuity. The series of fourteen-stave leaves with Roman numerals on their rectos (pp. 41-52 of the manuscript as it now stands) is quite distinct from the preceding and following pages in terms of both the layout and the content of the music; but internally the leaves are continuous, provided that they are read in accordance with the Roman numerals and not their present-day sequence (that is to say, in the order 49-52, 41-48). 2o Example 9, a partial transcription of these pages, shows what looks like an early version of the second half of the tutti exposition, going from the second subject up to the second Concluding Figure.

However, as can also be seen from Example 9, these pages do not constitute a score in any normal sense of the word. Their layout does not seem to correspond to any consistent instrumentation. Indeed, the

"19 While the page numbers, which are on the rectos only, run from I to XI and from 5 to 2 1, the final verso is in each case musically continuous with the preceding recto. Therefore the sequences run from I to XII and from 5 to 22. Examples of these numbers can be seen in Figures 2 and 3. 20 As Table 5 shows, all these leaves are linked to the next by inkblots, except pp. 47/48 and pp. 49/50.




different staves frequently contain quite incompatible materials, es- pecially in the last few pages (the most obvious example of this is the statement of the opening theme, marked "oboe," on stave I2 of pp. 46-48). There is in short little reason for thinking that these pages are

properly speaking part of the autograph score at all; it is more likely that they represent extensively reworked open-score sketches which have somehow come to be bound along with the autograph proper. The second subject itself appears not in its final version, but in one of the variants found in Mendelssohn 6;21 pp. 132-33 of Mendelssohn 6, in particular, have much in common with pp. 41-52 of Artaria 184. This indicates that these pages predate the Landsberg io/Add. 29997 continuity drafts, as shown in Table 4. If this is so, it means that in drafting the second subject area of Hess 15, Beethoven chose to adopt an open-score format at an even earlier stage in the compositional process than Lockwood supposed.22 Perhaps this reflects the relative contrapuntal complexity of the materials in this section of the movement.

There are no pages numbered 1-4 at their bottom right hand corners; the Arabic sequence begins with 5, on what is now p. 53 of Artaria 184. Figure 3 shows this page, which begins with tied notes in the clarinets and bassoons-notes which correspond to nothing on p. 52 but do correspond to those at the end of p. 4.23 So it looks as if the cadenza which begins on p. 53 was at one time intended to conclude the introduction of the work, where its lack of tonal dynamism would make much more sense than before the recapitulation. Direct evidence that this is what was originally intended is to be found in the continuity drafts in Mendelssohn 6 (p. i24), Landsberg io, and Grasnick 2ob, in each of which the introduction finishes with the same characteristic As in octaves leading to a trilled C0, E and G, that

21 The entire second theme appears on pp. 50:4-52:1 of Artaria 184 (staves i i and 14) exactly as in Mendelssohn 6, p. 132, staves i5-16 (see Example 8). The second part of the second subject is shown in Example 9 as being already in its final form (p. 50, st. I I, 9); but this passage is not clearly written, and is in any case the outcome of multiple corrections. It is possible that Beethoven went on sketching sporadically on these pages until a comparatively late stage.

22 In his discussion of Op. 132, Sieghard Brandenburg (1980, 280) observes that "Beethoven began working out the score . . even before he had found the definitive form of the theme;" this observation is equally applicable to pp. 41-52 of Artaria 184 (and also to its last four pages, discussed below). For an earlier example of the same phenomenon, see Kramer 1977, 44-

23 Compare the end of Example I with the beginning of Example 6.




Example 9

Partial transcription of pp. 49-52 and 41-48 of MS Artaria 184. These pages are at times heavily corrected and as a result the transcription is conjectural in many of its details.

p. 49, bar 3 p. 50

st. 14 st. 13

st. 11 st. 9

p. 51 p. 52

st. 11, 14

st. 14

p.s41.

st.8,1, 14 st. 81 st.14 rst. 11

A p A

s,

12 "sst.

13 "[st. 1" ] st I'

. I

po 44

p.t. 1

[st.1 ,141 stst.

14St.



BEETHOVEN'S UNFINISHED PIANO CONCERTO 36I

Example 9, continued

- A1-p. 45

III

F 4

[st. 11 ,

' '

-St.2

I-06

1st I

st10Anu IL

[St. 2

ClI a

[IS -t. I 1

[st. 1]

pr. 46

4J•--4.tJ•• Is.4

I ! ~ •l

I I U

,

I

9 i -P eI

, ,

Yl St. 12 bw 4?eI

C nm^

. -- - __.,

I•. . ."

I , , , r

I i I

I_ ,' ,' I• • st. 2

p. 46 _.

Stst. 12 1 oboe ,

F i-4i

-St.

u

2

.l

L'• "] I i F

, r : , '[st.l] ,

'13

A IL lol-

I P

f st. 10 [ t.

II F I I ' [st. 21 ' , '4 3 ,

i I ,

p. 48

[st. 121

[st. 1] "- " I

S,,I st. 3 [st. 131




are found on pp. 53-54 of Artaria 184.24 An additional, though not of course conclusive, reason to believe that pp. 53-56 were intended to come between pp. 4 and 5 is that the bifolia pp. 53-56 and pp. 5-8 are from the same sheet (see Table 5).

4? 5):: . I o I

~t~J*~ t -t vr

: i sp ":-DC; f-_ :j-li:-7

Figure 3. MS Artaria 184, p. 53=5 (see Example 6).

One further detail can be brought to bear upon this. Nottebohm, who catalogued the Artaria collection during the I86os (Johnson et al. I985, 2 3), published a short, and unfortunately rather uninformative, article on Artaria 184.25 In this article Nottebohm gave a transcription of the beginning of the movement which includes the As in octaves; that is to say, it does not follow the present sequence of pages in Artaria 184, but goes from p. 4 to p. 53 (where it stops). Nottebohm says nothing about the pages being in the wrong order. Should we conclude that when Nottebohm saw the manuscript its pages were in the sequence shown by the numbers at the bottom right? This is

possible, of course; but it is just as likely that Nottebohm himself added these numbers in trying to make sense of the manuscript as he

24 The Mendelssohn 6 draft has a trilled B and C# in place of the C#, E, and G, as shown in Example 7; the As in octaves can be seen at the end of the excerpt that Lockwood (197oa, 637) quoted from Grasnick 20ob. What follows in the sketches, however, is much briefer than the extended cadenza of pp. 53-56 of Artaria 184. 25 "Ein unvollendetes Clavierconcert" (Nottebohm I887, 223-24).




found it.26 In any case there is reason to believe that Artaria 184 had been tampered with before Nottebohm saw it, because whereas Nottebohm says in his article that it has about thirty leaves (the "about" is exasperating), Anton Griffer's catalogue of the Artaria collection as it stood around I840 lists Artaria 184 as having 27 leaves (Johnson 197 3, 226). Graffer was in the habit of omitting totally blank leaves from his reckoning, and in its current state Artaria 184 contains thirty leaves of which one is blank (pp. 27/8); it follows that, unless Graffer made a mistake, two leaves must have been added to the score since his time, and probably before Nottebohm saw it. Nottebohm's evidence, then, has no weight beyond that of an expert opinion. Nevertheless the evidence of the musical continuity betwen pp. 4 and 53, together with that of the sketches, means that it is most probably correct to read Artaria 184 in the sequence shown in Table 6. What makes the interpretation of Artaria 184 complicated is that this reading may not be the only correct one.

TABLE 6 MS Artaria 184, Reading A

Page sequence (top)

Introduciton 1-4 Tutti 53-56 Solo 5-2 I Tutti Exposition 22-40 Solo Exposition (up to Group 2)

The bottom right-hand numbers continue with pp. 57-6o of the present score. Some of these pages are heavily corrected, and Example io presents a partial transcription of them. It is these pages that Lockwood read as the beginning of the recapitulation-a tutti statement of the main theme (beginning with its fifth bar), a solo passage, and then the main theme proper in the orchestra-and this reading is the source of John Meyer's remarks about the work (see p. 338, above). But such a reading has little to recommend it. The solo passage on p. 59 includes the same As in octaves, and trills on C#, E and G, as the cadenza on p. 53; in fact it is very similar to the briefer versions of this cadenza found in the sketches. And p. 59 even begins with the last three notes of the arpeggio on p. 4. So it seems most likely that this is simply an earlier form of the cadenza on pp. 5 3-56;

26 The examples of Nottebohm's hand reproduced in Brandenberg 1981 include numerals similar in formation to those at the bottom of Artaria 184.




and an early date is in any case suggested by the fact that pp. 57-60 consist of 14-stave paper. As for the remaining pages of this bifolium, their peculiar musical construction is easily explained if we assume that the bifolium has come to be bound the wrong way round. If it were folded the other way, we would have the sequence 59-60, 57-5 8: or, in musical terms, the cadenza preceding the main theme, followed by the first twelve bars of the main theme itself. The theme has at first been written down in the form shown in the lower staves of Example io-a form that is found in Mendelssohn 6 but nowhere else.27 And this early version of the theme has subsequently been overlaid with the version in which it occurs in the initial pages of Artaria 184, as shown in the upper staves of Example 10.28 As can be seen in Figure 4, the new version has been squeezed into the spaces left by the old one; these pages have a curiously scrappy appearance, even by the

general standards of Artaria 184. ??:?i-?- ? ?- -* ? ?%i?

r

t :~, ::: : "::

.. ~II;.

- - -?? -?:I;--?---?- Y ? 1-~-?1*1~~~- -?:?'?----?I-

I--;----.r --~--~~---?-~-- .: ...._.

?- ----~~~I~ irc-cl-l*-'* ~I -?--

)*-?- -+????l??-rr-^--i ?,?r-^?---.---r~???* -I??- 1-?-? ?- f~tTil::~- -~~slrr;--z~-- ----- .....-~z-~-~c~I 1 I ._.._.~__.,___:~_ 1 :

?f

?L::

r i_ `i i t L -- I

Figure 4. MS Artaria 184, p. 58= o (see Example io).

One might easily regard pp. 57-60 of Artaria 184 as no more than a discarded open-score draft of the early part of the work, if it were not for something that was presumably noticed by whoever added the

27 See Mendelssohn 6, p. 126, st. 15-i6; p. 129, st. 5. Hence the citation in Table 4 of these pages from Artaria 184. 2s The final bar of p. 58 (which has been corrected and is difficult to read) is quite different from the corresponding point on p. 7 (see Example 2 above). However the top stave of p. 7 has also been corrected, and looks as if it originally read the same as p. 58. See also Example 9 (penultimate bar) and Example ii below (st. 7); this figure seems to have given Beethoven particular trouble.




numbers at the bottom right hand corners. For it makes perfect sense to read directly from the scrappily corrected version of these pages-which make up 9-I 2 of the lower numbering sequence-to the beginning of p. 29 of the score, which is numbered 13 at the bottom right; the music is continuous.29 And what makes this look like more than a coincidence is that p. 29 itself follows on two entirely blank, and redundant, pages in the score (pp. 27/8); in musical terms p. 26--like p. 58-leads directly to p. 29. As Table 5 shows, these blank pages form the second leaf of a bifolium. This could mean that the pages that now come before p. 29 were inserted some time after pp. 29ff. were originally written, with the blank pages representing the excess of the final bifolium of the insertion. In this case the sequence given by the numbers at the bottom right would represent an earlier version of the movement, before the insertion was made. In musical terms it would mean that the work's introduction led directly to the solo exposition.

In other words there would be no tutti exposition at all: the movement would take the shape, not of a concerto with a double exposition (or even an orchestral ritornello preceding the exposition proper), but of a symphonic movement with a single exposition in which the piano played an obbligato role. Table 7 collates the two different ways in which Artaria 184 can be read.

VI

What are we to make of these alternative readings? The simplest conclusion would be that Beethoven started off writing something that was not a piano concerto-maybe an overture with obbligato piano--but subsequently tried to turn it into a piano concerto by interpolating a tutti exposition. In other words the two possible readings of Artaria 184 would correspond to two distinct phases of the compositional process.

As it stands, this thesis is appealing but untenable. It is appealing because it addresses the basic musical peculiarity or, in terms of a piano concerto, shortcoming of the I815 movement: the essentially symphonic nature of its materials. This would not be a shortcoming at all if the work had been originally intended as some kind of symphonic movement. Indeed the symphonic nature of Beethoven's

29 Read from the end of the upper stave in Example io, second system, to the beginning of Example 4.




Example i o

Partial transcription of MS Artaria 184, pp- 57-60. Some details are again conjectural.

p. 57

st. 1

st. 1

p.60

st. 1

ilT " 1 [ t . . .-- _---

st. 12

p. 6o

st. 1

concertos, which has frequently been commented on,3o would make this a natural outcome of Beethoven's development of the genre. If, as Tovey complained,3,

Beethoven's conversion of the opening ritornello into a symphonic exposition left the soloist with nothing to add, then the logical solution (and the one that Mendelssohn and Schumann were to adopt) was to eliminate one of the expositions and integrate the solo part into the symphonic form. Moreover, the absence of any identifiable sketches for subsequent movements of Hess 15 would be explained if the work had in fact been originally intended to be in one movement. Other composers working in Vienna were experimenting with one-movement works for piano and orchestra (very different

30 See for instance Meyer 1982, 229ff., and Deane 1973, 318. 31 Tovey 1934, 71. See also Ernst Pauer's remarks quoted in Stevens 1974, 54.




TABLE 7 MS Artaria 184, Collation of Readings A and B

Page sequence Reading A Top Bottom Reading B

Introduction (i) 1-4 Introduction (i) Introduction (ii) 53-56 5-8 Tutti Exposition Solo Exposition 5-28

Dovetailed entry Group I (i)

Introduction (ii) 59-60?, II-12,1 57-58 9-Io Exposition

Group r (i) Group I (ii)

Groupi i(ii)

Transition 29-40 13-22 Transition Group 2 Group 2

ones, admittedly) at just this time-Hummel's Rondo brillant dates from 1814 and Moscheles' La Marche d'Alexandre from 1815.

There are two reasons, however, why this thesis is not tenable. One is that pp. 57-60, with their scrappy corrections, are quite different in appearance from pp. 29ff. They fit into the sequence of the score, but they don't look like part of it; it is hardly possible that they were written out at the same time, as part of a single score. The other is that the sketches in Mendelssohn 6 clearly show that, right from the start, Beethoven had in mind an exposition which remained in the tonic for its second subject-a tutti exposition, that is to say, which would be followed by a solo exposition moving to the dominant. In short, the early sketches are for a piano concerto. Where, then, does the idea of a movement with a single exposition come in?

There are some entries in the Scheide sketchbook which may have a bearing on this question. In his account of the Scheide sketchbook, Nottebohm transcribed a lengthy single-line draft of what he described as the opening of the I815 movement (Nottebohm 1887, 321ff.); his transcription is reproduced in Example ii. It begins with the introduction (though the very opening is marked "Cembalo," and the cadenza-like passage is modified) and continues with a statement of the first subject in which solo and tutti passages alternate. Now if what Nottebohm transcribed really was, as he said, a sketch for the opening of the movement, it would clearly indicate that at this point Beethoven was envisaging something other than the first movement of a conventional concerto: how could a first exposition like this be




Example xx First subject draft from p. I8 of the Scheide sketchbook, as transcribed by Nottebohm.

Cembalo

8 loco

cresc.

tutti

Solo

tutti w -I w

followed by a second one? Reference to the original sketch,32 however, illustrates the dangers of relying on Nottebohm's transcriptions,

32 Scheide, p. i8.




as Beethoven scholars did for generations. There are a number of

discrepancies.33 But the one that matters for the present argument is that the passage transcribed by Nottebohm starts half way through a line, and seems to be continuous with what precedes it. 34 This means that what Nottebohm transcribed was probably intended not for the

beginning of the movement at all, but for its recapitulation-which is what one would expect, given the location of this draft within the Scheide sketchbook. The fact that this passage includes materials from the introduction does not necessarily militate against such a conclusion, for Beethoven had set a precedent in his

E, Concerto for

reusing the introductory material at the point of recapitulation. Indeed it could be said to strengthen the conclusion, because of the way the arpeggios and trills in octaves that the piano had at the

beginning of the work-improvisatory passages which would hardly bear repetition-have been replaced by more symphonic double- dotted materials derived from the transition. 35

However, the following pages of the Scheide sketchbook contain a number of drafts of this passage in which the double-dotted material, perhaps significantly, does not appear. A relatively short draft on p. 24 has the piano's descending scale followed by a short gap before the opening tutti; a longer draft on pp. 26-27 has merely a G# in the upper stave at this point, and from then until the tutti entry almost a whole line is left empty, apart from an A in the bass which is figured 8-7. And these drafts, which indicate alternations of tutti and solo in the main theme, begin with the introduction. (One starts at the beginning of a line, while the other begins in the middle of a line but has no

33 For instance, Nottebohm has transposed the last four bars up an octave. He has also moved the "Solo" marking four bars later than where Beethoven wrote it, and while Nottebohm's transcription is plausible (his transcriptions always are) the evidence of other sketches in Scheide is that Beethoven meant his "Solo" marking to be exactly where he put it. And Nottebohm has supplied the falling triplet figure in the bar before the final "tutti" marking; what Beethoven actually wrote was a sixteenth-note figure B-A-G-A on the first beat of the bar, together with diagonal lines indicating the continuation of the figure on the subsequent beats. This is the only time this sixteenth-note figure is found in the Scheide sketches; it is perfectly easy to read, but Nottebohm was evidently expecting to see the same triplets as before. The sixteenth notes appear in the piano part on p. 29 of Artaria 184 (see Example 4), but the cue-staff has the triplets; this discrepancy suggests that these pages of the autograph are roughly contemporaneous with the Scheide draft.

34 Or so it appears on microfilm. The first half of the line consists of material derived from the opening phrase of the first theme, in D Major, and this is in turn connected (via a "2000" label) with an entry on staves 13-14 of p. i6--an entry which is hard to decipher, but seems to consist of trills (presumably for the piano) over repeated chords.

35 Stave 4 of Example ii.




apparent connection with the material preceding it.) Could it be that Beethoven was intending these two drafts, not for the recapitulation at all, but for a reworked version of the movement's opening, with a single exposition featuring the piano? There is no way of being sure; but perhaps the best argument for this hypothesis is simply the fact that (as Table 3 shows) there are so many drafts for what, if it were indeed the recapitulation, should be a section so closely modelled on what has come before as hardly to need extensive and repeated drafting in its own right.

I am suggesting that, after Beethoven had fully tested the potential of his materials through sketching parts of the development, he began to have doubts as to the ability of these materials to sustain a full-length concerto movement, and considered-perhaps only brief- ly-the possibility of a more compact, overture-like work with a single exposition. Some, though not all,36 of the later drafts in the Scheide sketchbook would represent explorations of this possibility. If he had already written out the solo exposition (which is much barer in its format than the tutti exposition, and could well have been written out earlier), Beethoven would now have thought about remodelling it so that it followed directly upon the introduction. This would mean supplying a new opening to the exposition, starting with the beginning of the first theme rather than the overlapped version of it, and the present pp. 57-60 would represent a discarded draft that Beethoven now adapted for this purpose, updating the theme to its current form. Perhaps he actually interpolated this scrappily altered bifolium between a draft of the introduction and the score of the solo exposition, just to see how the movement would look in this more compact form (after all, Beethoven's sketches provide abundant evidence that he liked to see how things looked before making major compositional decisions). If so, he presumably did not like what he saw, since he did not write out the new version properly; the subsequent addition of the tutti exposition (pp. 5-28) would represent a reversion to the original double-exposition plan.

The chronology I am putting forward is hypothetical; other interpretations of the evidence are possible. The essential point I want to make, however, is not a chronological one. It is simply that Beethoven seems to have been in two minds about what sort of movement he was composing, even though he had already written out a considerable proportion of it in full score.

36 There is a draft on p. 28 which goes as far as the second subject, and this appears in the tonic.




VII

If this is correct, then it provides a musical explanation for Beethoven's eventually abandoning the work after the extensive labor represented by seventy or so pages of sketches, not to mention the sixty pages of Artaria 184. Of course, there does not have to be a musical explanation for this; it could be that Beethoven abandoned the work, as Lockwood suggested, because he had hoped to take the solo part himself and the steady deterioration of his hearing persuaded him that this was not going to be feasible (Lockwood I97oa, 626 and 1976, 148). Or maybe he abandoned it because he had intended it for the benefit concert planned for 18I5, and the eventual cancellation of this concert removed the stimulus to get the work finished. 37 But if the evidence of Artaria 184 and of the Scheide sketches is indeed that Beethoven vacillated between an overture-like movement with one exposition and a concerto movement with two, then it becomes possible to understand something of the nature of the compositional impasse in which Beethoven may have found himself-an impasse that would explain the wholesale cancellations that are visible in certain parts of the autograph score, often without any replacement version of the music being written in.

To clarify this last point, it is useful to draw a comparison with another autograph score which ended up as a spectacular muddle of deletions and corrections, but which was nevertheless brought to a successful conclusion: that of the A-Major Cello Sonata, Op. 69. Lockwood (197ob) has shown that in the course of writing out this autograph Beethoven totally recast the relationship of the two instruments in the development section of the first movement. As graphic design the result is not unlike the autograph of Hess I5; but in musical terms there is a telling distinction between the two cases. In the case of Op. 69 the revisions, far-reaching though they were, took place within an established formal and tonal framework. Robert Winter

(i977, 120) has argued compellingly that one of the principal purposes of Beethoven's sketches was the establishment of (as he terms it) the "overall tonal direction" of a work; in general, this seems to have been the precondition for Beethoven's finalizing the thematic, transitional, and textural aspects of his music. But such overall tonal direction would clearly have been disrupted by the kind of vacillation I have

37 This is what Richard Kramer (1977, 45) suggests may have happened in the case of the unfinished Concertante of 1802. For Beethoven's proposed benefit concert see Johnson et al. 1985, 238; Beethoven refers to it in Anderson 509.




described between two quite different formal plans. In trying to formulate the movement variously as a concerto movement and as a kind of overture, Beethoven would have found himself in the unfa- miliar and uncomfortable situation of having a structural plan whose large-scale tonal direction was parlous, while at the same time having a considerable body of musical material that had already been worked into a relatively final state. If this is indeed what happened, then the compositional difficulties evident in the autograph would reflect not the fact that, as Lockwood put it (197oa, 641), "basic decisions about the material . . . have not yet been made," but rather the opposite: that the composition was too far advanced for a fundamental change in its character and direction to be possible.38

Despite the false starts and changes of direction to which Beethoven was prone, sketch studies of his completed works are by definition success stories: we have become accustomed to seeing Beethoven succeed in rescuing even the most unpromising compositional situations. The 1815 movement, by contrast, is a story of failure. Its significance for our understanding of Beethoven's compositional process lies in the fact-for so it appears to be-that despite his best efforts the movement never quite had the makings of becoming Beethoven's Sixth Piano Concerto.

The University of Hong Kong

LIST OF WORKS CITED

Anderson, Emily, ed. The Letters of Beethoven. London, 1961. Brandenburg, Sieghard. "The Autograph of Beethoven's Quartet in A

Minor, Opus i32: the Structure of the Manuscript and its Relevance for the Study of the Genesis of the Work." In Wolff 1980, 278-300.

1. "Die Beethoven-Autograph Johann Nepomuk Kafkas: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sammelns von Musikhandschriften." In Divertimento fiir Hermann J. Abs, ed. Martin Staehelin, 89--1 33. Bonn, 1981.

Deane, Basil. "The Concertos." In The Beethoven Companion, ed. Denis Arnold and Nigel Fortune, 318-28. London, 1973.

Greenfield, Donald. "Sketch Studies for Three Movements of Beethoven's String Quartets, Opus 18 Nos. i and 2." Ph.D. diss., Princeton Univ., 1983.

Hess, Willy. Verzeichnis der nicht in der Gesamtausgabe verdffentlichen Werke Ludwig van Beethovens. Wiesbaden, 1957.

38 Kramer (1977, 48-49) puts forward a similar argument regarding the 1802 Concertante (cf. the previous note).




Johnson, Douglas. "The Artaria Collection of Beethoven Manuscripts: a New Source." In Beethoven Studies i, ed. Alan Tyson, 174-236. New York, 1973.

Johnson, Douglas, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter. The Beethoven Sketch- books. Berkeley, 1985.

Kramer, Richard. "An Unfinished Concertante by Beethoven." In Beethoven Studies 2, ed. Alan Tyson, 33-65. London, 1977.

Lockwood, Lewis. "Beethoven's Unfinished Piano Concerto of 1815: Sources and Problems." Musical Quarterly 56 (1970): 624-46. Reprinted in The Creative World of Beethoven, ed. Paul Henry Lang, 122-44. New York, 1971 (1970a).

. "The Autograph of the First Movement of Beethoven's Sonata for Violoncello and Pianoforte, Opus 69." The Music Forum 2 (1970): 1-109 (1970b).

. "The Beethoven Sketchbook in the Scheide Library." Princeton University Library Chronicle 37 (1976): 139-553.

Meyer, John. "The Concerto." In The Age of Beethoven 179o-1830 (New Oxford History of Music, vol. 8), ed. Gerald Abraham, 206-54. London, 1982.

Nottebohm, Gustav. Zweite Beethoveniana: nachgelassene Aufsatze. Leipzig, 1887.

Rosen, Charles. The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. New York, 1971.

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ABSTRACT

During I814- 15 Beethoven sketched the first movement of a piano concerto, writing out a considerable proportion of it in full score. Some of the curious stylistic features that have been ascribed to this movement are the consequence of a faulty reading of MS Artaria 184, in which open-score sketches have been bound in with the autograph score. One curious feature, however, remains: the symphonic nature of the materials. There is some reason to believe that, because of this, Beethoven considered deleting the tutti exposition, resulting in a symphonic work with obbligato piano. Such indecision at a late stage in the compositional process could explain why Beethoven abandoned the work.



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Beethoven's Unfinished Piano Concerto: A Case of Double Vision?