I. Sources of knowledge of Beethoven’s compositional procedures

a) Sketchbook Leaves

b) Composing Scores

c) Autograph Manuscripts

Problems:
Definition; Identification; Reconstruction; Deciphering contents; interpretation.

Interrelationships of sketches, composing scores, and autographs: for a given work, what can we discover about the way in which Beethoven developed his ideas from initial sketches to the finished work, and is there evidence that he may have back-tracked to the sketchbooks or sketch-leaves while working on later stages of the work?

Single-stave sketches and score sketches: most of his entries in the sketchbooks are single-stave ideas, ranging from short “concept sketches” to long “continuity drafts.”  For most of the early and middle-period works we have single-stave sketches and, where they have survived, autographs. We have many autographs for middle-period and late works, most of which have late compositional changes (and most of these changes remain to be deciphered and understood).

 

Problem: were there score sketches for many works of the early and middle periods that we no longer possess?

The score sketches for the late quartets are plentiful and have been catalogued with thoroughness and care by Robert Winter in JTW; almost all of them, however, remain to be transcribed and studied (the exceptions are the score sketches for Op. 131, fourth movement and finale, which Winter discussed in his dissertation, Compositional Origins of Beethoven’s Opus 131 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982).

An example of a large project for which we possess multiple types of sketches and a rudimentary full score is the first movement of Beethoven’s unfinished Piano Concerto in D major (Hess 15) of 1815.  For this movement we have sketches on one, two, and three systems, plus the sixty-page rudimentary full score (Berlin, Artaria MS 184).  For an interpretation of the potential relationships of these sources see L. Lockwood, “Beethoven’s Unfinished Piano Concerto of 1815,” The Musical Quarterly, LVI/4 (1970), pp. 624-46; reprinted in P.H. Lang, ed., The Creative World of Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1971), pp.122-44.

A truly major contribution to current knowledge of Beethoven sources (including all the categories mentioned here) is the recent new thematic catalogue:

Ludwig van Beethoven, Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, bearbeitet von Kurt Dorfmueller, Norbert Gerstch, und Julia Ronge (Munich: G.Henle Verlag, 2014), 2 vols.

This immense achievement now supersedes the former standard thematic catalogue of Beethoven’s works by Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm (Henle, 1955)