A Chronological Checklist of Collected Editions of Beethoven's Solo Piano Sonatas Since His Own Day

Abstract

On an earlier occasion (Notes 29 [1972-73]: 795-96), the late Albert Riemenschneider, collector of the remarkable Bach library at BaldwinWallace College, was quoted as offering to trade his right arm for the one edition he still lacked among 106 known editions of Das wohltemperierte Clavier. How he got 106 is not now evident, since the number of editions the late Sylvia Kenney has since listed in her Catalog of the . . . Riemenschneider . . . Bach Library (New York, 1960), pages 254-76, is only 94, apart from 58 editions of excerpts and arrangements. In any case, the real though indirect point of this recollection is to cite Kenney's list as the one precedent known to me for the present Checklist-that is, for this record of the continuing stream of editions through which has gone the corpus of Beethoven's solo piano sonatas, one of the greatest bibles of all music, from its creation to the present day. Of course, the number of such bibles-the kind without which no lover of the arts would be caught stranded on a desert isle-is highly restricted. Bach's Inventions invite a similar listing, one that surely would contain more editions than Kenney's, and so do Beethoven's sonatas, which, with their total of 133 in this Checklist, may contain still more. But after these, at least in keyboard music, it is hard to think of another bible that ranks similarly high in musical significance