Review: Beethovens Werkstatt

Abstract

Beethovens Werkstatt. Bernhard R. Appel and Joachim Veit, Directors. URL: http://beethovens-werkstatt.de Numerous scattered pages of Ludwig van Beethoven's compositional legacy, bought up by individual collectors after his death in 1827, have gradually found their way into institutional collections. Quite a number of these libraries, both state and private, now make their treasures digitally accessible to a worldwide public in scanned facsimiles. The Beethoven-Haus Digital Archives, the largest collection of Beethoven manuscripts on the web, has led and encouraged this effort since the beginning of the present century.1 In addition to providing access to digitized manuscripts, early prints, letters, pictures, and other documents held physically at the archive—a laudable public service that would be even greater if the images were not marred by an ownership mark, LVB, resembling initials carved into the inherited family silver—the website offers links to important manuscripts housed in other collections, not all of which have yet gone live at the linked institutions. For close to sixty years the research division of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn has overseen the new critical edition of Beethoven's music that is slowly being issued by Henle Verlag, in addition to producing a facsimile sketchbook series, a complete edition of the letters, and numerous other Beethoven-related publications, notably, in 2014, a hefty two-volume print catalogue of Beethoven's oeuvre that replaces the old Kinsky-Halm.2 The Wissenschaft nurtured here is deeply rooted in textual studies, editorial theory, and the practice of making critical editions. Beethovens Werkstatt, a highly visible new collaboration between the Beethoven-Haus and the Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar Detmold/Paderborn, furthered by the Akademie der Wissenschaften …