Two Beethoven Facsimiles

Abstract

Reviewed by: Streichquartett B-Dur op. 130; Grande Fugue: B-Dur op. 133 by Ludwig van Beethoven, and: Klaviertrio B-Dur Opus 97 "Erzherzog"-Trio by Ludwig van Beethoven Seow-Chin Ong Ludwig van Beethoven. Klaviertrio B-Dur Opus 97 "Erzherzog"-Trio. Foreword by Mitsuko Uchida. Introduction by Julia Ronge. München: G. Henle Verlag, 2020. [Foreword and introduction in German and English. Cloth on slipcase. ISMN 979-0-201-83230-2. $245.] Ludwig van Beethoven. Streichquartett B-Dur op. 130; Grande Fugue: B-Dur op. 133. Commentary by Ulrich Konrad. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2019. (Documenta musicological. Zweite Reihe, Handschriften-Faksimiles; Bd. LV) [Commentary in German and English. Hardcover. ISBN 978-3-376-182464-1. $436.] [End Page 640] Issued to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth in 2020, Henle's facsimile of the autograph of Beethoven's Piano Trio in B-flat major, op. 97, the "Archduke" Trio, the most expansive of all the composer's essays in the genre, is a beautiful document, with the deep red color of the binding and the hard case contrasting strikingly with the decorative gold lettering. Quite apart from the content of the facsimile, the richness of the presentation alone invites one to pick it up and admire it. The autograph, originally housed in the Preußische Staatsbibliothek in Berlin prior to World War II, is now kept in the Biblioteka Jagiellónska in Cracow, Poland. An account of how this autograph, together with many other priceless manuscripts previously kept in the Preußische Staatsbibliothek came to be deposited in the Biblioteka Jagiellónska, is given in Nigel Lewis's Paperchase (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981). The autograph is bound in two volumes, the first containing the first two movements of the work and the second, the last two. Both volumes, however, are not of the same size, and the facsimile is accordingly published in similar fashion. Published in color, it appears to preserve the physical dimensions of the autograph (although this is not mentioned in the commentary). The first two movements of the autograph feature papers in the usual oblong Querformat that Beethoven had so often used throughout his career. The last two movements, by contrast, are characterized by papers in vertical Hochformat. This dissimilarity in paper size and orientation within the same autograph is extremely unusual for Beethoven. Indeed, the watermark of the second volume's Hochformat paper is a rarity in Beethoven: among the thousands of Beethoven manuscript papers in existence, only forty-five folios are known to bear a similar watermark (including the papers for the autograph of the Violin Sonata in G major, op. 96, a work roughly contemporaneous with the "Archduke" Trio). Manufactured in Italy, in a town called Fabriano (in the Marche region), this Italian paper stands apart from the vast majority of papers made within the Hapsburg empire that Beethoven had often used. For a more extensive discussion of the autograph, see my article "The Autograph of Beethoven's 'Archduke' Trio," in Beethoven Forum, vol. 11, no. 2 (2004): 181–208. The introduction to the facsimile, written by Julia Ronge, describes in brief the history of the work, its genesis, the circumstances of its publication, the autograph, and the composer's working methods in connection with the "Archduke" autograph (although, to be sure, Beethoven's manner of working described here may be applied more widely to the composer's manuscripts in general, including his sketches). Not included in the introduction are some of the details that a musicologist may look for, such as diagrams showing the paper gathering structure of the autograph and drawings of the watermarks of the papers used. While these details are available elsewhere, having them here would have been especially appropriate and convenient. Beethoven's autographs are essentially working manuscripts at a late [End Page 641] stage of the compositional process. As such, they are typically characterized by revisions and emendations of various kinds, from corrections of small errors to reworkings of longer musical passages. Revisions that are particularly involved are sometimes written out on fresh manuscript paper that is then pasted over the original musical text. Although such paste-overs are not present in the "Archduke" Trio autograph...