Windows into Beethoven’s Lessons in Bonn: Kirnberger’s Die wahren Grundsätze zum Gebrauch der Harmonie (1773) and Vogler’s Gründe der Kuhrpfälzischen Tonschule in Beyspielen (1776/1778)

Abstract

Beethoven’s lessons in Vienna with Haydn, Albrechtsberger, and Salieri are well known, but considerably less has been written about his earlier studies in Bonn. This article examines what Beethoven may have learned from two treatises that Gustav Nottebohm (Nottebohn 1873) connected to Beethoven’s Bonn manuscripts: Johann Philipp Kirnberger’s Die wahren Grundsätze zum Gebrauch der Harmonie (Kirnberger 1773) and Georg Joseph Vogler’s Gründe der Kuhrpfälzischen Tonschule in Beyspielen (1776, revised in 1778). I corroborate the evidence that links these treatises to Beethoven, analyze and categorize their contents, and suggest some parallels between materials in these treatises and Beethoven’s Bonn works including his “Elector” piano sonatas (WoO 47; 1783) and his two unusual preludes for piano or organ (op. 39; 1789, published in 1803). From what we know of Beethoven’s studies in Vienna, several pillars of standard eighteenth-century musical education are missing: the study of solfeggio, thoroughbass, and harmony. This article makes the case that Beethoven encountered this training in Bonn. From Kirnberger’s Grundsätze, he would have learned about the fundamental bass, harmonic function and progression, and the principles of prolongation. In Vogler’s book, he would have encountered solfeggio exercises, common thoroughbass patterns including the Rule of the Octave, invertible sequences, diminution patterns, modulations schemes to every key, the fundamental bass, and more. Although these two treatises were not the only books Beethoven likely studied in Bonn, they offer probable windows into his formative lessons in music theory, improvisation, and composition.