Hess 117 – Music for Christoph Kuffner’s Tragedy Tarpeja

The old GA contained only the Triumphal March (GA, Series 2, no. 14) [cataloged as WoO 2a in Kinsky/Halm, p. 429]. According to Otto Jahn, the piece titled “Introduction to the Second Act” (Berlin, Beethoven Autograph, Artaria 152) may also be part of the music composed for Tarpeja. Georg Schünemann adopted this view without reservation and published the two pieces – the Introduction and the Triumphal March – in 1938 with B. Schott’s Söhne in Mainz.

In his preface to that edition, Schünemann even speculated that other pieces may have existed which are now lost. (It is the common opinion among most Beethoven scholars that the second piece, “Introduction to the Second Act”, cataloged in Kinsky/Halm as WoO 2b, p. 430, is a discarded introduction to the second act of Leonore, which in 1805 was in three acts. What seems to be the decisive article on the identity of this piece is the one by Clemens Brenneis, “Introduction to the Second Act und die ‘Leonore’ von 1805”, Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, XXXII, no. 3 (1990), pp. 181–303.)