Kuffner came into contact with Beethoven during the composer’s final years, at a time when Beethoven was impatiently seeking texts for operas and oratorios. In 1826 Kuffner offered him the texts for two oratorios, Saul and Die Elemente (The Elements). No proposals for operatic works have survived.

Moreover, if Czerny’s recollections are accurate, it would appear that several years earlier Kuffner had hastily written the text for the finale of the Choral Fantasy, Opus 80, following Beethoven’s poetic instructions, as the composer had already written part of the music. It is, however, impossible to verify the truth of this statement. Nottebohm, in Zweite Beethoveniana, footnote 503/4, reports the claim but adds a question mark, noting that this text does not appear in the complete edition of all Kuffner’s poems, published in twenty volumes in 1845. Alexander Wheelock Thayer, on the other hand, saw no reason to doubt Czerny’s statement: “Sicherlich ist die Versifikation der Gedanken eines ändern nicht in dem Grade eine originale Schöpfung, daß wenige solcher Strophen in eines Dichters ,Werke‘ Aufnahme finden könnten” (“Surely the versification of another person’s thoughts is not so original a creation that a poet would necessarily include such verses in his collected works”).

Kuffner wrote the tragedy Tarpeja, which was first performed at Vienna’s Hofburg Theatre on 26 March 1813 and received only one further performance. It is strikingly reminiscent of Collin’s tragedy Coriolan. Both plays are set in Rome’s legendary past and deal with the same theme: a noble and upright man torn by conflict between personal inclination and loyalty to his Roman homeland. In a moment of deep despair, Coriolanus joins Rome’s enemies. Regretting his decision, he realises he will be a traitor in either case—both to Rome and to his new allies. Only suicide can restore his lost honour.

Kuffner’s drama presents a similar conflict. Here the central figure is Tarpeia, the daughter of Tarpeius, a general and friend of King Romulus, who is tragically in love with Tatius, the noble king of the Sabines—the same Sabines secretly seeking revenge for the audacious abduction of their women by the Romans. Once again, the only possible resolution of this moral conflict is death. Coriolanus and Tarpeia are two solitary figures of noble birth, fundamentally incapable of betrayal, yet fragile and fallible, drawn towards death as they are torn between duty and emotion, unable to find their way amid the compromises and pains of life. Remaining faithful to these opposing principles, it is easy to see why Beethoven was drawn to this theme, which in Collin’s Coriolan Overture achieved immortal heights.

As for the music to Tarpeja, all that is known with certainty is that Beethoven composed it for the performance of 26 March 1813, given for the benefit of the retired actor (and Mozart’s brother-in-law) Joseph Lange (1751–1831). It consists of a short but grandiose triumphal march in C major, later published in the complete edition of Beethoven’s works (see the attached PDF). The contemporary announcement read: “Der Marsch ist neu componirt von Hm. v. Beethoven” (“The march has been newly composed by Mr. V. Beethoven”).

A short march-like movement in D major, which Beethoven titled in Italian “Introduzione de(!) IIdo atto” (WoO 2b), was once assumed to have been written for this same work, though it is now generally believed to have been composed for the second act of Fidelio. The playbill gives no indication, and no sketches or fair copies of the score have been found. The surviving autograph, full of corrections and deletions, could in no way have been used for a performance. Whether Beethoven indeed wrote this “Introduction” for Tarpeja and later decided not to use it remains an open question.

Georg Schünemann attributed the “Introduction” to Tarpeja. In his edition of the tragedy (B. Schotts Söhne, Mainz, 1938) he claimed that these two pieces—the introduction to the second act and the triumphal march—were the only surviving numbers from a once complete dramatic score for Kuffner’s tragedy, now lost. This, however, remains conjectural, as Schünemann provided no source for his theory.

Perhaps the essential question is this: where in the tragedy is music explicitly required? Apart from a “necessary” overture and the three central acts, which call for no music, the text mentions musical cues in the following instances: a trumpet sound at the end of the eighth scene of Act I and again at the close of the act (probably a very brief march); in the final recitative of the third scene, at the end of the fourth, and in the final scene—likely short brass fanfares, perhaps only signals. Beethoven may have written something of this sort; the only comparable example he produced many years later was for the first and sixth scenes of Die Weihe des Hauses, Opus 124 (see Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, pp. 386–402). The eighth scene of Act II calls for martial music for the entry of the victorious Romans leading their captives, and again a march at the end of the scene, as well as a triumphal march at the close of the play.

It cannot be determined with certainty in which of these sections the triumphal march was performed—perhaps in each of the three scenes—but this remains pure speculation. In any case, Kuffner’s verse structure offered Beethoven little scope for the kind of powerful dramatic music he had created for Goethe’s Egmont.

The edition of Tarpeja presented in the attached PDF is based on the reprint in volume two of the complete edition of Kuffner’s dramas, published in two volumes by Kaulfuss and Krammer in Vienna in 1825. The volume contains Die Minnesänger auf der Wartburg, Catilina, and Tarpeja.