Ludwig van Beethoven – Transcriptions and Studies of the Works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
List of the transcriptions and studies that Beethoven made of the works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
The musical examples on this page are by Graziano Denini.
Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Weimar 1714 – Hamburg 1788). Son of J. Sebastian, he was also his pupil. After an upbringing spent in Weimar, Köthen and Leipzig, he studied law in Frankfurt an der Oder and in Leipzig. Music, however, remained his true vocation: in 1740 he became harpsichordist at the court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam. After twenty years of service, during which he consolidated his reputation as a composer throughout Europe, in 1768 he took up the post of director of sacred music in Hamburg, a position he held until his death.
He composed two Passions, several Cantatas, two Oratorios, sacred songs, odes (after Gerbert), many Concertos, Symphonies, Chamber Works, and more than 210 keyboard pieces, among which the Sonatas are pre-eminent. His music is striking both for its stylistic boldness and for its intense expressiveness. It is characterised by the introduction of dramatic elements into the sonata genre in general; by the establishment of a model type of sonata—three movements with a slow movement in the middle and a first movement in tripartite form; and by the expansion of melodic cantabile writing, which until then had been little developed in German keyboard music. As a teacher, he left the invaluable treatise Versuch über die wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen (1753–62).
I) From six harpsichord sonatas, Opus 2, “Württemberg”
(“Württemberg Sonatas”, Wq 49, from which: No. 4 (H 32), 2nd movement, and No. 5 (H 34), 2nd movement).
A-Wgm, A 75 IV. Transcription: Seyfried / Studien, pp. 160–167. Description: Vienna / Autographs, p. 144.
In the Treatise on Harmony and Composition, pages 160 ff., Beethoven transcribes for study the two slow movements of the Opus 2 sonatas, Wq 49, H. 32 and 34, known as the “Württemberg Sonatas”.
II) Zwey Litaneyen aus Schleswig – Holsteinischen Gesangbuche
This series of harmonic progressions with figured bass, written on page 25 of the notebook now known as the Eroica Sketchbook or Landsberg 6, was identified by Gustav Nottebohm as a combination of three pieces by C. P. E. Bach, taken from Zwei Litaneyen (Wq 204). This work, consisting of old and new litanies (Alten und Neuen Litaneyen), was completed in Hamburg in 1785 and published in Copenhagen in 1786.
The work was described by Bach himself as: “Two litanies from the Holstein Hinnenbuch, with fine melodies, for eight vocal parts, two choirs, and corresponding basso continuo, assessed and arranged for harmony and for the use and pleasure of those who wish to learn.” — C. P. E. Bach.
Johann Friedrich Reichardt wrote in his Musikalisches Kunst-Magazin of 1791: “Creativity, richness, diligence, courage, correctness, and wit make this work one of the most remarkable and enduring monuments of German art and style. Certainly, no connoisseur of art, eager for instruction, will be able to set it aside without having derived great benefit and pleasure from it.”
The pedagogical stance of the work spoken of by the composer and critic Johann Friedrich Reichardt is made explicit by Bach himself in his Preface: “For the pleasure of those who are desirous of instruction, I have marked with [NB] certain passages that indicate my concern for the words. Nevertheless, I do not deny that there are also passages in which unusual harmony was necessary, which I nevertheless chose, for the sake of variety, bearing in mind that it was not in contrast with the meaning of the written word.”
The necessity of harmonic variety is rendered indispensable by the repetitive nature of the Litanies themselves. Although Luther’s revised form of the Litanies, used in the Holstein Hinnerbuch, does not contain all the petitions to the saints present in its Catholic counterparts (almost sixty supplications), each is constituted by a phrase sung by one choir and a corresponding phrase sung by a second choir.
The litanies all conclude with a series of “Amen,” sung by the choir. Considering the 537 measures of the Alte Litanye, Beethoven notes in his notebook the second phrase of the ninth petition (measures 48 to 51).
The basic form of the cantus firmus for the first large section and for the second section are provided respectively in the following Examples.
| Choir 1: Sei uns Gnädig!
Choir 1: Vor allem Irrtum, Choir 1: Vor Aufruhr und Zwietracht, |
Choir 2: Hilf uns, Herr, Herr unser Gott.
Choir 2: Behutt uns, Herr, Herr, unser Gott. Choir 2: uns Behutt, Herr, Herr, unser Gott. |
[Be kind to us, Help us, Lord, Lord our God]
the second sentence of the eleventh petition (mm. 62-66): [From all our errors, Protect us, Lord, Lord our God] and the first sentence of petition XVII (mm. 107-10): [From disturbance and discord, Protect us, Lord, Lord our God |
Eleventh petition, phrase 2 (page 25, staves 1b/2b – 3a/4a): passage “a” is added at the beginning. However, unlike the note added at the beginning of the first phrase, this one appears to have two bar lines. It is unclear whether this indicates a soprano and alto voice on the same note, or something else that remains obscure to us. The figures have been omitted on the fourth, fifth and sixth bass notes.
Beethoven originally wrote the last two bass notes of this phrase as E and A, thus producing a perfect cadence. These notes are then erased, and C. P. E. Bach’s original descending bass line D–C is restored.
Petition XVII, phrase 1 (page 25, staves 3b/4b): the dynamic markings (forte in the first bar and fortissimo in the second bar) are omitted.
Beethoven’s version differs from C. P. E. Bach’s original music in the following ways:
Ninth petition, phrase 2 (page 25, staff 1a/2a): the G major key signature is omitted. Instead, Beethoven adds a single G at the beginning.
The absence of a key signature necessitates the addition of a sharp in the figured bass above the D in the second full bar (note F natural in the following bar). The dynamic markings (forte in the first bar and fortissimo in the second bar) have been omitted. (It should be noted that Beethoven retained the dynamic markings in the second phrase, which does not seem particularly relevant for a purely harmonic exercise.)
It is hardly surprising that Beethoven should have been interested in this publication. Not only is it well established that he admired C. P. E. Bach in general, but he had already shown a keen interest in various harmonisations of sacred melodies. Franz Wegeler recounts an anecdote concerning a performance of the Lamentations of Jeremiah given in Bonn, for which Beethoven had written unusually bold harmonisations that greatly astonished the tenor Ferdinand Heller.
Joseph Schmidt-Görg developed an interesting theory of a connection between this anecdote and a complex matrix of figured basses written on folio 96 recto of the miscellany known as the “Kafka” (description, MIDI and MP3 available on our website).
Richard Kramer went further, suggesting a connection between these figured basses and twenty-six different harmonisations of the phrase from the Lutheran hymn “Ach Gott und Herr, wie groß und schwer sind mein begangne Sünden!”, contained in Johann Philipp Kirnberger’s music-theoretical treatise Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in Musik. Although Kramer stated that “the expressivity of the text does not seem to have been Beethoven’s primary concern” about these sketches in the “Kafka” miscellany, it is nevertheless unclear whether this harmonic progression was Beethoven’s sole interest in the act of copying these passages by C. P. E. Bach.
Indeed, Beethoven does not include the text, and only the last two passages chosen by the Bonn master were identified by Bach as being of harmonic interest. The first bears no “N.B.” (as indicated by Bach himself in his Preface). Instead of using the complete progression of a single petition, Beethoven treats the progressions out of context (Choir I, phrase of petitions 9 and 11, and Choir I, phrase of petition 17). One is left to wonder whether this represented for Beethoven a specific investigation into a particular compositional process, or whether it was taken as didactic material (as Bach and Reichardt themselves suggested), or perhaps whether the sequence of text extrapolated from its context (“Help us, Lord, our God; protect us, Lord, our God, from strife and discord”) was connected with the mental and physical struggles that the composer was enduring during those years.
Beethoven’s interest in these works lasted well beyond these notes. In his Tagebuch, his personal diary from the years 1812–1818, he wrote: “Bachs Litaneyen nicht zu vergessen” (“Not to forget Bach’s Litanies”). This note dates from around 1817–1818, and in those very years he undertook research into certain “Gregorian chants”, as he mentioned elsewhere in the same Tagebuch (p. 168), in preparation for his masterpiece, the Missa solemnis.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach AI
III) Kanons. D-B, Mus ms. autogr. Landsberg 5, S. 46.
Datierung: 1809, Faksimile und Ubertragung: Brenneis/Landsberg 5, weiteres Faksimile: SBB/Mikrofiches.
Vorlage: Kirnbergers “Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik” (siehe auch Abschriften Beethovens aus Musiktheoretika).
