Biamonti 401 – Piece that recalls at the beginning an Aria from Haydn’s The Seasons, circa 1803. (Page 166). Nottebohm (page 71) reports the following sketch.

It is located in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, in the Eroica Sketchbook (Landsberg 6), on page 166, lines 1–5.

Although there are no accidentals in the key signature, this Aria-like beginning should be in F-sharp minor; in fact, we find G naturals and E-sharps.

It consists of three sketches: the first is melodic, the other two more harmonic. At the end of the third sketch, we find the upbeat notes of the first sketch again, and at the end of the first sketch Beethoven writes “fine”: we could thus hypothesize a da capo al fine that connects the third sketch with a repetition of the first.

The writing of this fragment is curious: the second sketch is written on lines 2–3, halfway through the lines, with the third beginning on lines 3–4 and concluding on lines 4–5. Beethoven probably wrote the first sketch partly across two lines and partly on one, then wrote the treble clef part of the second sketch, began the third, and at the third bar of this, stopped to complete the second sketch also with the bass clef notes, and then concluded the third sketch, which no longer had its own free line, so he moved down one.