Biamonti 480 – Sketches from Spring 1809
The musical examples, analyses, and texts on this page are curated by Graziano Denini.
Biamonti 480 – Sketches from Spring 1809, contained in a group of sheets described by Nottebohm under numbers 477, 478, and 479, and reported as follows (Nottebohm, II, page 265).
(The sketchbook referred to by Biamonti and Nottebohm is the so-called “Landsberg 5” sketchbook. It dates from 1809 and is preserved in the Beethoven Collection at the Music Department of the German State Library in Berlin. The Beethovenhaus in Bonn published an excellent edition in 1993, edited by Dr. Clemens Brenneis. Unfortunately, the first pages are missing. However, several sheets have been added that come from the Peters and Willmot sketchbooks.)
The sketches in this notebook concern Opus 69, 70, 73, 74, 75-5, 75-6, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81a, 82-2, 85, 86, 115. It contains an impressive number of unpublished fragments.
Nottebohm writes on page 265: “Then (p. 45 ff.) there are again unused beginnings. These two sketches cited by Nottebohm are found: the first on page 50, staves 3–4; the second on page 51, staves 1–2.”
After this second sketch, we see written in fine calligraphy the name “Tomaselli” (though it does not appear to be in Beethoven’s hand). These two sketches are: one in C major in 2/4, and one in C minor in 3/4.
Regarding Nottebohm’s indications, it must be noted that—aside from the error in page numbering due to a fanciful pagination created by Nottebohm himself (see manuscript description in the Sketches section)—the first sketch was written with several errors that render the passage musically awkward; we therefore present the corrected version. The second passage, however, was transcribed correctly.
