Biamonti 586 – Sonata (Sketch), November 1814. It is found in a notebook containing sketches for Glorioso Momento, L’addio del Guerriero, the Polacca for piano, the song Merkenstein, and the canon Kurz ist der Schmerz. It is mentioned by Nottebohm, who, however, does not reproduce the music.

New information from the Centro Ricerche Musicali www.lvbeethoven.it: The sketch is located in Kraków, in the manuscript Mendelssohn 6, on page 98, staves 5–8. At the time of Nottebohm’s analysis it was held in the Preussische Staatsbibliothek in Berlin but, at the end of the Second World War, it was among the manuscripts from that library that could no longer be traced. It was eventually rediscovered in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków.

Nottebohm, in his Zweite Beethoveniana (chapter 33), while analysing the entire manuscript, describes it on page 309 as follows:

“Den Entwürfen zur Cantate folgen ferner, ausser liegengebliebenen Entwürfen, von denen einer die Ueberschrift ‘Sonate’ zeigt, (S. 99) Ansätze zur Composition von Goethe’s ‘Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt’.”

[“The sketches for the Cantata are followed, moreover, by unfinished sketches, one of which bears the title ‘Sonata’ (p. 99), and by attempts at a composition on Goethe’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt.”]

This Sonata, also thanks to the accidentals inserted by Beethoven in this sketch, must have been conceived in the key of E-flat major. It consists of 11 measures written in 3/4 time; the melody in the right hand is already complete, and we also find several indications for the left hand. In the second measure, on the lower staff, there is an indication that I have not been able to decipher. In the following staves we find another fragment which, although it presents figurations similar to this opening, does not seem to me to belong to this Sonata.