Biamonti 602 – Sonata Pastorale for Piano and Cello.  From a sketchbook dated February – August 1815

Biamonti 602 – Sonata Pastorale for piano and cello. As reported by Nottebohm, Zweite Beethoveniana, vol. II, page 317, from a sketchbook dated February – August 1815. It is located in Kraków at the Jagiellonian Library, on page 24 of the Mendelssohn-Stiftung 1 Pocket Sketchbook, named after its owner Abraham Mendelssohn, father of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

This notebook was analyzed by Nottebohm in Chapter XXXIV of his analytical work Zweite Beethoveniana. The Mendelssohn 1 sketchbook is one of those small notebooks Beethoven used to carry in his pocket during his Viennese walks; all sketches and annotations are written in pencil. Some of these sketches were later considered important by the Maestro and thus rewritten in ink so as not to forget them; one can indeed see, beneath the ink writing, the shadow of the pencil notation. Naturally, since these are “personal” notes that Beethoven jotted down quickly to remember later at home, they lack all clefs and key signatures; sometimes—and this is one such case—their deciphering is difficult:

• Should the cello part be read in bass clef, suggesting a possible G major?
• Or in treble clef, implying a hypothetical A minor?
• The first arpeggio of the piano (notated as “cembalo” in the manuscript) is written in bass clef, and thus would be a C major arpeggio; or in treble clef, and thus an A minor arpeggio?

Perhaps to these questions, in the absence of a more advanced version, there may never be a definitive answer.