Biamonti 686 – Sketches probably related to the second movement of the Ninth Symphony, Opus 125; late 1817 – early 1818. Nottebohm (II, pp. 161–162) refers to the preparatory work for the Ninth Symphony dating from late 1817 to early 1818. Some sketches already show a strong resemblance to the future composition, while others remain quite distant from it, such as the following examples. Additional sketches are discussed under nos. 746 and 779. See also no. 597.

Update from the Beethoven Music Research Center www.lvbeethoven.it (May 2026): In Chapter XX of his Zweite Beethoveniana, Nottebohm cites these sketches for the second movement of the Ninth Symphony (pp. 159 ff.): “The beginning of the composition of the Ninth Symphony is connected with the beginning of the first movement. The earliest sketches for this movement show that Beethoven intended to write a symphony. They are found on scattered sheets from 1817. How far the work had progressed by the end of 1817 or the beginning of 1818, and whether Beethoven was already thinking of the other movements, can be seen from a sketchbook of that period.” [Musical examples for the first, second, and third movements of the Symphony follow.]

These sketches were probably written in the Taschen‑Notirungsbuch A, the pocket sketchbook known as the Boldrini. However, this sketchbook had already been lost by the end of the nineteenth century (on this matter, see Johnson, Tyson, and Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks, pp. 347–350). Since no copy of the manuscript survives, we must necessarily rely on Nottebohm’s 1879 transcription, first published in the Musikalisches Wochenblatt and later reprinted in Zweite Beethoveniana.