Biamonti 687 – Unspecified Notes from February–March 1818.

Unspecified notes found in the conversation notebook from February–March 1818 (notebook preserved in Bonn, Beethovenarchiv No. 53). Some are written on the inside of the first page of the notebook. Others, on the back sheet of the cover, appear to refer to a Kyrie.

These fragments are located in Bonn at the Beethoven-Haus, in Conversation Book No. 1. This notebook likely contains the first written Beethovenian conversations, spanning from February to June 1818. The musical notes are found mostly on the page preceding and immediately following the actual notebook—that is, on the inside pages of the cover. They are written on pink paper, in very fine pencil, and are therefore difficult to decipher.

Only the small second fragment, a F major arpeggio, written on page 1 of the notebook (folio 1-recto), is easily legible. The version of Biamonti analyzed here matches exactly the one provided by Schünemann in his transcription book of the Konversationshefte, which we have also followed. Biamonti adds only one fragment before the one written on folio 1-recto, which is not found in either the manuscript or in Schünemann.

These fragments can likely be classified more as studies in counterpoint in the Dorian style, perhaps preparatory to the formation of the Kyrie of the Missa Solemnis Op. 123, although there exists a striking analogy between the incipit of these sketches and the Assai sostenuto of the String Quartet Opus 132.