Biamonti 727 – “Es sind nur Steine” (“They are only stones”), fragment, late May – early June 1820

Annotated in a conversation book: (ILTE notebook, page 661). A wordplay on the name of the publisher Sigmund A. Steiner (Stein = stone). It is found on folio 65-recto of Conversation Book No. 14 (according to the Staatsbibliothek Berlin numbering) or No. 13 (according to the cover numbering).

The site Unheard Beethoven informs us that, on the afternoon of June 28, 1820, during a visit to Vienna from the countryside town of Mödling, Beethoven jotted down this small musical fragment in his Conversation Book. It refers to the Viennese music publisher Sigmund Anton Steiner, about whom Beethoven occasionally complained for being slow to publish his works. It is written in pencil but legible; only the last three notes are somewhat unclear.

Both the version offered by Biamonti and that by Schünemann are unconvincing: From what we see in the first measure—the only complete one—in both versions Beethoven would have had to conceive a theme in 7/8. According to the editors of the site, Biamonti and Schünemann misinterpreted the final quarter-note C of the first subphrase as a sixteenth-note G. Therefore, the site proposes a new version of this fragment.