Hess 11 – Romance for Violin (and Orchestra?) 1816. Unidentified – Hess 11.

In the aforementioned catalog number, Hess refers to this composition based on a note found in the preface to the Eulenburg edition of the Concerto in D major for violin and orchestra by Altmann, who stated that it was offered by Beethoven to the publisher Steiner in 1816. Nothing else is known.

Hess/Green: Romance No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra. W. Altmann alluded to such a work as the one offered to publisher [Sigmund Anton] Steiner in 1816 (Preface to the Eulenburg edition of the violin concerto), “…but this offer is not proof that he (Beethoven) actually had it ready. The late Beethoven scholar Erich Prieger was aware that this third romance was in private hands and hoped to be able to locate it.” Unfortunately, this hope has not yet been fulfilled. [This work was not listed in the price list sent to Steiner in 1816, but rather in a list of works compiled by Beethoven for his own reference and later offered to C.F. Peters in 1822. On this point, Alan Tyson writes: “In the appendix to the third volume of his biography of Beethoven, Thayer cites a price list that Beethoven compiled for a number of his unpublished works (and in a couple of cases, not yet composed).

Thayer seems to have learned of it from a transcription by Otto Jahn, and his published text contains some errors. Fortunately, these can be corrected, as the list is now held at the SBB, cataloged as ‘Mus. Ms. Autogr. Beethoven 35, 80.’ As expected, the list bears no date, since the document was likely intended for Beethoven’s personal use. Thayer published the list along with Beethoven’s correspondence from the years 1815–1817 with Steiner and Haslinger, and added a rather cryptic footnote stating that, based on clues in the correspondence with Steiner and Streicher, the document can be dated to late 1816. (See Thayer III, pp. 487–8; reprinted unchanged in Thayer-Deiters-Riemann III, pp. 619–20. The footnote was omitted in Thayer/Krehbiel and Thayer/Forbes). Thayer’s dating was not disputed by Nottebohm. (Nor, of course, by Hess). Today, however, it is clear that the list must be dated more than five years later. The most compelling evidence for a later date is found in a letter Beethoven wrote to Leipzig publisher C.F. Peters on June 5, 1822.” This letter is cataloged as Anderson 1079/Brandenburg 1468. The work is listed in the price list as Romanze für Violin solo at a price of 15 ducats and offered in the letter at the same price as Violin-Romanze (Solo mit ganzem Orchester). The only known works by Beethoven that match this description are Op. 40 and Op. 50, both published many years earlier. Tyson speculates that, “The only known composition for violin and orchestra at the time was the Violin Concerto WoO 5, written in Bonn between 1790 and 1792. All that survives is a fragment of the first movement, although, since the score ends at the conclusion of a fascicle (a group of pages bound together), it is plausible that more existed. Perhaps its slow movement still existed when the list was compiled and was the Romance referred to here.” See Alan Tyson, A Beethoven Price List of 1822, in Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honor of Elliot Forbes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1984.