During the first years of residence in Vienna – where he would later establish his permanent residence – Beethoven, while dedicating himself to an increasingly intense activity as a pianist and composer, continued to study with Haydn, Schenk and Albrechtsberger, also occasionally practicing with Ferdinando Salieri in the practice of Italian vocal music. (obviously read Antonio – this is perhaps the only typo in Giovanni Biamonti’s Catalogue). The numerous notes and exercises relating to these studies and other teaching material collected by him almost in the form of a treatise, put up for auction after his death together with the other papers and music of the “succession” in November 1827, were purchased by the Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger, and entrusted by him to the well-known Kapellmeister and friend of Beethoven Ignaz von Seyfried,  who published them in the volume “Ludwig van Beethovens Studien in Generalbass, Contrapunkt und in der Compositionslehre, aus dessen handschriftlichen Nachlasse” (edited by Haslinger himself, 1832). This work, however not very faithful to the original, with numerous and arbitrary interpolations, omissions and modifications, was translated into French by Fétis in 1833, with the title: “Beethoven études; traité d’harmonie et de composition” (Paris, Schlesinger).

A German reprint, edited by Henry Pierson, was published in 1851 (J. Schuberth & Co., Leipzig, Hamburg and New York) and other Italian editions, more or less faithful, in Lucca and Ricordi editions, were published in the second half of the century. About forty years after the 1832 edition, the original Beethoven manuscripts were re-examined by Nottebohm, who in a chapter of Beethoveniana (1872) gave an accurate summary highlighting Seyfried’s arbitrariness and in the following year published in a separate work, with absolute fidelity, the most important part together with the corrections made by the teachers,  also adding a chapter on his studies with Salieri, of which Seyfried had not spoken. In Beethovenian, Nottebohm divides the manuscripts, according to chronological order, into five groups: a) studies carried out with Haydn; b) studies completed with Albrechtsberger; c) notes on the general bass, the counterpoint, the fugue, the double counterpoint and the canon compiled and ordered almost as a treatise by Beethoven, with the stock of various didactic works, in 1809: intended in all likelihood for the teaching of his noble disciple Archduke Rudolf of Austria; d) notes, compiled by Beethoven at different times and not necessarily connected to each other, mainly concerning the fugue, with several examples copied from other authors (Albrechtsberger, Handel, F. E. Bach, etc.); e) apocryphal writings, i.e. exercises and contrapuntal examples copied from works by Albrechtsberger and others. Of these five groups, only the first two are mentioned in this catalogue.

As for the first, to which reference is made here, it should be remembered that Beethoven studied with Haydn in the period from the end of 1792 (he had arrived in Vienna in early November) to the end of 1793 (Haydn left for England on January 19, 1794). The exercises of counterpoint preserved in the manuscripts are 247 (Nottebohm, St., 25-41, reports 48).

The reference book for these and subsequent studies is

BEETHOVEN WERKE
GESAMTAUSGABE BEGRÜNDET VON JOSEPH SCHMIDT-GÖRG HERAUSGEGEBEN VON BERNHARD R. APPEL IM AUFTRAG DES BEETHOVEN-ARCHIVS BONN

ABTEILUNG XIII • BAND 1 (IN DREI TEILEN)

Kompositionsstudien

bei Joseph Haydn, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger und. Antonio Salieri
G. HENLE VERLAG MÜNCHEN

BEETHOVEN

KOMPOSITIONSSTUDIEN

BEI JOSEPH HAYDN, JOHANN GEORG Albrechtsberger UND ANTONIO SALIERI
HERAUSGEGEBEN VON JULIA RONGE

1. TRANSKRIPTIONEN
   2014
2. HENLE VERLAG MÜNCHEN

We also have material from Nottebohm (Nottebohm Gustav – Beethoven Studien – Beethovens Unterricht bei Haydn, Albrechsberger und Salieri. Leipzig und Winterthur. Reiter Biedermann – 1873), which you will therefore find available on the site, in PDF format and that of Ingaz Seyfied, or the famous Ludwig van Beethovens Studien in Generalbass, Contrapunkt und in der Compositionslehre, aus dessen handschriftlichen Nachlasse Haslinger, 1832, also digitized and available on the site, with musical examples in Mp3 and Midi, in Italian.

In his lectures on simple counterpoint to Beethoven, Haydn referred to Johann Joseph Fux’s  1725  treatise, Gradus ad Parnassum, which Johann Georg Albrechtsberger did later. The exercises are systematic and, at the base of each of them, there is a Cantus firmus in whole notes in the six authentic ecclesiastical modes: Doric, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Ionic. There would have been 272 exercises but only 247 written on 27 sheets remain: to be exact, sheets 7, 23 and 24 are missing. Beethoven kept them for the rest of his life, but probably, given his countless moves, they were lost. The manuscripts were purchased by Tobias Haslinger, composer, publisher and friend of Beethoven, at the auction held after his death, where all the things found in his final resting place were put up for sale.

Until recently, only 48 exercises with Haydn had been published, listed by Gustav Nottebhom and 30 by Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried (there would have been 31 but Mark Zimmer says that no. 13 and 15 are the same) for a total of 78.

On this subject, James F. Green stated in 2003 that “(…) the new complete edition of Beethoven’s works should collect not only the studies of vocal compositions written under Salieri’s guidance, but also all those composed during the period in which Beethoven was studying with Franz Josep Haydn and Johann Georg Albrechtsberger. These studies provide us with an extremely interesting introspection of the works of this genius. And especially in this field, there is still a lot to be done because for the most important things concerning these works we still depend on the analyses of Gustav Nottebhom. (…)».[1]