Hess 245 – Fugue in D Minor for String Quartet (Fragment)

This fugue fragment, catalogued as Hess 245 and Biamonti 82, is written in D minor and likely dates from the final period of Beethoven’s studies with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, around early 1795 (not later than March). It reflects Beethoven’s rigorous contrapuntal training and his early attempts to master fugue writing. According to Willy Hess and J. Green, this is a fragment of a fugue for string quartet “probably developed by Beethoven during his lessons with Albrechtsberger.”

Manuscript Sources and Provenance: Grouped under manuscript Mh 46, now re-catalogued as SBH 597 at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, are 18 pages containing Beethoven’s transcriptions of works by Albrechtsberger, Marpurg, and others. There is speculation that these pages may have once belonged to Autograph 75 in Vienna, which was considered the most complete source during Seyfried’s time.

Seyfried reportedly gifted one autograph page from these fragments to conductor Weber of Rostock, accompanied by a letter (Br 380) to his friend Friedrich Schwaan, asking him to deliver the page to Weber. This anecdote is cited by Max Unger. The fugue fragment itself is written on the back of a sheet containing sketches for Beethoven’s song Adelaide, Op. 46, which helps date it to 1794 or 1795. This particular sheet is catalogued as Mh 62, now SBH 614 (SV 109), also housed at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

Musical Content and Structure: As noted by Nottebohm in Beethoven Studien, p. 70: “In Beethoven’s handwriting, we have only the final page of the fugue, which contains 17 measures. Therefore, the fugue was completed by Beethoven, but the preceding pages have been lost.” The fugue is written in a free style and ends on a dominant chord rather than a tonic, implying that it was intended to be followed by another movement. This leads to speculation that it may belong to the same group as the Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, Hess 29, since Beethoven wrote on the draft of Hess 29: “mit einem presto endigen” (“to end with a presto”).

Musicologist Douglas Johnson offers a different interpretation: “The quartet score in manuscript SBH 614 is probably the conclusion of a prelude to a fugue in D minor (not the fugue itself, as Hess believes).” See: Johnson, Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the Fischhof Miscellany: Berlin Autograph 28, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1978, p. 234. When Hess compiled his catalogue in 1955, he referred to the fragment as a “fugue” (likely following Nottebohm’s terminology). However, in his 1963 publication in SBG, Vol. VI, p. 52, he revised the title to “conclusion of a prelude to a fugue,” clearly acknowledging Johnson’s observation. Curiously, Biamonti, in his 1968 catalogue, did not reflect this change of opinion. He listed the piece as Biamonti 82 (p. 97) and Biamonti 100 (p. 110), citing Mh 62 as the source for both entries. Biamonti also described the fragment as consisting of 15 measures, whereas Nottebohm had counted 17.