Hess 305 – “Geschlagen ist der Feind”. A sketch of 8 bars, in D major [SV 135]. It was found among the sketches for the “Battle of Vittoria” (Mh 87 from the Bodmer collection). [The Bodmer collection is now housed at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, and the piece has been recatalogued as SBH 638]. Max Unger claimed that it was “a canon by Beethoven on the redemption of Germany”. However, Unger later wrote to Donald MacArdle: “After completing the catalogue, I was able to establish exactly that only a small part of the (likely) canon ‘Geschlagen ist der Feind’ had been transcribed. Beethoven had evidently intended to write a canon on this text, but he never got beyond the beginning”. [The catalogue Unger refers to is his “Eine Schweizer Beethoven-Sammlung Katalog”, Verlag der Corona, Zurich, 1939, which is the catalogue of the H.C. Bodmer collection, now in Bonn]. A. Willem Holsbergen puts forward the following interesting hypothesis: “Given the text of the canon (The enemy is defeated) and the fact that the canon is in the same key as the ‘Battle Symphony’, it seems plausible that at some point Beethoven was considering giving the ‘Battle Symphony’ a choral finale. If that were the case, this would establish a connection between the Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, and the Ninth Symphony, Op. 125”. In other words, a symphonic work with a choral finale. The fact that the musical setting of these words is in the form of a canon seems to be an example of Beethoven’s well-known fondness for word games, a canon in a “Battle Symphony”.

Given the text of the canon, it seems plausible that at one point Beethoven was considering giving the Battle Symphony a choral finale. If that were the case, it would create a link between the Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, and the Ninth Symphony. To change the subject, Beethoven’s handwriting is reasonably clear, but the key and accidentals are missing. Therefore, it was very helpful that Hess and Unger had already identified the key of the piece (D major).

A canon on the melody of the sketch would seem impossible, so the question becomes: is it really a canon, as Hess and Unger claim? The answer is yes, because above the sketch Beethoven has scribbled a few words, and in the third one, it appears to read “canon”. Therefore, we can agree with Unger that Hess 305 is the first section of a canon.

It is written on the second sheet, lines 12-13 of the bifolio HCB Mh 87, located at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. Biamonti catalogued it as number 556. Since the other sketches refer to the Battle of Vittoria, Op. 91, we could date it around 1813. It has the full structure of a canon but remains difficult to resolve.