Hess 321 – Small instrumental melody in B-flat major, 12 measures with “da capo.” Written before 1800, Page 576.

It is located at the British Museum in the Kafka Skizzenbuch, sheet 42r, lines 14-15. It is a melody of 12 measures with “da capo.” Nottebohm in his volume Zweite Beethoveniana, page 576, describes it as follows: “Unter den der Zeit vor 1800 angehörenden Entwürfen zu Instrumental-Compositionen findet sich eine hübsche Melodie. Beethoven hat sich in den letzten Takten verschrieben, und muss der Wert einiger Noten geändert werden.” [“Among the drafts for instrumental compositions from before 1800, there is a nice melody. Beethoven made a mistake in the last few measures and the value of some notes needs to be changed.”]

Indeed, as Nottebohm correctly points out, Beethoven forgot to add a line to the descending note sequence in measure 11 of the second movement, which should therefore be written as double-crochets (dotted eighth notes), not crotchets (eighth notes) as it is written; to me, this seems simply like a distraction. Considering that this melody seems to lack a proper ending, I have assumed that the “da capo” should be interpreted as “da capo al fine,” meaning “from the beginning to measure 8.” Thus, the complete form of the melody would become 8+4+8.