Hess 330 – March Movement in C Minor
The musical examples on this page are curated by Graziano Denini
Hess 330 – March-like Movement in C Minor, nearly completed. Cited on page 70 by Nottebohm.
From Green’s book: march-like movement in C minor, nearly completed in its first draft; page 155. Cited on page 70 of Nottebohm. The march in C minor is 19 bars long. In the margin, before the first bar, we find the note “Graffin” [sic]. A. Willem Holsberger writes: “I read Beethoven’s sketch (page 155 of the Eroica Sketchbook) as two attempts at the same piece; the second stops at the same point as the first. Both attempts have the same structure: a 4-bar phrase followed by another incomplete 6-bar phrase. In the second attempt, he tries an alternative to the first 4 bars. The second phrase is almost the same in both attempts, only using different inversions in the chords. Comparing the two versions gives a clear and pleasant idea of the harmonic intentions.”
The marginal note is interesting: why would Beethoven write “Graffin” in the margin, and to whom does it refer? The spelling error is Beethoven’s.
It is found on page 155, lines 10–13, of the sketchbook Landsberg 6, also known as the Eroica Skizzenbuch, and catalogued as Biamonti 396.
Biamonti writes in his catalogue: “Pezzo in forma di marcia” (Sketch nearly completed), circa 1803 (pages 155–156). Mentioned by Nottebohm (page 70) [Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven aus dem Jahre 1803], without reproducing the music.”
In this case, Biamonti confuses Nottebohm’s wording, who correctly writes on pages 69–70 of his analysis of Landsberg 6:
“Among the works for ‘Leonore’ we find, besides a considerable number of small sketches to be skipped here: (…) a draft of a nearly finished march-like piece;”
This sentence is followed by a reference to another sketch, also in C minor but in ¾ time, which begins immediately after and ends on the following page (pages 155–156).
James F. Green and W. Holsberger state that at the beginning of the piece Beethoven wrote the word “Graffin”, but I tend to agree instead with L. Lockwood and A. Gosman, who claim that the word written by Beethoven is “espressivo”; in fact, throughout this page—and almost all previous pages—Beethoven writes his indications in Italian, not German.
Manuscript Analysis: Analyzing the manuscript, we immediately see that the piece consists of 20 bars (not 19), or more precisely, two parts of 10 bars each (4+6 / 4+6). Note the repeat sign erased at bar 10 and the repetition, marked as a repeat, at bar 12. Also noteworthy is the near-perfect overlap of bars 5–10 with bars 15–20. On this point, W. Holsberger writes that Beethoven “uses different inversions in the chords”; in fact, Beethoven does not change the chord inversion but simply spaces the lower notes to give, in my opinion, more depth and variety to the piece.
Final Consideration. In my view, the piece is not incomplete, but rather may lack a more melodic second part—almost a Trio—to be followed by a repetition of the march.