Opus 12, 3 Sonatas for piano and violin in D major, A major, E flat major
Opus 12, 3 Sonatas for piano and violin in D major, A major, E flat major, Op. 12, 1797-1798, dedicated to Ferdinando Salieri, published in Vienna, Artaria, December 1798. GA. no. 92-94 (series 12/1-3) – B. 12 – KH. 12 – L. I, p. 127 – N. 12 – P. 102 – T. 60.
The original manuscript is lost. To the almost completed sketches of the second sonata, preserved in Berlin, Nottebohm (II, p. 45) mentions in passing, speaking of the Sonata op. 14 n. 1 for piano.
[By Biamonti Giovanni – Catalogo cronologico e tematico delle opere di Beethoven comprese quelle inedite e gli abbozzi non utilizzati, Torino, ILTE 1968]
Original title: Opus 12 Drei Sonaten (D-dur, A-dur, Es-dur) für Klavier und Violine Widmung: Antonio Salieri NGA V/1 AGA 92-94 = Serie 12/1-3.
Creation and publication: The sketches for Sonatas No. 2 and 3 date from 1797/98. Nothing more is known about the origin of the first sonata. The original edition in parts was published by Artaria in Vienna in December 1798 and January 1799 (see also BGA 40). Beethoven’s first attempt to refer to this instrumentation is the fragment of “Sonatine” Hess 46 (1790/91, see Unfinished Works Unv. 12), in Rondo WoO 41 (1792) and in the variations on Mozart’s “Se vuoi ballare” WoO 40 (1792/93). The stay in Vienna of the violin virtuoso Rodolphe Kreutzer, who arrived in the Austrian capital in February 1798 in the wake of General Bernadotte, may have been one of the decisive factors in the composition of the Violin Sonatas op.12 (Brandenburg/Op.12). Particularly negative is the review of the sonatas on the Leipziger Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung: “Es ist unleugbar, Herr van Beethoven geht einen eigenen Gang; aber was ist das für ein bi-sarrer mühseliger Gang! Gelehrt, gelehrt und immerfort gelehrt und keine Natur, kein Gesang! Ja, wenn man es genau nimmt, so ist auch nur gelehrte Masse da, ohne gute Methode; eine Sträubigkeit, für die man wenig Interesse fühlt; ein Suchen nach seltener Modulation, ein Ekelthun gegen gewöhnliche Verbindung, ein Anhäufen von Schwierigkeit auf Schwierigkeit, dass man alle Geduld und Freude dabey verliert. […] Wenn Hr. v. B. sich nur mehr selbst verleugnen, und den Gang der Natur einschlagen wollte, so könnte er bey seine Talente und Fleisse uns sicher recht viel Gutes für ein Instrument liefern, dessen er so ausserordentlich mächtig zu seyn scheint” (1, 1798/99, 5 June 1799, column 570f).
Beethoven later commented on the reviewer’s negative attitude in a letter to the publishing house AmZ, Breitkopf & Härtel, with the words:“They recommend to their reviewers more caution and prudence, especially in view of the products of younger authors, many a person can be deterred by this, who might otherwise get further as far as I am concerned, so I am indeed far from to keep me close to such perfection as could bear no blame, but the cry of her reviewer against me was at first so humiliating that, when I began to compare myself with others, I could hardly stop myself, but remained quite calm, and thought they did not understand; I could be all the more calm when I looked at how people were lifted up who meant little here among the better in loco – and almost disappeared here, however good they might have been, by the way” (BGA 59 del 22 aprile 1801).
Dedication: Antonio Salieri, born on 18 August 1750 in Legnago (near Venice), died on 7 May 1825 in Vienna. He was in Vienna from 1766, from 1774 court composer and director of Italian opera, from 1788 k.k. Hofkapellmeister, from 1788 to 1795 president, then vice-president of the Wiener Tonkuenst-ler-Societät. In 1813 he was a member of the founding committee of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and from 1817 head of the associated conservatory. From 1790 Salieri was the central figure of Viennese musical life and had numerous students of composition and singing. Beethoven probably took lessons from Salieri to learn the correct setting of the sung text from 1801 to 1802. The dedication was so much to Maestro Salieri (Beethoven at that time was not yet a pupil of Slaieri), but to the “Musik-Patron” of the hope of protection or recommendation (Brandenburg/ Op 12). In 1801 Beethoven invited Salieri to a musical feast (BGA 70). In 1808 Beethoven accused him of envying him, because the Tonkünstler-Societät held a concert on the same day that he also organized his own academy, December 22, 1808 (BGA 350). In all cases, the date of the Tonkünstler-Societät concert was traditionally set on this date and Beethoven’s slander was unfounded.
Even this quarrel did not last long. At the performances of the “Wellingtons Sieg” op. 91 held on 8 and 12 December 1813, Salieri participated as director of the timpani and cannons. On 14 February 1818, Salieri and Beethoven published a joint statement in the AmZÖ of Vienna (2, 1818, col. 58f), in which they expressed support for Mälzel’s metronome. In the autumn of 1823 Salieri was admitted to hospital for senile dementia (AmZ 25, 1823, 19 November 1823, col. 766). Early in 1824 a rumour spread in Vienna that Salieri had admitted poisoning Mozart. Beethoven was also informed (BKh 5 p. 92, 95, 132, 136), though his reaction to the news is not known. From Salieri’s opera “Falstaff” (1799), Beethoven drew on the duet tune “La stessa, la stessissima” for piano variations published by Artaria in the same year; see WoO 73. (Clive/Dictionary.)
The first performance of one of the three sonatas may have been given in a concert by the singer Josepha Duschek on 29 March 1798 in Vienna, with Beethoven himself at the piano. An announcement sheet for this concert is in A-Wgm. On the sheet there is only one work for “piano with accompaniment” (TDR II p. 65). It is possible that Ignaz Schuppanzigh was Beethoven’s instrumental partner. According to an entry in Zinzendorf’s diary dated 5 April 1798, a violin sonata was played shortly afterwards during a private performance in the Lobkowitz family, although it is unclear whether it is Op. 12: „Gestern hatten wir zu Ehren der Herzogin Musik. […] Beethoven spielte die Sonate mit Violoncello, ich die letzte der drei Violinsonaten [op. 12] mit Schuppanzighs Begleitung, der wie alle ändern göttlich spielte.“ (Wagner/Zinzendorf p. 105.) More than two years later the composition of the third sonata of op. 12 was performed in a music concert at the home of Josephine Deym and Ignaz Schuppanzigh in the presence of Beethoven, as Josephine Deym explains in a letter to her sisters dated 10 December 1800: “beym Verleger hier nur von meinen frühem Sonaten mit violin [gefunden], da dieses polledro dur[ch]aus wünschte, muste ich mich eben bequemen ein[e] alte Sonate zu spielen” (LaMara/ Brunsvik p. 14.) Beethoven may also have performed the sonatas together with violinist Giovanni Battista Polledro at a benefit concert held in Karlsbad on August 6, 1812. Beethoven informed Archduke Rudolf shortly afterwards: “beym Verleger hier nur von meinen frühen Sonaten mit violin [gefunden], da dieses polledro dur[ch]aus wünschte, muste ich mich eben bequemen ein[e] alte Sonate zu spielen” (BGA 592).
The sketches will be featured in an article specially created for the Beethovenian Music Research Center, www.lvbeethoven.org
Opus 12 number 1 Sonata for piano and violin in D major
I) Allegro con brio – II) Theme with variations (Andante con moto) – III) Rondo – Allegro
The first theme of the Allegro con brio, which will then be the basis of the development in minor, is constituted, after the debut fanfare, by the appeal of the violin, which emerges from the movement figure of the bass; the second, in dialogue between the two instruments, has a more elaborate and relaxing form. The Adagio is characterized by the large picture formed by the last two Variations (III and IV): one in minor, with the alternative dynamics of its broad melodic and rhythmic symmetries; the other again in major that seems to respond to her, as if to appease her, slowly and sweetly: at first almost timid in the slow penetration of the syncopation; then coming to life victoriously and finally dying in serenity. The Finale (Rondo) adapts to the spirit of the first movement with a refrain, one might say, of a dancing folk song and tonally colored melodic interludes.
Opus 12 Sonata No. 2 for piano and violin in A major
I) Allegro vivace – II) Andante più tosto allegretto – III) Allegro piacévole (!)
The initial Allegro vivace presents itself with the festiveness and momentum that in the same tone and rhythm will open a few years later the Fifth Quartet of op. 18; The end of the tempo will explain the spirit already contained in this entrance, in the gradual extinction into fragments of the various parts, up to the last of the bass. The Andante takes place in the same nostalgic atmosphere in which it will be born many years after the corresponding tempo of Schubert’s great Symphony in C major. The sentimental climate is the same, although less refined; the different structure, implanted as usual on the principle of expressive dualism. The first theme, so happily penetrated in rhythm (similar in this one to the Allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh), alternates with a second theme, as if to soften its melancholy, in which two melodic voices flow with sweet indolence in imitation of each other: in the end they appear happily merged in a single poetic musical sense. The Rondo participates in the ease and festivity of the first movement, with alternating elegant and popular elements: to which the two interludes can refer, the second especially in D major.
Opus 12 Sonata No. 3 for piano and violin in E-flat major
I) Allegro con spirito – II) Adagio con molto espressione – III) Rondo – Allegro molto
It is in the Allegro and in the Rondo of a more concertistic and brilliant character than the other two sonatas: in the Allegro above all with its swamp of arpeggios and sprint steps. The first melody of the Adagio, of an unshaken tranquillity, has some points of contact with the congener, in the same key of C major, of the Piano Sonata op. 31 n. 1. The second — a slow violin phrase, accompanied by piano arpeggios — hovers in the atmosphere of superior contemplation. The Rondo, like those of the two previous sonatas, is governed by a feeling of elementary gaiety; but here we are in the suburbs rather than in the salons, and we can also imagine some opera buffa attitude. Schering refers this sonata to some scenes of the little buffoonish Singspiel: Goethe’s Scherz, List und Rache (Joke, cunning and revenge), written in 1784 (and set to music as early as 1790 by Kayser), where it deals with the deceptions to which Scapino and Scapina resort to take back from an old, miserly doctor the nest egg that the latter, intriguingly, had managed to bequeath to one of their aunts. The first movement would find its reason in the scene of the first act which has as its subject the meeting of Scapino with Scapina on the threshold of the doctor’s door, by which Scapino has managed to be accepted as a servant. The second would derive from Scapina’s Canto della notte at the beginning of the fourth act: “O propitious night! you are the other half of life“, etc. The third would refer to the tragicomic scene of the second act minutely concerted between Scapino and Scapina, who manage to put the doctor in the condition of suffering their blackmail without the possibility of escape and of stripping himself, duchy by duchy, of all his nest egg.
