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Skizzenbuch “Kafka” (Kafka Sketchbook)

Autograph Miscellany from circa 1786 to 1799
British Museum additional Manuscript 29801, ff 39-162. Edited by Joseph Kerman, Professor of Music, University of California at Berkley. London 1970

Sketches of works with Opus number

Pages 1 / 68

Sketches of works without opus numbers (WoO)

Pages 69 / 102

Sketches of extended and already defined works

Pages 103 / 132

Pages 133 / 164

Pages 165 / 182

Sketches of extended and already defined works

Pages 185 / 208

Pages 209 / 235

Pages 236 / 254

Pages 255 / 274

The large collection held at the British Library and commonly referred to as the “Kafka Miscellany” consists of individual pages of musical notes, bifolios, and notebooks—totaling 124 sheets dating from between 1786 and 1799. Beethoven used it, as was his custom, as a canvas for notes on works he would complete or intended to complete, as well as a notebook for sketches and drafts. In this authentic “mine of thought,” around 300 works—known and unknown—and other various notations are stored.

The Viennese Johann Nepomuk Kafka (1819–86) is believed to have purchased the miscellany from Artaria after 1870. A pianist and composer, as well as an amateur collector and dealer of musical manuscripts, his collection included autographs of a series of Beethoven’s bagatelles, the piano sonata Op. 28, and the sonata Op. 53 (“Waldstein”), along with various sketches, drafts, and assorted note sheets. Some sheets that likely belonged to this collection are now preserved at the Beethovenhaus.

The miscellany was studied by Gustav Nottebohm, who first mentioned it in two brief notes between 1869 and 1871, and later published nine more articles in 1875–76; six additional articles appeared posthumously in 1887. Nottebohm’s interest in the sketches was primarily chronological, and he recognized the miscellany as a valuable source of information on Beethoven’s early period—a time for which information is naturally scarcer.

Remarkably, the dates proposed by Nottebohm for the works with Opus and WoO numbers contained in the miscellany (Op. 1 Nos. 2 and 3, Op. 7, Op. 10 Nos. 2 and 3, Op. 11, 13, 14 No. 1, Op. 15, 16, 19, 37, 46, 49 Nos. 1 and 2, Op. 52 No. 3, Op. 71, WoO 6, 53, and 126) are still universally accepted.

In one article, Nottebohm went even further, illustrating the evolution of the Sonata in E major, Op. 14 No. 1, through the transcription of thirteen sketches found on pages 65 and 121 of the miscellany (these pages contain a total of 28 preparatory drafts of the sonata).

Nottebohm’s laconic writing style, combined with a great sparseness in exact manuscript references (which frustrated later scholars), should not be mistaken for a lack of method. Certainly, he made errors, but few scholars have maintained such a high level of precision, objectivity, and relevance when dealing with such a difficult-to-interpret mass of material.

Nottebohm, the first and still most famous of these scholars, likely never considered the possibility of a complete transcription of the sketchbooks. In his most well-known work, the monograph on the “Eroica Sketchbook” of 1880, he made no attempt to present the entire source or even a part of it, and provided scant information on the context of individual sketches and drafts.

Nevertheless, his work was the progenitor of this type of research and laid the foundation for subsequent publications (including those initiated by the Beethovenhaus in Bonn in 1952 and still ongoing), aimed at fully publishing all surviving sketchbooks.

Once the manuscript arrived in London, it was analyzed by British scholars. A. J. Hipkins noted the autograph of the Sonatina in C minor for Mandolin and Piano, WoO 43a (on page 87), first published by Grove in 1880 in the article “Mandoline.” In 1892, the miscellany also appeared in a long article by J. S. Shedlock, “Beethoven’s Sketch Books” (a series of articles and examples fully reproduced on our site).

Other notable names joined the ranks: Fritz Stein, Jack Werner (these publications are also fully included on the site), A. E. F. Dickinson, Willy Hess—who published some works from the miscellany in the renowned “Supplemente zur Gesamtausgabe” edited by Breitkopf & Härtel in the 1960s.

Finally, special mention goes to the well-known anecdote by Wegeler about the “Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah,” reported in 1959 by Professor Joseph Schmidt-Görg, director of the Beethovenhaus in Bonn. Both the anecdote and the “Lamentations,” sketched on folio 96 recto of the miscellany, are featured on our site.

Faced with a multitude of pieces of various kinds, I decided to follow different principles depending on the nature of the transcribed material.

  • For known works, I grouped the sketches according to the works they refer to and, within each, respected the chronological order of the finished work (e.g., Opus 14: Allegro – Adagio – Rondo).
  • Where many sketches exist for a particular movement, I grouped them according to the successive “formal phases” of the composition. This way, some sketches are placed correctly within the section of the work they refer to (e.g., Opus 14, first movement: first theme, bridge, development, coda, etc.).

Listeners will understand that these sound files, created while fully respecting variants, deletions, and corrections, are not usable as critical editions—much less as concert pieces—but as study material and reflections on Beethoven’s compositional process.

Classification

To facilitate access to this monumental collection, I divided it into four series:

  1. Sketches referring to works with Opus numbers
  2. Sketches of works with WoO numbers (Werke ohne Opuszahl, assigned by Kinsky-Halm), Hess, or other cataloging
  3. Extended sketches of planned but unfinished works
  4. Short fragments or simple musical notations

For the first two categories, little needs to be added. Regarding the third, we included those notes that are extensive or sufficiently developed to allow a coherent idea of their nature—at least as it was forming in Beethoven’s mind. Thus, we can confidently define them as “Sonata,” “Symphony,” or “Lied.”

Titles in the last group will necessarily be generic: “sketch,” “fragment,” “Klavierstück,” etc.

The main goal of an edition—whether printed or multimedia—is to make unknown and inaccessible material available to everyone, even non-specialists. Another aim is to present the material correctly and objectively, in a form as close as possible to the original source.

Beyond this incontrovertible point, differences in views and conclusions will appear from researcher to researcher. But if we have succeeded in being faithful enough to Beethoven’s creative moment to convey many of the major enigmas of a genius’s creation—and why not, even the musical emotions hidden in these pages—we will have achieved our highest goal.

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