In the Beethoven manuscript preserved at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn and marked with the number BH MS117 Recto, we find this minuet “Proesto” (sic!) . Beethoven writes: “einen majestätischen Menuet mit punktirten Noten”. Here is what Kerman writes in the Preface to his beautiful reconstruction:

“The two minuets published herewith were never completed by Beethoven, so far as is known, but they have been preserved in the form of relatively complete sketches in piano score. These are found among the surviving sketch sheets from Beethoven’s years at Bonn, before his move to Vienna at the age of 21 in 1792. In Bonn, Beethoven not infrequently prepared conscientious interim sketches of works in progress, sketches which are much more complete and carefully written than characteristic later sketches of the type made familiar by the studies of Gustav Nottebohm, Paul Mies, J. S. Shedlock, and others. Such sketches seem to allow for ‘realization’ in a way that later sketches rarely or never do. The extent of our additions, modifications, and interpretations will be clear from this edition, in which the original sketches are printed in transcription directly below the full score.

It is not known whether Beethoven planned these minuets for symphonies he was contemplating, or whether perhaps they were conceived as isolated studies in the abstract. In any case, the young composer was working characteristically in a style that would count as rich and complex by the standards of the music he knew. This music would have included the minuets in Mozart’s late symphonies and in Haydn’s symphonies up through the ‘Paris’ set (the ‘London’ Symphonies were not yet written). We believe there are enough forceful and interesting ideas in these minuets to commend them to the attention of Beethoven’s admirers, and to the conductors among them. The sketches also include a number of weak places; in making the final versions, Beethoven would have been able to revise these more extensively than we have felt free to do.

The sketch of the Minuet in E minor is taken from f.123r of British Museum Additional Manuscript 29801, by permission of the Keeper of Manuscripts.1 The Minuet in D is taken from Bonn, Beethovenhaus MS H7r, by permission of the Director, Prof. Joseph Schmidt-Gorg, and Dr. Hans Schmidt. The transcription of the sketches below the full score follows the sources exactly, but does not attempt to record earlier readings of corrected notes or passages”.

William Denny – Joseph Kerman

1 A facsimile appears in Beethoven. Autograph Miscellany from ca. 1786-99 (the ‘Kafka Sketchbook’), ed. Joseph Kerman, London: The British Museum, 1970, Vol. I.