You are here: / Landsberg 7

Posts

Pages

Articles: Beethovenian Fragments (Landsberg 7) – A Fugue Sketch “in D minor” by Paola Rossetti

/in /by

Articles: Beethovenian Fragments from the Landsberg 7 Sketchbook

A Sketch of a Fugue in D minor by Paola Rossetti

From the introduction by Paola Rossetti:

“…This paper arose from the study of Francesco Trocchia’s 2015 composition Recast (Kleine Fuge). The musical text of the Milanese composer incorporates a three‑page fugue sketch taken from a notebook of Ludwig van Beethoven’s drafts known as Landsberg 7. The sketch was catalogued by Giovanni Biamonti as ‘FUGUE (fragments) (in D minor)’, dated 1800. In this article I will attempt to investigate the potential stylistic connection between this Beethovenian text and the composer’s later output, taking as a reference model the Große Fuge op. 133. This paper does not claim to be an exhaustive analysis, conducted with scientific rigor, of the materials under consideration: its aim is a preliminary inquiry which, in the author’s hopes, may raise questions and suggest avenues of reflection for scholars. This investigation begins with an examination of certain melodic intervals used in the early‑nineteenth‑century fragments and in Beethoven’s mature works.

The three pages of sketches that form the backbone of Francesco Trocchia’s composition—an outline of a fugue, as mentioned—come from the Landsberg 7 notebook, which can be consulted through the digital collection of the Berlin State Library, the holder of the original manuscript. The notebook was used by Beethoven during a period that scholars have mostly placed between the summer–autumn of 1800 and March 1801. After the composer’s death, the precious source passed through several hands: from the Viennese publisher Domenico Artaria (1775–1842) to the German musician and collector Ludwig Landsberg (1807–1858), before being acquired by the Berlin library—then the Royal Library—in 1862…”

Our page on Biamonti 250 – Fugue (fragments not very legible), pages 60 and 62 of the Landsberg 7 notebook.

This is the page dedicated to Recast (Kleine Fuge) for orchestra by Francesco Trocchia.

… And if you would like to listen to other sketches from the Landsberg 7 notebook, you are in the right place! A wide selection is available here.

A study of Francesco Trocchia’s Recast (Kleine Fuge), based on Beethoven’s fragmented fugue from Biamonti 250 and the Landsberg 7 sketchbook.

/in /by

Recast (Kleine Fuge) for orchestra

(2015) – Ludwig Van Beethoven – Francesco Trocchia.

Beethoven, still talking to us

Unlike Giuseppe Verdi, who wanted a sizeable part of his “secret” papers and sketches to be burned after his death, Ludwig van Beethoven preserved for posterity a great deal of his albums, sketchbooks and notebooks, where he wrote down his thoughts and observations, sketches and composition projects. Paradoxically, Verdi’s unplanned legacy was jealously guarded by his heirs at Villa Verdi in Sant’Agata until a few years ago, while Beethoven’s voluntary bequest was subject to dispersion after the composer’s demise, for several decades.

Through Beethoven-Trocchia RECAST (Kleine Fuge), completed in 2015, the Milanese composer aims to recuperate – if one may say so – and re-elaborate one of Beethoven’s early sketches, which survived in fragmentary form on manuscript papers that passed through various owners after the musician’s death: from the Viennese publishing firm Artaria to German musician and collector Ludwig Landsberg (1807-1858), finally ending up at the Royal Library in Berlin in 1862.

The fugue sketch – three pages datable to circa 1800, included in the sketchbook known as Landsberg 7 – was reviewed for the very first time by Karl Lothar Mikulicz, who made a complete transcription of the sketchbook, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 19271. Such a process is by no means a neutral one: as palaeographers never fail to stress, each transcription entails a loss of some sort of the contents that the original object tries to convey through its visual appearance.

While in this case we are not dealing with an ancient witness preceding modern notation, Mikulicz’s transcription, intended to provide a faithful, at the same time readable version of the sketches, certainly involved a few choices by the editor, so that a manuscript written over a century earlier, and meant for the writer’s personal use, could become more comprehensible to the modern reader. The final result normally entails neutralizing someone’s very own writing, which reflects the writer’s attempt to capture an idea in its fundamentals, leaving on paper only what is deemed necessary. Because of their indefinite nature, notes and sketches can reveal clues of a psychological sort, hidden in a number of details – writing in a hurry can betray a creative urge and that is no small thing for the scholar who strongly relies on the biographical information that documents can provide.

Almost a century after that very first review of the sketches, Francesco Trocchia has found the necessary inspiration to build something new upon them. The Milanese composer explains he was not guided by merely philological, restoration-oriented criteria in his work. «I used – we read in the Author’s note published in this score – all the composition material by Beethoven, bridging gaps and creating unity in a new composition».

The stylistic and aesthetic problems involved are partly the same as those faced by Luciano Berio – an eloquent example amongst many – when he composed his finale for the unfinished Turandot, based on Puccini’s original fragments. Berio had to fit his work into a pre-existing score, which made a revisitation of the style of the early 1900s unavoidable. Composing decades after the sketching of those fragments – decades that were crucial for the analysis and evaluation of Puccini’s idiom, although work was still in progress -, Berio was able to highlight key elements which only the passage of time shows in their absolute clarity, such as the unmistakable modernity of that late work of Puccini’s.

Another work by Berio, composed upon Franz Schubert’s sketches for the planned Tenth Symphony in D major (D. 936A), provides the subject for a fascinating comparison. In writing Rendering for orchestra (1988-1990), Berio approached Schubert’s sketches through modern restoration criteria whose purpose, he explained, is to bring back the original colours without effacing the damages and gaps brought about by

time2. Berio completed the fragments by orchestrating them in a Schubertian fashion – the instrumentation chosen is the same as that of the “Unfinished” Symphony no. 8. He then linked the fragments, by inserting between them specially composed brief sections, reminiscent of Schubert’s later style, to be constantly played pianissimo. According to American musicologist David Metzer3, Berio’s effort was after all a creative restoration, one that succeeds in making the listener perceive the remoteness and fragmented nature of those sketches. Sketches which, despite the attempts to do so, will never bring to life the Tenth Symphony such as Schubert had devised it.

A similar starting point – looking at the sketches through a contemporary perspective –, but quite a different result, we find in Beethoven-Trocchia RECAST (Kleine Fuge). The composer’s aim and attitude in approaching the fragments are of quite a different nature, compared to Berio’s.

By evoking different periods, styles and genres, Trocchia’s work becomes a reflection on the timeless significance of a time-honoured musical form, the fugue. Through this work of his, the composer strives not only to integrate Beethoven’s musical text into the present, but also to allow Beethoven’s work to instil its vital breath into today’s music – the powerful gesture pictured in Michelangelo’s Creazione di Adamo.

The remoteness of those fragments from the contemporary idiom and expression can be clearly heard but, despite their incompleteness, the sketches can still inspire the composer. The fracture is not without repair, the loss is not irreversible. The fragments stand witness to a past which cannot be repeated; at the same time, they constitute an everlasting legacy to seize, with no time limit to do so.

The orchestration is the preferred medium used by the composer to blend together past and present, allowing tradition to play a key role in today’s musical scene.

Paola Teresa Rossetti



1 KARL LOTHAR MIKULICZ (ed. by), Fin Notierungsbuch von Beethoven aus dem Besitze der Preussischen Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1927, pp. 56-58.
2 See the Author’s Note published with the score, also available on the web page provided by the Centro Studi Luciano Berio: www.lucianoberio.org/node/1447?1113584796=1 .
3 DAVID METZER, Musical Decay: Luciano Berio’s “Rendering” and John Cage’s “Europera 5”, «Journal of the Royal Musical Association» (2000), vol. 125, n. 1, pp. 93-114. Consulted online 23.04 2020: www.jstor.org/stable/3250683 .

Biamonti 250 – Fugue (fragments not very legible), pages 60 and 62 of the Landsberg 7 notebook, corresponding to pages 56 and 58 of Mikulicz. The theme on page 60 (Mikulicz page 58) is similar to that of the sketch Biamonti 50 ‘Nenne nicht das Schicksal grausam’. The sketches are found in the Landsberg 7 Sketchbook on pages 60, 61, 62 in full. It is not known why Beethoven, while studying the Violin and Piano Sonata op. 24, the Piano Sonata op. 26, the Second Symphony op. 36 and The Creatures of Prometheus op. 43, felt the need to sketch and develop this fugue in D–, nor why the beginning of the fugue itself is not found on the first of these three pages but on the third (page 62). It is nevertheless evident that in these three pages all of Beethoven’s attention was focused on the development of a fugue.

Author’s note to the Beethoven fragments

by Francesco Trocchia

Author’s note to the Beethoven fragments

Recast (Kleine Fuge) contains all the fragments found on pages 60-62 of the Landsberg notebook (by the name of the first owner: Paul Landsberg of Breslau), corresponding to pages 60-62 in Mikulicz. Period: 1799-1800.

Below are the three pages containing the original fragments, reproduced in the order in which I have used them, with some additional colored notes:

  • green: “graphic” changes designed to make the fragments more readable;
  • red: bars in which the fragments were used;
  • blue: detailed indications on how the fragments were actually used.

Some clarifications on the blue notes, which refer to:

  • clefs that I used to indicate the pitch of the notes;
  • alterations omitted in the fragments[i] but used in my composition;
  • notes deleted in the fragments but used in my composition;
  • notes or alterations crossed out, and not used in my composition;
  • changes in note values;
  • ties for those notes in the fragments that I joined to those already present in my composition;
  • 8va and 15ma  for fragments that are transposed in my composition;
  • square brackets for fragments not quoted in their original form, but further developed in my composition.

[i] I refer to the B flat missing from the key signature, not indicated even where clearly necessary.

​© Copyright 2005/2026 of the Centro Ricerche Musicali Beethoveniane (C.R.M.B.) www.lvbeethoven.it – Managers, co-authors, reviewers and curators: Luigi Domenico Bellofatto, Antonietta Cappelli, Graziano Denini, Armando Orlandi and Fiorella Romenzi. Texts, documents, research, scores, mp3, MIDI files and documents are the exclusive property of the Centro Ricerche Musicali Beethoveniane (C.R.M.B.) and their respective authors; therefore, none of these resources may be used or disclosed without the prior written authorization of the owners. The complete list of researchers, performers and collaborators of the Centro Ricerche Musicali is visible on the relevant page. Anyone wishing to contact us for consultation, to obtain a copy of the site’s resources or to collaborate with the Centro Ricerche Musicali Beethoveniane (C.R.M.B.), can make a request using the appropriate contact form. Web publishing: Aruba. Site optimized for mobile devices, tablets and PCs with a resolution of 1920 × 1440 or higher. To provide a better service to users, the site only uses technical cookies, which do not track the visitor or send personal data to third parties. These cookies do not require a prior consent banner: we mention them here anyway.