Unv. 10, formerly Biamonti 637, comprises sketches for the first and final movements of a piano trio for violin, cello, and piano in F minor, dating from 1815. These span pages 86 to 107 of the manuscript (Nottebohm, II, p. 345). The trio has attracted scholarly and practical attention: Albert Willem Holsbergen has created an insightful reconstruction, which can be heard on www.unheardbeethoven.org, and the work has also been studied by the distinguished musicologist William Kinderman, who provides an MP3 excerpt on the University of Illinois website.

The description provided on www.unheardbeethoven.org reads as follows:

The year 1815 saw several large-scale Beethoven works that never reached completion. Among these was the abandoned Piano Concerto No. 6, Hess 15, documented elsewhere on the site. Another is this Piano Trio, whose surviving sketches reveal a work unlike any other by Beethoven. Perhaps the composer abandoned it because it was too unconventional. It begins with a slow introduction in which the piano presents a flowing triplet arpeggio, while the strings respond with a mournful phrase punctuated by sharp, almost painful rests. The piano struggles against the strings’ sorrowful character, and gradually the music takes on a tone of bitter defiance, as a short four-note motif begins to assert itself, driving the music toward a violent Allegro in which this motif emerges as the first theme.

The gradual development of the main theme recalls the opening of the first movement of the Ninth Symphony. Yet while the Symphony evokes the creation of the universe, in this Trio the effect is far more modest, suggesting merely the tentative first steps of our ancestral hominids across the African plains. Interestingly, the tonal relationships play a crucial role in both works: F minor to D-flat major in this Trio, and D minor to B-flat major in the Ninth Symphony. Here, in Biamonti 637, this tonal interplay appears even more pronounced, indicating Beethoven’s engagement with abstract musical ideas that would only later be fully realised in the Ninth.

From the start of the Allegro, the autograph largely consists of melodic sketches, tracing themes and motifs from one instrument to another. The material extends coherently for roughly 130 bars, after which several pencilled sketches, appearing discontinuous, are added.

The original manuscript, Grasnick 29, is held at the Berlin Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Willem Holsbergen has produced a full realisation of a large-scale movement based on this score, incorporating additional sketches from the Scheide Sketchbook, also held by William Scheide. Recordings of Willem’s completion are available in MP3 format, performed both by The Unheard Beethoven and by composer Gerd Prengel. The full score of Holsbergen’s realisation can be downloaded for study, under copyright The Unheard Beethoven, Inc. (BMI). Thanks are due to the SPK and Mr Scheide for providing access to the sketch materials.