WoO 61a Piano Piece (Bagatelle) in G minor
Allegretto quasi andante
WoO 61a – Piano Piece (Bagatelle) in G minor, 27 September 1825, published by L. Misch in the April 1956 issue of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and by others; more recently by Hess in the ninth fascicle of the Supplemente zur GA, 1965. Hess 56 – KH (WoO) 61 / Biamonti 825.
The original manuscript is in the possession of Louis Krasner of Syracuse (U.S.A.). It is a small piece (13 bars) written by Beethoven for Sarah Burney Payne (daughter of the musician and music historian Charles Burney) and not, as some have erroneously suggested, for an unknown Lady Clifford.
[By Biamonti Giovanni – Catalogo cronologico e tematico delle opere di Beethoven comprese quelle inedite e gli abbozzi non utilizzati, Torino, ILTE 1968]
Official title: WoO 61a Klavierstück (g-moll) Widmung: — NGAVII/6 AGA-SBG IX/23 (Hess 56)
Origin and Publication: Written on “27 Septemb. 1825” in Baden near Vienna. The first edition was published posthumously in 1956 in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik of Leipzig. Beethoven gave the autograph copy of this piano piece to Sarah Burney Payne (1796 – after 1868) when she visited Baden. Payne was the daughter of Rear Admiral James Burney and his wife Sally née Payne, and the granddaughter of the English music historian Charles Burney. Together with her husband, the bookseller John Thomas Payne, she visited Vienna from 22 September to 2 October 1825. In the same year, she anonymously published her memoirs “A Visit to Beethoven. [Extract from a letter written by an English lady; dated Vienna, October, 1825]” (BGA 2061), which recount the circumstances of the composition of the piano piece. According to her account, Beethoven wrote this little piece (“two lines of music – a little fugue, for the piano-forte”) for the guest shortly before bidding her farewell, saying “Je veux vous donner un Souvenir de moi” (The Harmonicon 3, 1825, December, p. 223). In 1826, Payne sent Beethoven a copy of her grandfather’s General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (BKh 9, pp. 227 and 235).
First performance unknown. Sketches lost or nonexistent. The manuscript was preserved until the late 1970s in the private U.S. collection of Louis Krasner (see Hess/Green, p. 42). Title at top: “le 27 septemb. 1825.” Folio 1 recto, above: “Allegretto quasi Andante,” below: “Comme un souvenir à Sarah Burney Payne [followed by a crossed-out word] par Louis van Beethoven le 27 septemb. 1825.” One folio; musical text on recto. Paper: vertical format, 26 × 21 cm, four staves handwritten freely.
Provenance: Sarah Burney Payne – Thomas Massa Alsager, London, from February 1845; he received the manuscript from Sarah Burney Payne with the letter: “Not unca-ring for the Remembrance of Beethoven, but desirous to consecrate and enshrine it in the most congenial spot in London (perhaps say the World). S. Payne claims for it a place in the Music Room of her most valued Friend T. M. Alsager. February 2nd 1845.” Facsimile and transcription: Misch/WoO 61a, pp. 196f.
WoO 61a is part of the “Research Becomes Art” project
A New Life for the Unknown Works of Ludwig van Beethoven: An Artistic Exploration by pianista maestro Francesco Gussago
