Hess 231 – Song 24: Duet “Sei mio ben”; for soprano and tenor; in G major; 14 bars. Text taken from “Cantata XXIV”, in Bruno Brunelli, Tutte le opere di Pietro Metastasio, Mondadori, Milan, 1943–54, 5 vols. For the date of composition, see what has been said for the previous song. [Published by Hess in SBG, vol. I, 1959, p. 9. A facsimile of the autograph of this song is reproduced on p. 106.]

The autograph of the Italian song is Artaria 166, page 45. The song was discovered by Willy Hess and was published in facsimile in the Neue Winterthurer Tagblatt of 16‑7‑1955, then in his catalogue, pages 64–65, and finally in the 1st book of the Supplemente zur G.A., 1959.

The Italian text: “Sei il mio ben, sei mio conforto, per te porto al cor catene, per te pene di Amor mi dà. Per te calma e pace spero, col pensiero a te m’aggiro: né sospiro altra beltà, né sospiro altra beltà.”

This song is listed in the Hess catalogue as Hess 231 and in the Biamonti catalogue as Biamonti 216.

There are two different manuscripts concerning this song:

The first manuscript, which in fact corresponds to the preliminary sketches, is in Berlin in the State Library (manuscript Artaria 166, pages 44–45); in this manuscript we find a couple of sketches for the Soprano voice alone with many corrections. Willy Hess, in the Appendix to volume I of the Supplements to the Gesamtausgabe, also informs us that in this manuscript at least two versions (Hess indicates three) of this song coexist:

• the first, with an instrumental introduction, is found on page 45, staves 6–8–10; these sketches remained incomplete.
• the second version of the sketches, this time complete in the Soprano part, is found immediately afterwards on staves 12–14–16, with a classic Beethovenian indication (Vi=) which leads to the ending on page 44, stave 1 (though the =de is missing), where we also find the Tenor part.

I have therefore produced four different versions of this song taken from the Artaria 166 manuscript.

The definitive version, on the other hand, is in Vienna in the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, and it is the version that Hess included in his GA. This manuscript too was reworked several times. I have taken into consideration only Beethoven’s final version and the one with Salieri’s corrections. Finally, I found some differences between the version corrected by Salieri and the one rewritten by Willy Hess in the GA.