WoO 163 Kurz ist der Schmerz, Canon
WoO 163. Kurz ist der Schmerz, canon, 23 November 1813, published in Leipzig in the sixteenth fascicle of the Sammlung von Musik-Stücken alter und neuer Zeit als Zulage zur neuen Zeitschrift für Musik, 1841. GA no. 256/3/a (series 23, p. 179/f) – Bruers 206 – KH (WoO) 163 – L.IV, p. 352/y – Nottebohm, p. 162/3 – Thayer 179.
The original manuscript was part of the (now lost) album of Johann Friederich Naue, music director at the University of Halle, who had paid a visit to Beethoven. Sketches were reported by Nottebohm (II, p. 120), with others held in the Library of the Paris Conservatoire.
[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 163 Kurz ist der Schmerz Kanon (Fassung 1813, f-moll) nach Worten von Friedrich von Schiller Widmung: – NGA XII/2 AGA 256/3a = Serie 23/S. 179f
Development and publication: The canon was composed on 23 November 1813. Its first edition appeared, together with a facsimile of the autograph, as a supplement to Dr. Johann Severin Vater’s Jahrbuch […] für das Jahr 1828, published by the firm Renger in Halle. The piece was inscribed in a Taschenbuch belonging to Johann Friedrich Naue (1787–1858), a pupil of Daniel Gottlob Türk who, from 1813, succeeded his teacher as Director of Music at the University of Halle and subsequently founded the Singakademie in that city.
Naue provided an account of the work’s genesis in a letter to Heinrich Carl Breidenstein dated 17 August 1845:
“During my journey to Italy, I spent some time in Vienna, where I had the pleasure of associating almost daily with our most illustrious Beethoven. Upon my departure, he graciously presented me with a small notebook, suggesting that I should invite the most eminent musicians I encountered in Italy to contribute to it. Beethoven himself, however, composed a canon on Schiller’s words ‘Kurz ist der Schmerz, und ewig ist die Freude’ and wrote it out in his own hand in the album. Although in Italy I met many distinguished men, none seemed to me sufficiently worthy to be placed beside Beethoven; thus, the only entry it contains is the aforementioned autograph by him.”
Naue later approached Breidenstein with the intention of selling the autograph manuscript, though it remains uncertain whether this transaction ever took place. Likewise, the circumstances and date of the sheet’s separation from Naue’s Taschenbuch are unknown.
Text: Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), Die Jungfrau von Orleans. Beethoven composed a second canon on the same text (WoO 166) in March 1815, intended for Louis Spohr.
The sketches will be featured in an article specially created for the Beethovenian Music Research Center, www.lvbeethoven.org
