Official title: WoO 202 Das Schöne zum Guten Albumblatt (Fassung 1823; F-dur) nach Worten von Friedrich von Matthisson Widmung: – NGA XII/2 AGA – SBG V/58 (2. Auflage: 59; Hess 283)

Origin and Publication: Written on 27 September 1823 in Vöslau. The first edition appeared posthumously in 1865 in Alexander W. Thayer’s Chronological Index. The lawyer Karl Pachler had invited Beethoven to Graz for the first time in 1817 (BGA 1124). His wife, Marie Leopoldine Pachler (1794–1855), née Koschak, had played the piano part in a performance in Graz of the Choral Fantasy, Op. 80. Beethoven may have recommended her in a letter to Joseph von Varena after Julius Schneller had spoken to him about her (BGA 531).

Marie Pachler renewed the invitation to Graz in September 1823, while Beethoven was staying in Baden near Vienna, where she herself was undergoing treatment (BKh 4, p. 192). Marie Pachler wrote to her former teacher Julius Schneller about this meeting with Beethoven — whom she had met repeatedly since 1817 — on 25 December 1823: „Was mir aber in die Seele schnitt, war der Anblick Beethoven’s. Ich fand ihn sehr gealtert. Er klagte über Krankheit und Andrang der Geschäfte. Seine Taubheit hat, wenn möglich, noch zugenommen; allein seine Abneigung, oder vielmehr Unfähigkeit, selbst zu sprechen, scheint sich verloren zu haben. Unsere Conversation war nur von meiner Seite schriftlich; er schrieb mir blos im Moment des Scheidens ein musikalisches Lebewohl, das ich, wie Sie denken können, als eine Reliquie bewahre.“ (Pachler/Beethoven p. 20.)

Text: Friedrich von Matthisson (1761–1831), „Opferlied“, final stanza. (See Op. 121b and WoO 126.) Beethoven set the text once again (WoO 203) in May 1825 (for Ludwig Rellstab).

Autograph Sources: Sketches not documented. Transcription: A-Wgm, A 15.
Dating: „am 27ten Septemb.“ 1823. Title: „Vößlau am 27ten Septemb. / von L v. Beethoven / An Frau v. Pachler“. One leaf; text on the recto, verso blank.
Paper: horizontal format, torn at the top, trimmed on the right, 13 × 20 cm, freely written in a single line. Provenance: old inventory (Vienna/Autographe, pp. 10f). Facsimile: August Göllerich, Beethoven, Berlin [1903], after p. 48 (Die Musik I, by Richard Strauss). First Edition: 1865, “Erinnerungsblatt”, in Thayer 1865, p. 152, no. 242.