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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
Several writers, beginning with Gustav Nottebohm, have made mention of a movement entitled ‘la gaiete’ that was at one stage intended for Beethoven's String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 127, but none of them have previously given a full account of this movement. It appears in several sketch sources, notably Artaria 206 (currently in Kraków), and although it was not incorporated into the final version of the quartet, it played an important role in shaping the slow movement of the work. It also had an indirect influence on the coda of the finale. Its precise function in the creation of the quartet becomes much clearer through a detailed study of Beethoven's sketches, which are scattered in many different sources and appear in four formats that run concurrently, making assessment of them difficult. Examining the sketches for the movement also throws light on the chronological relationship between the various sketch sources. Contrary to some accounts, the movement appears never to have been part of a planned six-movement scheme for the work – a scheme that was extremely fleeting and only one of many possibilities for the work's structure.
1 Kinderman, William, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar: 285.
2 Cooper, Barry, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar: 323; second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 348.
3 Lockwood, Lewis, Beethoven: The music and the life (New York: Norton, 2003)Google Scholar: 446.
4 Brandenburg, Sieghard, ‘Die Quellen zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Beethovens Streichquartett Es-Dur Op. 127’, Beethoven Jahrbuch, 10 (1983): 221–276Google Scholar. Nottebohm's article was originally published as ‘Skizzen zum zweiten Satz des Quartetts Op. 127’, Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 7 (1876): 561–64, 577–79, but was reprinted with minor changes in his more readily accessible Zweite Beethoveniana (Leipzig: Peters, 1887, reprinted New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970): 310–20.
5 For a detailed account of Beethoven's sketchbooks and sketching methods, see Johnson, Douglas, Tyson, Alan and Winter, Robert, The Beethoven Sketchbooks, ed. Douglas Johnson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985)Google Scholar.
6 Brandenburg, , ‘Die Quellen’, 234–267Google Scholar.
7 See Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, edited by Sieghard Brandenburg, 7 vols (Munich: Henle, 1996–98), volume 4: 488–90, 508–9, 511–13 (= items 1465, 1478, 1480).
8 Brandenburg, , ‘Die Quellen’, 233Google Scholar.
9 See Brandenburg, ed., Beethoven: Briefwechsel, volume 5: 11–12 (= item 1535, replying to letter no. 1508 of 9 Nov. 1822).
10 Brandenburg, , ‘Die Quellen’, 231–232Google Scholar.
11 Brandenburg, ed., Beethoven: Briefwechsel, volume 5: 333 (= item 1846).
12 Brandenburg, ed., Beethoven: Briefwechsel, volume 5: 336 (= item 1848).
13 Johnson, ed., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 292–303.
14 Johnson, ed., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 411–18.
15 Johnson, ed., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 411–13.
16 Johnson, ed., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 303.
17 See Brandenburg, , ‘Die Quellen’, 267Google Scholar.
18 Johnson, ed., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 471. The reference to Brandenburg is to his article ‘Die Quellen’ cited above; the other reference is to Hans Schmidt, ‘Verzeichnis der Skizzen Beethovens’, Beethoven-Jahrbuch, 6 (1969): 22 (= item 18).
19 It was one of many manuscripts that disappeared at the end of World War II and came to light in Kraków in the 1970s.
20 Brandenburg, , ‘Die Quellen’, 264Google Scholar.
21 Nottebohm, , Zweite Beethoveniana, 218–220Google Scholar.
22 Nottebohm, , Zweite Beethoveniana, 218–220Google Scholar.
23 Brandenburg, ed., Beethoven: Briefwechsel, volume 5: 11 (= item 1535).
24 See Cooper, Barry, ‘Beethoven and the Double Bar’, Music & Letters, 88 (August 2007): 458–483Google Scholar, for a discussion of the different types of double bar Beethoven used.
25 ‘Sich zu gewöhnen gleich das ganze – alle Stimmen wie es sich zeigt im Kopfe, zu entwerfen.’ See Alexander Wheelock Thayer, revised Hermann Deiters and Hugo Riemann, Ludwig van Beethovens Leben, 5 vols (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1907–23), volume 3: 246.
26 Nottebohm, , Zweite Beethoveniana, 217Google Scholar.
27 Nottebohm quotes several sketches for both the C major and A-flat versions of the theme (Zweite Beethoveniana, 210–16), though the time signature and adagio marking are omitted in his version of Example 8.
28 See Cooper, Barry, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990)Google Scholar: 114.
29 See Cooper, , Beethoven and the Creative Process, 71–147Google Scholar.
30 These are quoted in Nottebohm, , Zweite Beeethoveniana, 541–543Google Scholar.
31 The foliation given in the manuscript and used here counts stubs, whereas that given in Johnson, ed., The Beethoven Sketchbooks, 415–18, does not. Thus folio 15 is referred to in The Beethoven Sketchbooks as folio 14.
32 Nottebohm, , Zweite Beethoveniana, 550Google Scholar; see also, for example, Stadlen, Peter, ‘Possibilities of an Aesthetic Evaluation of Beethoven's Sketches’, in Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress Bonn 1970, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and others (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1971)Google Scholar: 111–17.
33 Brandenburg, , ‘Die Quellen’, 274Google Scholar.