New Beethoven PC debut

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Peter:
I'm not aware of a Fur Elise reconstruction - there is another revised fragmentary version dating from 1822 which may be what you are referring to, but I think the 1810 version is original.

As for the rage over a lost penny, I believe only the ending was supplied by Diabelli.

From the *Beethoven Compendium* we have:

Bagatelle WoO 59 "Fur Elise" in A minor
Poco moto (3/8)
1808 or 1810; published posthumously;
Autograph missing; A revised but slightly
fragmentary version from 1822 also survives.

Rondo a capriccio "Rage over the lost penny"
in G major, opus 129, allegro vivace (2/4),
1795, published posthumously, incomplete,
completed by an unknown editor probably
Diabelli.

Well, should we call the above "works by Beethoven" or should we call them "a fantasy based on Beethoven?"

[Michael]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
In many cases on the Unheard Beethoven site, the original sketch version is placed next to the competed or restored version. That way, the listener can compare the original idea and the suggested way to complete it. Nowhere on the Unheard Beethoven site does it say that these completions are Beethoven's works. It is also a credit to the founders of the site that the MIDI's are FREE and DOWNLOADABLE.

As for Dr. Barry Cooper's "realization and completion" of the 1st movement of Beethoven's 10th Symphony, he had far more than just 2 or 3 themes. He had around 250 bars of sketches. There is a recording of this completion that includes his lecture on how he did it. He stated that there was more than enough thematic material in the sketches to make a reasonable attempt to complete it. Also, he admits in his lecture that Beethoven most certainly would have done it differently, but Cooper believes that he was able to give the listener an idea of what Beethoven had in mind.
So, it is not Beethoven and they do not claim it is Beethoven. It is an interpretation of what Beethoven had in mind.

I think I have acknowledged the great work done by "Willem" on the "Unheard" site and he has indeed clearly indicated which is an original sketch and which is a reconstruction. What annoys me is the press coverage of such reconstructions:
LOST BEETHOVEN CONCERTO!
UNKNOWN WORK BY BEETHOVEN DISCOVERED!
One minute's googling will reveal the above and similar headlines.
As to the reconstruction of Beethoven's Tenth, I very much admire Barry Cooper and have read his recent Beethoven biography at least three times, but he shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the Beethoven sketches with his lethal composer's pen. I have the same disc to which you refer. I am not a musician - in fact I am musically illiterate - but I have been listening to Beethoven for the past 37 years - and nothing will ever convince me that the man who wrote the opening movement of the Ninth Symphony would then go on to write something as puerile as Cooper's work. I can only pick a handful of themes out of it - no matter how many bars Beethoven left after him - and their development is ....... well, I'll be kind and say that they are not up to Beethoven's standard.
I will agree, however, that Barry Cooper did not make any outrageous claims for his work, but it made enormous news headlines back in the eighties.
I had the good fortune, about ten years ago, to meet the composer and Beethoven expert, Robert Simpson and I asked him why he didn't emulate Barry Cooper and "do a job on the Ninth?" His reply was that "there was really nothing there to work on".
"However," he added with a mischievous grin,
"there's a lot of money to be made out of such things."
Nobody would be more delighted than I if a genuine complete lost score were discovered - even that tiny string quartet piece that was uncovered in 1999 was a joy.
But spare us the news headlines about what is really (albeit skillful) guesswork.

Michael

[Peter]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
From the *Beethoven Compendium* we have:

Bagatelle WoO 59 "Fur Elise" in A minor
Poco moto (3/8)
1808 or 1810; published posthumously;
Autograph missing; A revised but slightly
fragmentary version from 1822 also survives.

Rondo a capriccio "Rage over the lost penny"
in G major, opus 129, allegro vivace (2/4),
1795, published posthumously, incomplete,
completed by an unknown editor probably
Diabelli.

Well, should we call the above "works by Beethoven" or should we call them "a fantasy based on Beethoven?"

There is no evidence that the 1810 version of Fur Elise is by any other hand than Beethoven's despite the lost autograph. As to the lost penny, I've never really liked it anyway, but the majority of the work is Beethoven.

There are many fragments and sketches left by Beethoven - do we really need some musicologist to patch any of them together and palm them off as 'Beethoven'? Beethoven left us hundreds of completed works as he intended them to be, isn't that enough?

I entirely agree with Michael's assessment of Cooper's 10th - no matter how excellent a job is done (as with Payne and Elgar), the best that can be hoped for is a convincing immitation of style. Elgar actually pleaded that the sketches for his 3rd be destroyed as he didn't want this happening to him - alas!



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'Man know thyself'

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Peter:

Beethoven left us hundreds of completed works as he intended them to be, isn't that enough?

I entirely agree with Michael's assessment of Cooper's 10th - no matter how excellent a job is done (as with Payne and Elgar), the best that can be hoped for is a convincing immitation of style. Elgar actually pleaded that the sketches for his 3rd be destroyed as he didn't want this happening to him - alas!

Let us be accurate. Elgar told his doctor: "I can not complete the 3rd symphony, somebody will complete it--or write a better one--in 50 or 500 years." Anthony Payne did it inside the 50 year limitation!

Let us also be accurate with regard to Beethoven's finished works. Take for instance his 5th Symphony. During his lifetime and after his death, performances of the 5th were given from manuscript orchestral material prepared under his supervision and revised by him in several stages, and later revised by an "unknown hand." In other words, the 5th Symphony as it is now performed may very well be not what Beethoven invisioned or wanted. If Beethoven had lived long enough to see the projected complete collection of his works, he would have revised many early works.

Tell me, when you listen to "Turadot," do you stop the recording before the last act so that you do not have to hear Alfano's imitation of Puccini?

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Peter:
There is no evidence that the 1810 version of Fur Elise is by any other hand than Beethoven's despite the lost autograph.

The autograph is lost. No one knows what was on it, or what was not on it! The point I was trying to make is that "Fur Elise" may very well be the work of a reconstructor. The autograph is lost and the other manuscript is fragmentary.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
Let us be accurate. Elgar told his doctor: "I can not complete the 3rd symphony, somebody will complete it--or write a better one--in 50 or 500 years." Anthony Payne did it inside the 50 year limitation!

Let us also be accurate with regard to Beethoven's finished works. Take for instance his 5th Symphony. During his lifetime and after his death, performances of the 5th were given from manuscript orchestral material prepared under his supervision and revised by him in several stages, and later revised by an "unknown hand." In other words, the 5th Symphony as it is now performed may very well be not what Beethoven invisioned or wanted. If Beethoven had lived long enough to see the projected complete collection of his works, he would have revised many early works.

Tell me, when you listen to "Turadot," do you stop the recording before the last act so that you do not have to hear Alfano's imitation of Puccini?

Indeed let us be accurate - Elgar expressly begged his close friend Reed to burn the manuscript sketches of the 3rd. A few years earlier an American firm tried to interest him in the completion of Schubert's Unfinished and he expressed his displeasure at the idea in no uncertain terms.

The score of the 5th symphony was published in 1809 and it is well known how meticulously Beethoven proof-read not only the copied scores but the published works as well.

I don't listen to Turandot, but if I did I would be well aware that the last act is not Puccini. In this case (as in Mozart's requiem) a substantial portion of the work was written by the composer. My argument is not that it is wrong to complete a work when a small amount is missing, but that it is wrong to construct an entirely new composition based on fragmentary sketches, and then palm it off as being by the composer.

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'Man know thyself'

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Peter:
The score of the 5th symphony was published in 1809 and it is well known how meticulously Beethoven proof-read not only the copied scores but the published works as well.

Clive Brown writes in a new Breitkopf-Hartel score of the 5th Symphony:
"Apart from mere mistakes and deficiencies in copying and engraving--some of which took many years beyond Beethoven's death and some which are only now being identified for the first time--the printed edition [of 1809] failed in many respects fully to reflect Beethoven's concept of the work." Despite Beethoven's instructions in a letter from 1810, the publishers failed to correct a serious mistake that resulted in two redundant bars in the third movement which were originally intended as a first-time bar for a repeat of the entire Scherzo and trio. Having done three impressions of the symphony in 1809, the publishers continued to ignore further instructions from Beethoven which would mean a fourth major re-engraving. Thus two versions of the 5th Symphony developed: the 1809 published version and an evolving manuscript in close proximity to Beethoven in Vienna.

[Johan]

Originally posted by Michael:
I think I have acknowledged the great work done by "Willem" on the "Unheard" site and he has indeed clearly indicated which is an original sketch and which is a reconstruction. What annoys me is the press coverage of such reconstructions:
LOST BEETHOVEN CONCERTO!
UNKNOWN WORK BY BEETHOVEN DISCOVERED!
One minute's googling will reveal the above and similar headlines.
As to the reconstruction of Beethoven's Tenth, I very much admire Barry Cooper and have read his recent Beethoven biography at least three times, but he shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the Beethoven sketches with his lethal composer's pen. I have the same disc to which you refer. I am not a musician - in fact I am musically illiterate - but I have been listening to Beethoven for the past 37 years - and nothing will ever convince me that the man who wrote the opening movement of the Ninth Symphony would then go on to write something as puerile as Cooper's work. I can only pick a handful of themes out of it - no matter how many bars Beethoven left after him - and their development is ....... well, I'll be kind and say that they are not up to Beethoven's standard.
I will agree, however, that Barry Cooper did not make any outrageous claims for his work, but it made enormous news headlines back in the eighties.
I had the good fortune, about ten years ago, to meet the composer and Beethoven expert, Robert Simpson and I asked him why he didn't emulate Barry Cooper and "do a job on the Ninth?" His reply was that "there was really nothing there to work on".
"However," he added with a mischievous grin,
"there's a lot of money to be made out of such things."
Nobody would be more delighted than I if a genuine complete lost score were discovered - even that tiny string quartet piece that was uncovered in 1999 was a joy.
But spare us the news headlines about what is really (albeit skillful) guesswork.

Michael

Michael!
Certainly the completion of the Ist movement of the X symphony by Cooper is not a work of Beethoven. It is a work from the sketches as they now stand. I think Beethoven would have developed, discarded and then intertwined in new ways and so on...
What we have now from Cooper is something from Beethoven sketches put together by Cooper and certainly not the X symphony of LvB.
You are right, I think, in pointing this out. But I disagree with you totally about the realization of Cooper from the sketches. It can be puerile, but knowing the technique Beethoven used in composing...

[Peter]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
Clive Brown writes in a new Breitkopf-Hartel score of the 5th Symphony:
"Apart from mere mistakes and deficiencies in copying and engraving--some of which took many years beyond Beethoven's death and some which are only now being identified for the first time--the printed edition [of 1809] failed in many respects fully to reflect Beethoven's concept of the work." Despite Beethoven's instructions in a letter from 1810, the publishers failed to correct a serious mistake that resulted in two redundant bars in the third movement which were originally intended as a first-time bar for a repeat of the entire Scherzo and trio. Having done three impressions of the symphony in 1809, the publishers continued to ignore further instructions from Beethoven which would mean a fourth major re-engraving. Thus two versions of the 5th Symphony developed: the 1809 published version and an evolving manuscript in close proximity to Beethoven in Vienna.

Yes, but inaccuracies in a score is hardly the same as constructing an entirely new work from sketches - these are separate issues. Anyway, I've never heard a performance of the 5th that ignored Beethoven's 1810 letter complaining about the extra bars.

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'Man know thyself'



[This message has been edited by Peter (edited 01-30-2005).]

[Johan]

Originally posted by Johan:
Michael!
Certainly the completion of the Ist movement of the X symphony by Cooper is not a work of Beethoven. It is a work from the sketches as they now stand. I think Beethoven would have developed, discarded and then intertwined in new ways and so on...
What we have now from Cooper is something from Beethoven sketches put together by Cooper and certainly not the X symphony of LvB.
You are right, I think, in pointing this out. But I disagree with you totally about the realization of Cooper from the sketches. It can be puerile, but knowing the technique Beethoven used in composing...

We can't even know for certain, that this would have made out the X symphony as Beethoven sometimes left works beside or did not want to complete them (perhaps in the form they then stood) and began with others.

[Rutradelusasa]

Originally posted by Johan:
We can't even know for certain, that this would have made out the X symphony as Beethoven sometimes left works beside or did not want to complete them (perhaps in the form they then stood) and began with others.

That's one the things I believe, that even though he left 500 pages of manuscripts for the first movement, he maybe chose not to complete it (maybe to elevate the ninth, maybe because he wasn't eager to complete another symphony) or maybe he just stopped were we know and was going to start over. Mozart left instructions for the Requiem completion and left it as a known desire, yet Beethoven didn't, or do you think he didn't know he had a youth concerto?
Don't you think he knew of something he performed? Why did he choose not to publish it? Why didn't he give a copy to Haydn, Waldstein, Neefe or any other that he met in his Bonn years?
Excuse me, but there isn't one single letter of his that states that he wished to find that concerto, or that he was sorry that he never published it, or that he missed it. Not one. Is the idea of presenting sketches to us nice? Yes it is, but only in the form of sketches, for study purposes, for curiosity purposes.
Do people think that these masters died in hope that one day someone would dig their already rejected past? Rejected by themselves. The obsession that once took over Schubert's unfinished is too without purpose. I agree with what I once read, Schubert's Unfinished is his D major sketch, that B minor wonderful thing is a completed symphony. Schubert stopped working on it as soon as 1822 and he died in 1828.

My idea is: findings are always interesting, but leave what they left in the way they left it. No more posing as Beethoven.

P.S.: No one here will convince me that greed isn't what is motivating these people when they attempt such reconstructions. If it wasn't, this guy who is reconstructing the andante would have appealed to the media to stop such headlines as: "NEW BEETHOVEN CONCERTO FOUND AND TO BE PERFORMED."
P.S.2: Once again I say, I'm against reconstruction, completion I judge to be sometimes necessary in order to have a coda, an ending, even a recapitulation, where (to those who folow classical forms) the work would be mechanic, or predictable (but still isn't as the composer would have completed it). As for reconstruction... it should be called recomposing, thus it is not the composer's anymore, but something inspired by him.

I hope I've made myself clear.

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"Wer ein holdes weib errungen..."

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Peter:
I've never heard a performance of the 5th that ignored Beethoven's 1810 letter complaining about the extra bars.

As I understand it, ignoring the 1810 letter gives us the classsic A-B-A' format of the 3rd movement, where A is the scherzo theme, B is the trio theme, and A' is the ingenious grotesque variant of the scherzo theme. Applying the letter gives us an A-B-A-B-A' format.

Before the recent publications of the new Barenreiter Edition and the new Clive Brown B&H Edition of the 5th Symphony, conductors used the older A-B-A' classic format. Now the vogue is the newer A-B-A-B-A' format. I have CD's of David Zinman and Kurt Masur using the new format. I also know that Stefan Sanderling also uses it.

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Rutradelusasa:

P.S.: No one here will convince me that greed isn't what is motivating these people when they attempt such reconstructions.

I assume that "greed" means "money" to you. Well, in Beethoven's day, the big money was made by the publishers with the composer receiving very little compensation. Today, the big money goes to the publishers and the biggest money goes to the recording companies.

I know for a fact that the reconstructor of the "Macbeth Overture" received zero compensation for the world premiere in Washington D.C. and zero compensation for the European premiere in Rennes, France. As a matter of fact, he paid his airfare to both events out of his own pocket. He also paid from his own pocket for the printing and shipping of the score and orchestral parts.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Hofrat:
I assume that "greed" means "money" to you. Well, in Beethoven's day, the big money was made by the publishers with the composer receiving very little compensation. Today, the big money goes to the publishers and the biggest money goes to the recording companies.

I know for a fact that the reconstructor of the "Macbeth Overture" received zero compensation for the world premiere in Washington D.C. and zero compensation for the European premiere in Rennes, France. As a matter of fact, he paid his airfare to both events out of his own pocket. He also paid from his own pocket for the printing and shipping of the score and orchestral parts.

Whatever the motives, Rutradelusasa has a point - if these sketches were discarded by the composer, who has the right now to dish them up as a completed 'Beethoven' work and really what is the point when we have hundreds of genuine Beethoven pieces which are neglected today anyway? Beethoven was convinced even when it came to arrangements of his completed works that no one else should do it, (consider his comments on the Op.14 nr.1 sonata) - just imagine what his thoughts would be if someone were to compose a piece based on his sketches and that should settle the matter.


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'Man know thyself'

[Hofrat]

Originally posted by Peter:
Who has the right now to dish them up as a completed 'Beethoven' work and really what is the point when we have hundreds of genuine Beethoven pieces which are neglected today anyway?

The reconstructors ARE NOT dishing their reconstructions off as "Beethoven" works. I checked my numerous scores of various reconstructions to see what was claimed:

Overture Macbeth is based on sketches in Biamonti 454 and opus 70/1.
The 10th Symphony movement is completed and realized by Barry Cooper.
The D-major Piano Concerto Movement is based on Artaria 184 by Nicholas Cook.
The Beethoven C-minor Symphony movement is completed from sketches in the Kafka miscellany.
The Schubert 7th and 10th Symphonies are realizations by Brian Newbould.

No one claimed that his work was authentic!

As for the hundreds of genuine Beethoven pieces that are neglected today, you may blame the recording companies. They only record that which they think will make money, and if they had their way, all we would see of Beethoven on the CD store shelves would be his 9 symphonies. Only in recent years, we are beginning to learn that their were composers by the name of Kraus, Gossec, Beck, Eggert, Onslow, Vorisek, Haeffner, Hofmann, Verhurst, Schwindl, et al who composed very decent music but never been recorded because the recording companies feared a loss.