Lost Beethoven work

[Megan]

In the news.

Lost Beethoven work to be aired.

A "lost" Beethoven movement is to be performed for the first time in more than 200 years, after being pieced together from early drafts.

Beethoven wrote the slow movement for his string quartet Opus 18 Number Two in 1799 before discarding it and composing another version a year later.

The original has not survived, but has now been reconstructed by Professor Brian Cooper of Manchester University.

He has reassembled the surviving sketches, filling in any gaps himself.


read more.......

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15073541

[Peter]

I think the BBC mean Barry Cooper - he of the 10th symphony! I know a lot of people find these things fascinating but if Beethoven discarded it and produced the wonderful slow movement we have, why bother? Purely an academic exercise.

[Quijote]

Here's The Guardian's take on Megan's BBC posting above. It offers a bit more detail, that's all.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011...vered-premiere

[Quijote]

Here is a comment from one reader of the Guardian article above :

I will of course listen to the 'new' piece with great interest, but I have reservations about putting bits together to form a new work from a master who rejected it at the time. Sketches should remain as sketches. Beethoven we are told was a perfectionist. He clearly did not think this work was up to the mark and was not what he would have wanted published. It is of academic interest but that should be the end of it.

We would not take rough sketches and create an oil painting from one of the masters; so we should not do so in music.

[Roehre]

I think the BBC mean Barry Cooper - he of the 10th symphony! I know a lot of people find these things fascinating but if Beethoven discarded it and produced the wonderful slow movement we have, why bother? Purely an academic exercise.

In the case of opus 18 it isn't an academic exercise, as it is only by accident that the earlier versions of the first three of these 6 quartets haven't survived completely but for the F-major quartet.

Opus 18/1 has survived completely in its earlier version, no.2 and 3 have partly so, but also have many sketches of these works, including -and that is essential here- some of the continuity drafts.
With the latter as point of departure it is only a matter of placing the right sketches or passages from the published works or surviving parts on top of this continuity draft - more a solvable jigsaw puzzle than a conjecture like the 10th symphony.

[Roehre]

read more.......

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15073541

Nice to see that standards within the BBC have dropped to a level that subtracting 1988 from 2011 equals 13..... as Cooper's "Tenth" dates from 1988.

[Quijote]

Well, it is indeed of academic interest, and nobody is claiming otherwise. Personally, I am happy to hear play-throughs of sketches, even if they have been discarded. Simple intellectual curiosity. I can't see the harm, and why all the brouhaha?
However, if this is marketed as something it is not, then that is a different question.
The same has been going on for years with Bruckner's (incomplete) Finale to the Ninth Symphony. There are several performing versions (Carragan, Phillips, Cohrs [2010 !] ...) that attempt reconstruction, but I don't think anyone ever really loses sight of that reality : informed, intelligent, caring, musical speculation of the highest order. I see no harm.
In any case, if offered a chance to hear this reconstructed quartet movement by Cooper, I would say yes immediately.

[Peter]

In any case, if offered a chance to hear this reconstructed quartet movement by Cooper, I would say yes immediately.

So great enthusiasm for a discarded Beethoven work completed by an academic, yet what about the neglect of many pieces he did actually complete? Years ago on this site we ran a weekly 'rare Beethoven' page which revealed just how much fine music has been forgotten and is hardly ever performed.

The completion exercise reminds me of a critic who claimed people would praise a manuscript by Beethoven if he simply spilt ink all over it! No doubt we could have a far more interesting completion based on that from today's composers? How about the 'Blot quartet' reconstructed by Prof Brian or Barry Cooper?

[Michael]

So great enthusiasm for a discarded Beethoven work completed by an academic, yet what about the neglect of many pieces he did actually complete? Years ago on this site we ran a weekly 'rare Beethoven' page which revealed just how much fine music has been forgotten and is hardly ever performed.

The completion exercise reminds me of a critic who claimed people would praise a manuscript by Beethoven if he simply spilt ink all over it! No doubt we could have a far more interesting completion based on that from today's composers? How about the 'Blot quartet' reconstructed by Prof Brian or Barry Cooper?

Exactly, Peter. I cannot understand the fascination with bits and pieces when there are literally dozens of small (and even large) completed works by Beethoven which are hardly ever heard.
I admire Barry Cooper and am at present reading his Beethoven biography for the umpteenth time, but I wish he had left the 9th symphony sketches alone. He has also done some tinkering with the 2nd and 4th piano concertos - his theory being that B did not publish his last thoughts on these works. This is valid enough, I suppose, but you have to leave the last word (or note) with the composer.
This reminds me of the revised "War and Peace" which was published a few years back, based on an earlier draft by Tolstoy in which Prince Andrei did NOT die. What was the point?
(In case anybody drags up "Leonore" and "Fidelio", I think there is a valid case for reconstructing the earlier version(s) as the music exists in total and it was performed in Beethoven's time.)

[Quijote]

I admire Barry Cooper and am at present reading his Beethoven biography for the umpteenth time, but I wish he had left the 9th symphony sketches alone.

(In case anybody drags up "Leonore" and "Fidelio", I think there is a valid case for reconstructing the earlier version(s) as the music exists in total and it was performed in Beethoven's time.)

Never knew Cooper tinkered with sketches of the Ninth. I know that Wagner and Mahler defiitely did (with the finished score).

If the music for Leonore exists in total, there is hardly any need for reconstruction, I would have thought. A revival, perhaps.

[Roehre]

I think there is a valid case for reconstructing the earlier version(s) as the music exists in total and it was performed in Beethoven's time.

and in case of opus 18/2 that is exactly what's done, as the original versions of the F, G and D quartets were performed before the revisions in preparation of the printed versions as we know these works now.

Cooper has edited the 2nd and 4th piano concertos' cadenzas and some of the solo parts as found in Beethoven's handwriting in printed material, but which were not published. That's all (and Mackerras has recorded them).

[Preston]

I don't mind people experimenting with Beethoven's music because his music itself will always be. For instance, I like that Liszt made piano transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies.

The problem I do have is with the way it is presented. If they are going to call it a work by Beethoven then they should only play the parts that Beethoven put to notes. Then the title should be:

"This is not a complete Beethoven work, it is fragments of a complete Beethoven work. The parts that are not written by Beethoven are written by Barry Cooper."

Well, something to that effect.

[Quijote]

Here's a little extract from this reconstruction :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/vide...00-years-video

[Michael]

Hmmm.
The allegro section does sound more interesting than the one in the quartet (which is one of my least favourite B movements) but how much of it is Cooper?
Beethoven composed a similar and much more melodic movement for the String Trio Opus 8.

[Quijote]

I have no idea what percentage is Baz Cooper; only a close look at the sketches and reconstructed score could tell me that.
What pleased me was to hear what the professor and the quartet's 1st violinist had to say about Cooper's effort : that nobody is attempting to supplant B's final word, but it can be treated as an appendix; further (in my own words), that it reveals compositional choices and is a highly interesting exercise in and for itself.