The piano sketches found in-between the pages of Beethoven’s notebooks propose exercises and experimental ideas that remain a largely unexplored area in the field of the Beethovenian studies. The existence of these exercises is well known, and their number continues to grow with the discovery of unpublished notebook pages. However, the purpose pursued by Beethoven, writing down so many heterogeneous and unsystematic fragments, remains unclear.
In order to better understand the function and significance of Beethoven’s exercises, we correlated them with the 32 sonatas, which fully represent the composer’s pianism. The ultimate objective of our study is to trace which gestural and timbral traits of his music Beethoven considered innovative, interesting or unusual, and what made him stylistically and instrumentally different, and an emblem in the world of piano Classicism.
From the collections of Wielhorsky, Kessler, Boldrini, as well as from other sources, we selected about seventy figurations and found their complete or partial analogues in Beethoven sonatas, establishing five degrees of similitude. In the process of quantitative and qualitative analysis, we noted for each figuration the number and movement of the sonata, the formal section, the exact number of measures containing it, and the level of compliance. Such a procedure has allowed to obtain a percentage index of the presence of the exercises in the sonatas, and to describe the characteristics of the most representative exercises with particular interest in timbral and gestural aspects.
1. Chiantore, Luca. 2009. “Los ejercicios técnicos de Beethoven.” Ph.D. diss., Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
2. Chiantore, Luca. 2014. Beethoven al pianoforte. Milano: Il saggiatore.
3. Cook, Nicholas. 1989. “Beethoven’s Unfinished Piano Concerto: A Case of Double Vision.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 42, no. 2 (Summer): 338–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/831659.
4. Cooper, Barry. 1990. Beethoven and the Creative Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
5. Cooper, Nicholas. 1985. “Newly Identified Sketches for Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony.” Music & Letters 66, no. 1 (January): 9–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/66.1.9.
6. Derry, Siân. 2012. “Beethoven’s Experimental Figurations and Exercises for Piano.” 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., The University of Manchester. Available at: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/beethovens-experimental-figurations-and-exercises-for-piano (accessed February 23, 2023).
7. Johnson, Douglas Porter. 1978. “Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the ‘Fischhof Miscellany’: Berlin Autograph 28.” Ph.D. diss., University of California.
8. Johnson, Douglas Porter. 1980. Beethoven’s Early Sketches in the “Fischhof Miscellany”: Berlin Autograph 28. 2 vols. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.
9. Johnson, Douglas Porter, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter. 1985. The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inventory. California Studies in 19th-Century Music 4. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.
10. Kann, Hans, ed. 1974. Johann Baptist Cramer. 21 Etüden für Klavier. Wien: Universal Edition.
11. Kerman, Joseph. 1970. “Beethoven’s Early Sketches.” The Musical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (October): 515–38. https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/LVI.4.515.
12. Kerman, Joseph, ed. 1970. Ludwig Van Beethoven. Autograph Miscellany from Circa 1786 to 1799. 2 vols. London: Published by the Trustees of the British Museum.
13. Kramer, Richard. 2008. Unfinished Music. New York: Oxford University Press.
14. Kramer, Richard. 1974. “The Sketches for Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas, Opus 30: History, Transcription, Analysis.” 3 vols. Ph.D. diss., Princeton University.
15. Lockwood, Lewis. 2005. Beethoven: The Music and the Life. New Work: W. W. Norton.
16. Marston, Nicholas. 2006. “In the ‘Twilight Zone’: Beethoven’s Unfinished Piano Trio in F Minor.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 131, no. 2: 227–86. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrma/fkl014.
17. Marston, Nicholas. 1995. Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109. Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
18. Meredith, William Rhea. 1985. “The Sources for Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109.” 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
19. Newman, William S. 1991. Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way. New York and London: W. W. Norton.
20. Nottebohm, Gustav. 1865. Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.
21. Nottebohm, Gustav. 1887. Zweite Beethoveniana: Nachgelassene Aufsätze. Leipzig: J. Rieter-Biedermann.
22. Reid, Paul. 2007. The Beethoven Song Companion. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
23. Rosenblum, Sandra. 1988. Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
24. Shedlock, John South. 1892. “Beethoven’s Sketch Books.” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 33, no. 592, 331–34.
25. Schenker, Heinrich. 1971. Beethoven. Die letzten Sonaten: Sonate E dur Op. 109. Kritischen Einführung und Erklärung. Edited by Oswald Jonas. Wien: Universal Edition.
26. Skowroneck, Tilman. 2006. “Beethoven the Pianist: Biographical, Organological and Performance-Practical Aspects of his Years as a Public Performer.” Ph.D. diss., University of Gothenburg
27. Skowroneck, Tilman. 2010. Beethoven the Pianist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.