The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I

by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

Beethoven and His Sketchbooks

Beethoven was seldom without a folded sheet or two of music paper in his pocket upon which he wrote with pencil in two or three measures of music hints of any musical thought which might occur to him wherever he chanced to be. Towards the end of his life his Conversation Books often answered the same purpose; and there are traditions of bills-of-fare at dining-rooms having been honored with ideas afterwards made immortal. This habit gave Abbé Gelinek a foundation for the following amusing nonsense as related by Tomaschek: “He (Gelinek) declared,” says Tomaschek,

as if it were an aphorism, that all of Beethoven’s compositions were lacking in internal coherency and that not infrequently they were overloaded. These things he looked upon as grave faults of composition and sought to explain them from the manner in which Beethoven went about his work, saying that he had always been in the habit of noting every musical idea that occurred to him upon a bit of paper which he threw into a corner of his room, and that after a while there was a considerable pile of the memoranda which the maid was not permitted to touch when cleaning the room. Now when Beethoven got into a mood for work he would hunt a few musical motivi out of his treasure-heap which he thought might serve as principal and secondary themes for the composition in contemplation, and often his selection was not a lucky one. I (Tomaschek) did not interrupt the flow of his passionate, yet awkward speech, but briefly answered that I was unfamiliar with Beethoven’s method of composing but was inclined to think that the aberrations occasionally to be found in his compositions were to be ascribed to his individuality, and that only an unprejudiced and keen psychologist, who had had an opportunity to observe Beethoven from the beginning of his artistic development to its maturity in order gradually to familiarize himself with his views on art, could fit himself to give the musical world an explanation of the intellectual cross-relationships in Beethoven’s glorious works, a thing just as impossible to his blind enthusiasts as to his virulent opponents. Gelinek may have applied these last words to himself, and not incorrectly.

This conversation took place in 1814, the day after a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Symphony in A—the Seventh! Gelinek’s pile of little bits of paper in the corner of the room, when touched by the wand of truth, resolves itself into blank music books, to which his new ideas were transferred from the original slight pencil sketches, and frequently with two or three words to indicate the kind of composition to which they were suited. Divers anecdotes are current which pretend to give the origin of some of the themes thus recorded and afterwards wrought out, but few judicious readers will attach much weight to most of them. For although conceptions can sometimes be traced directly to their exciting causes, the musical composer can seldom say more than that they occurred to him at such a time and place—and often not even that. It is certainly not improbable that Beethoven’s admirers may have questioned him upon this point, as Schindler did upon the “Pastoral” Symphony, and that he was able to satisfy them; but Handel’s “Harmonious Blacksmith” may be taken as the type of most of the current stories, which only need truth to make them interesting.

To return to the sketchbooks—which performed a twofold office; being not alone the registers of new conceptions, but containing the preliminary studies of the instrumental works into which they were wrought out. The introduction to the excellent pamphlet, “Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven, beschrieben und in Auszügen dargestellt von Gustav Nottebohm,” though properly confined by him to the single book which he was describing, is equally true of so many that have been examined with care as to warrant its general application. The following extracts may be taken as true of the greater part of the sketchbooks:

How the Sketching Was Done

Before us (he says) lies a volume in oblong folio (Teatro) of 192 pages and bearing 16 staves on each page, and, save a few empty places, containing throughout notes and sketches in Beethoven’s handwriting for compositions of various sorts. The volume is bound in craftsman’s style, trimmed, and has a stout pasteboard cover. It was bound thus before it was used or received the notes. [Excepting the number of pages this description applies to most of the true sketchbooks.] The sketches are for the greater part one-part; that is, they occupy but a single staff, only exceptionally are they on two or more staves. [In some of the later books the proportion of sketches in two or more parts is much greater than in this.] It is permissible to assume in advance that they were written originally and in the order in which they follow each other in the sketchbook. When a cursory glance over the whole does not seem to contradict this assumption, a careful study nevertheless compels a modification at times. It is to be observed that generally Beethoven began a new page with a new composition; and, moreover, that he worked alternately or simultaneously at different movements. As a result, different groups of sketches are crowded so closely together that in order to find room he was obliged to make use of spaces which had been left open, and thus eventually sketches for the most different compositions had to be mixed together and brought into companionship. [In some of the books “vi-” not infrequently meets the eye. It was the one of Beethoven’s modes of keeping the clue in the labyrinth of sketches, being part of the word vide. The second syllable, “-de,” can always be found on the same or a neighboring page.] “N.B.,” “No. 100,” “No. 500,” “No. 1000,” etc., and in later sketches “meilleur,” are common, all which signs are explained by Schindler as being a whimsical mode of estimating the comparative value of different musical ideas, or of forms of the same. Again Nottebohm continues: In spite of this confused working it is plain that Beethoven, as a rule, was conscious from the beginning of the goal for which he was striving, that he was true to his first concept and carried out the projected form to the end. The contrary is also true at times, and the sketchbook (like others) disclosed a few instances in which Beethoven in the course was led from the form originally conceived into another, so that eventually something different appeared from what was planned in the first instance. (Once more.) In general it may be observed that Beethoven in all his work begun in the sketchbook proceeded in the most varied manner, and at times reached his goal in a direction opposite to that upon which he first set out. [At times] the thematic style dominates; the first sketch breaks off abruptly with the principal subject and the work that follows is confined to transforming and reshaping the thematic kernel at first thrown on the paper until it appears to be fitted for development; then the same process is undertaken with intermediary sections; everywhere we find beginnings, never a whole; a whole comes before us only outside of the sketchbook, in the printed composition where sections which were scattered in the sketchbook are brought together. [In other cases] the thematic manner is excluded; every sketch is aimed at a unity and is complete in itself; the very first one gives the complete outline for a section of a movement; those that follow are then complete reshapings of the first, as other readings directed towards a change in the summary character, or a reformation of the whole, an extension of the middle sections, etc. Naturally, the majority of the sketches do not belong exclusively to either of the two tendencies, but hover between them, now leaning toward one, now toward the other.

One readily sees that, when the general plan of a work is clear and distinct before the mind, it is quite indifferent in what order the various parts are studied; and that Beethoven simply adopted the method of many a dramatic and other author, who sketches his scenes or chapters not in course but as mood, fancy or opportunity dictates. It is equally evident that the composer could have half a dozen works upon his hands at the same time, not merely without disadvantage to any one of them, but to the gain of all, since he could turn to one or another as the spirit of composition impelled; like the author of a profound literary work, who relieves and recreates his mind by varying his labors, and executes his grand task all the more satisfactorily, because he, from time to time, refreshes himself by turning his attention to other and lighter topics. When Beethoven writes to Wegeler: “As I am writing now I often compose three or four pieces at once,” he could have referred only to the preliminary studies of the sketchbooks. Sometimes, it is true, works were laid aside incomplete after he had begun the task of writing them out in full, and finished when occasion demanded; but as a rule his practice was quite different, viz.: All the parts of a work having been thus studied until he had determined upon the form, character and style of every important division and subdivision, and recorded the results in his sketchbook by a few of the first measures, followed by “etc.” or “and so on,” the labor of composition may be said to have been finished, and there remained only the task of writing out the clean copy of what now existed full and complete in his mind, and of making such minor corrections and improvements as might occur to him on revision. The manuscripts show that these were sometimes very numerous, though they rarely extend to any change in the form or to any alteration in the grand effect except to heighten it, or render it more unexpected or exciting. When upon reflection he was dissatisfied with a movement as a whole he seems rarely to have attempted its improvement by mere correction, choosing rather to discard it at once and compose a new one based either upon the same themes or upon entirely new motives. The several overtures to “Fidelio” are illustrations of both procedures.

The sketches of the greater part of Beethoven’s songs, after the Bonn period, are preserved, and prove with what extreme care he wrought out his melodies. The sketchbook analysed by Nottebohm affords a curious illustration in Matthison’s “Opferlied,” the melody being written out in full not less than six times, the theme in substance remaining unchanged. Absolute correctness of accent, emphasis, rhythm—of prosody, in short—was with him a leading object; and various papers, as well as the Conversation Books, attest his familiarity with metrical signs and his scrupulous obedience to metrical laws. Since the shameful mutilation and dispersion of Beethoven’s manuscripts at the time of their sale, probably no one person has been able to trace and examine half of the sketchbooks; still, enough have come under observation during the researches for this work to establish with reasonable certainty these points:

I. That each sketchbook was filled in pretty regular course from beginning to end before a new one was taken.