Ludwig van Beethoven rather startlingly reared his stern visage in the 21st century when Heather Carbo — librarian at the Austen K. deBlois Library of Palmer Theological Seminary outside Philadelphia — found an 80-page working manuscript score for a duet-piano version of Beethoven's monumental Grosse Fuge in B flat major when cleaning out an obscure archival cabinet one sultry afternoon in July.
"It was just sitting on that shelf," Ms. Carbo told the NY Times. "I was just in a state of shock ... I'd heard oral history about a Beethoven manuscript, so I recognized what I had found immediately," she said. Carbo had been nearing the end of a huge inventory project when she came across the bound booklet in the very last cabinet she inspected in the basement of the library.
Dr. Jeffrey Kallberg at the University of Pennsylvania authenticated the manuscript, as did Dr. Stephen Roe, head of Sotheby's Manuscript department, who said, "This is an amazing find. The manuscript was only known from a brief description in a catalog in 1890 and it has never before been seen or described by Beethoven scholars. Its rediscovery will allow a complete reassessment of this extraordinary music." It will be offered for sale at Sotheby's in London December 1, 2005, and is expected to bring up to $2.6 million.
Dr. Wallace Smith, president of Palmer Theological Seminary, said, "I was both thrilled and overjoyed when I heard about the rediscovery of this wonderful manuscript, a true original by an artist for the ages." The Beethoven manuscript — as were original music manuscripts by Mozart, Haydn, Strauss, Meyerbeer and Spohr discovered at the Seminary in 1990 — was part of a collection presented to the Seminary in 1950 by Margaret Treat Doane, daughter of Cincinnati industrialist and hymn-writer William Howard Doane, who had likely purchased the Beethoven work at a Berlin auction in 1890.
Article comments
1 - godoggo
Ludwig Van's late quartets are some of my favorite music music ever, but this piece has always left me pretty cold, because it seems like a technical excercise written without much sensitivity to the instruments (which I understand is considered to be an occasional problem after he went deef - the choral writing in the 9th being an example I've seen held up), but I suspect I might like the quadromanoic (I just made that word up; there's undoubtedly an actual word that means 4-handed, but what the hell) version, since it seems more pianistic than stringistic (see previous parentheticism - oh, god, I can't restrain myself today) to me. A while back I was reading this website (lemme google it; here it is about all the fun Shostakovich had trying to compose at the pleasure of Papa Joe, which contained an anecdote about how the composer loved playing duets of the Grosse Fugue, which he'd memorized, with visitors.
Anyways, so I amazoned piano versions of the Grosse Fugue, and came of with something called Complete Beethoven Edition Vol. 6 - Piano Works / Demus, Alder, Gilels, Mustonen, Kempff, Barenboim.
Somehow just the list of titles on disk 8 really makes me want to hear this stuff:
1. Sonata In D Major, Op. 6: 1. Allegro molto
2. Sonata In D Major, Op. 6: 2. Rondo. Moderato
3. 3 Marches, op.45: No.1 In C Major - Allegro ma non troppo
4. 3 Marches, op.45: No. 2 in E Flat Major - Vivace
5. 3 Marches, op.45: No. 3 In C Major - Vivace
6. 'Grosse Fuge' In B Flat Major, Op. 134: Overtura. Allegro - Meno mosso e moderato - Allegro - Fuga. (Allegro) - Meno mosso e moderato - Allegro (molto e con brio)
7. 2 Preludes Through All Twelve Major Keys For Piano Or Organ: No. 1
8. 2 Preludes Through All Twelve Major Keys For Piano Or Organ: No. 2
9. Fugue In D Major For Organ
10. 5 Pieces For Mechanical Clock: No. 1 In F Major - Adagio assai
11. 5 Pieces For Mechanical Clock: No. 2 In G Major - Scherzo. Allegro
12. 5 Pieces For Mechanical Clock: No. 3 In G Major - Allegro
13. 5 Pieces For Mechanical Clock: No. 4 In C Major - Allegro non piu molto
14. 5 Pieces For Mechanical Clock: No. 5 In C Major - Menuett. Allegretto
15. Grenadier March For Mechanical Clock In F Major, Hess 107