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Rh von Beethoven, beschrieben unci in Ausziigen dargestellt, von Gustav Nottebolim.' In this earliest of the important additions to Beethoven literature contributed by Nottebohm, the editors annotations and comments are more cojoious and explicit than in the volumes since published. We are warned at the outset to expect outline sketches and detached frag- ments only ; notliing cither fully planned or carried out ; further, that the sketcli-book contains many passages unsuitable for quotation because they refer to compositions begun but never finished. It has also to be borne in mind that the extracts contained in the first published ' Skizzenbuch ' overlap and run parallel with other sketches published in some cases only a year ago. In all the sketch-books we find, side by side, and sometimes intermingled, pas- sages belonging to compositions of quite different character. In a communication made to Wegeler in 1800, Beethoven himself says that ' one thing is scarcely finished before another is begun, and I have sometimes three or four compositions in hand at the same time.'' Beethoven kept to this particular way of woi-k- ing to the very end, and the fact explains to some extent the habit of fixing at once on paper, as it occurred to him, eacli new idea and eacli modification of older ones, and also the striking affinity of certain themes which belong to essentially different compositions, but which were evolved from the same rhythmic germ. The extracts given in Nottebohm^s first ' Skizzenbucli ' ai'e taken from a note-book belonging to the years 1801-2, and the circumstances of the entries having been made in ink has led to the conclusion that they belong to a time when Beetlioven was ill and confined to the house. The preliminary sketclies of this period bear the same relation to the sketches of a later date as the finished compositions of the first bear to those of the second period of Beethoven's creative activity. The entries are more copious, the corrections fewer, the material is less closely knit together, and the process of condensation less obviously at work. As a con- sequence, there is not the same concentrated force and energy which, a few years later, cliaracterise alike the rough draft and the finished work. As an example, we may refer to the lengthy outline sketches for the last movement of the D Major Sym- phony, quoted in the ' Skizzenbuch,'' and to the pre- liminary sketch for the introduction and first allegro of the same symphony, extracted from a note-book of still earlier date, the contents of wiiicli, with other additional sketches belonging to the same early period, were published last year in Nottebohm's last instalment of research, the ' Zweite Beetlio- veniana.'' The three outline sketches for the finale are interesting as showing liow Beethoven alternately interpolated and eliminated plirases, parts of phrases, and een whole sections, without deviating from the first conceived central idea with which the movement £ ^lEEP. 3' starts so boldly, which is the mainspring of action to the whole movement, and so much more charac- teristic of Beethoven than the Mozartean phrase which follows. In the first sketch this more conven- tional phrase ilHU^ii^^gi docs not appear ; and in the second, the first theme quoted above is omitted, though, pro- bably, not with the intention of its being finally discarded. That remarkable theme recurs in due course in its proper place in all the outline sketches. The first outline contains a passage which has no place either in the subsequent sketches or finished score ; and the third sketch, which incorporates all the thematic material, shows its distribution accord- ing to the last preliminary design to have been dif- ferent to that finally adopted by Beethoven. The early version of the first movement,on the other hand, though capable, as Beethoven has shown, of considerable improvement, is so much more concise, that it has led to the conclusion that it must have been preceded by other not known preliminary sketches. This refers, however, to the subject- matter of the allegro only. The thin outline for the introduction is a very faint foreshadowing of that lovely movement. The first section of the melody is jotted down as follows : —

The relation of this first tentative sketch to the finished composition needs no comment. The