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
£
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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
