Unknown Beethoven sketch leaf acquired by the SLUB Dresden

Amrei Flechsig

Friday, January 24, 2025

The Saxon State and University Library (SLUB) has acquired a privately owned Beethoven sketch leaf previously unknown to scholars. It forms part of a small collection that once belonged to the Saxon music teacher Carl Otto Böhme (1807-1874). The Beethoven autograph (D-Dl Mus.4193-T-608) contains sketches for the Piano Sonata op. 27 no. 2 (Sonata quasi una fantasia), better known as “Moonlight Sonata.”

Presumably, this single leaf originally belonged to the so-called Sauer sketchbook. The Viennese music dealer Ignaz Sauer (1759–1833) bought the sketchbook at an auction after the composer’s death in 1827, apparently in the hope of making good money by cutting it all up and selling the individual leaves. To date it has proved possible to identify 22 of these leaves, some of which are now kept in Bonn, Berlin, Vienna, Cambridge, and Stockholm. As to the whereabouts of some other leaves, however, we are still in the dark.

One of the missing sketch leaves may have resurfaced now: not only the paper format seems identical, but the irregularities at the outer edge of the grid also match the description of the Sauer sketchbook. The watermark provides a further clue to identification: the seven-armed starfish recognizable here forms part of the watermarks of the paper used in the sketchbook. Finally, the leaf’s content also suggests that it once belonged the Sauer sketchbook, since several sketch leaves from the latter pertain to the Piano Sonata op. 27 no. 2, particularly its third movement. On this leaf one finds the final bars of the third movement, whereby the last measures of the sketch differ from the corresponding passage in the later published version.

The connection to the so-called “Moonlight Sonata” is also indicated by an annotation added in pencil at the bottom of the front side by one “Jos. Doppler” – probably Josef Doppler (1791-1869), who was working for the music publisher Anton Diabelli in Vienna.

On the reverse side, several short sketches are notated, which could not yet be identified and possibly represent musical ideas Beethoven eventually discarded. At any rate, these bars seem not to belong to the other works appearing in the sketchbook, such as the Piano Sonata op. 28, the String Quintet op. 29, or the Bagatelles for Piano op. 33.

Images: Digital copies SLUB Dresden

Category: Library collections