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Excuse me, perhaps I am stating the obvious, but isn't "for Elisa" simply the dedication? Beethoven dedicated Piano Sonatas to Maximiliane Brentano, String Quartets to Count Razumovsky (to give two random examples) ... so why does the dedication of a Bagatelle to such an Elisa cause so much perplexity?
PS program music is another thing.
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RedScharlach wrote:... why does the dedication of a Bagatelle to such an Elisa cause so much perplexity?
More curiosity than perplexity.
The word Bagatella is not written anywhere in the title of the piece; instead, those mentioned by Daniele are called precisely Bagatelles opus 126.
The quartets are quartets opus X and in the little one somewhere it says dedicated to Count Razumovsky, right?
Simply because in the case of Für Elise no one calls it a Bagatelle? When you take the score, at the top it says Für Elise and not bagatella... then I understand that technically it is a bagatelle
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RedScharlach wrote:PS program music is a
other thing.
i thought it was music that tends to describe/evoke a scene, an action, a landscape, a character.... what is it instead?
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Program music deserves a dedicated topic
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LucaCavaliere wrote:i thought it was music that tends to describe/evoke a scene, an action, a landscape, a character.... what is it instead?
Exactly. This is more or less the definition of program music.
Instead, "Für Elise" is a dedication. Unless one wants to argue that even the heading "for Count Razumovsky" placed at the beginning of a Quartet would be a program (which seems quite bizarre to me!).
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LucaCavaliere wrote:Daniele... don't kill me . . . here is my program
Per Elisa
dialogue between two lovers
they go for a walk in the park
new romantic dialogue (on a bench)
they argue
they make up (final embraces)
Thanks Luca, I owe you fifteen minutes of hearty laughter!
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Pio wrote:More curiosity than perplexity.
Nowhere is 'Bagatelle' written in the title of the piece, whereas those mentioned by Daniele are indeed called Bagatelles opus 126.
The quartets are quartets opus X and somewhere in small print it says dedicated to Count Razumovsky, right?
Simply because in the case of Für Elise, nobody calls it a Bagatelle? When you take the score, at the top it says Für Elise and not bagatelle... then I understand that technically it is a bagatelle
Now I will do a little advertising for the most beautiful Beethoven website!
Biamonti, as with the other catalogs previously, clearly speaks of Bagatelle in reference to "Für Elise".
Just browse Armando's site, which reports Biamonti's words, and there you have the proof:
http://www.lvbeethoven.it/Opere/Beethoven-Midi-Mp3-Altre-Klavierstucke.html#WoO059
Ciao Pio!
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Ok, so it's the classic editorial problem...thanks.
Moderator
Pio wrote:Ok, so it's the classic editorial problem... thanks.
I didn't understand which editorial problem you are referring to; I have a G. Henle Verlag in my hands where Klavierstück is featured prominently and Für Elise in small print... perfectly in line with expectations, though it would go against the premises of the topic. To be precise, there is nothing wrong with asking questions.
For me, however, one might eventually have to ask why, in the case of Op. 33, 119, and 126, they speak of Bagatelles (see Shott/Universal Edition) and instead use Klavierstück for Für Elise.
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Frank wrote:i have in my hands a G. Henle Verlag where Klavierstück is written in large type and Für Elise in small...
ah!
http://imslp.org/wiki/F%C3%BCr_Elise,_WoO_59_%28Beethoven,_Ludwig_van%29
PS
Furthermore, I don't know what difference exists between Bagatelles and Klavierstück
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Pio wrote:PS
Furthermore, I don't know what the difference is between Bagatelles and Klavierstück
A preliminary search on Wiki never hurts
Bagatelle
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagatella_%28musica%29
A bagatelle is a short musical composition, generally for piano, but also used in chamber music. It generally presents a very simple formal structure and a light character.
Klavierstück
They are short pieces for piano
Ergo... all these pieces belong to that group which in Romanticism took the most disparate titles: nocturne, album leaf, etc.
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Thanks Dino, if they are practically the same thing why should they be differentiated? Maybe it depends on the character?
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Bagatella, in Italian, also means 'trifle' or 'something of no importance'.
Therefore, a composer who assigns the small piece they composed to this category is, in my opinion, performing an act of modesty.
That being said, we listen to bagatelles, Klavierstuck, and album leaves nonetheless...
And to me, certain bagatelles seem less like 'bagatelles' than many symphonies
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Hello everyone, I would like to say a few words on this subject, even though much has already been written.
In reality, the complete and original autograph of this famous piece is missing, which apparently had the heading “For Elisa, a small memory from L.v. Bthvn, 27 April”. Regarding the year, it can be hypothesized to be 1808 or 1810. However, two preliminary sketches remain: one studied by Sieghard Brandenburg (SV 90) and reported by Armando in his interesting post, and another sketch (SV64) certainly dated 1808.
The SV90 sketch does not have a precise date, but it is thought to have been written by Beethoven in 1810 and is preserved at the Beethoven Haus, gifted by Erich Prieger in 1890 on the occasion of the founding of the Beethoven Haus (Prieger was from Bonn and a great collector of Beethoven). This sketch had been taken up again by Beethoven in 1822 when he wanted to publish some small bagatelles (but it was no longer used) and presents small variations (or improvements, as some say) compared to the piece that everyone knows. Obviously, Beethoven could not have remembered his autograph gifted to “Elisa”.
This leads us to the scholar Ludwig Nohl, who published it in 1867 in his second (the first having been published two years earlier) collection of Beethoven's letters, where he writes of having seen Beethoven's complete autograph with the date 27 April as I wrote before, placed at his disposal by Ms. Babette Bredl, and part of the estate of Theresa Malfatti (the estate had passed to Bredl's illegitimate son, Rudolph Schachner, in 1851).
Therefore, it can be confirmed that this piece is certainly by Beethoven, as it is very similar to the two autograph sketches by Beethoven, and was certainly not written or completed by Ludwig Nohl, who, aside from being a great scholar of musicians (Beethoven, Mozart...) and a friend of Wagner, had no great musical or pianistic expertise.
Obviously, there is great interest in knowing who this Elisa was, and much has been said and will be said about it because it can never be known for certain. Hypotheses range from Theresa Malfatti (friend and pupil of Beethoven) with the possibility that Nohl had misread the name from the manuscript—Elise instead of Therese—to Elisabeth Röckel, wife of the musician Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a thesis supported by Kopitz in his book. Rita Steblin suggests it could instead be a certain (Elise) Juliane Katharine Elisabet Barensfeld who was in Vienna and Beethoven dedicated it to her when she was 13 years old.
Setting aside all these hypotheses and others to come, this piece—whether called “Klavierstuck” as Nohl himself identifies it or Bagatelle (as Copper and Biamonti do, because Beethoven revisited this sketch to compose a Bagatelle)—is one of Beethoven's most famous and most played pieces. I think that any person, from a child to an elderly person starting to play the piano, wishes sooner or later to play at least its first notes.
Hello everyone.
Luigi
PS Luca, I just wanted to reassure you that the Bagatelles Op. 119, even though they have the name Bagatelles, were specifically written for “Wiener Pianoforteschule”, so as you can understand, for a very precise purpose.
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Thank you again to everyone for the further clarifications
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I had missed this wonderful topic, I would like to show appreciation for the contributions of all those who participated in it
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TheSimon wrote:I agree with Pio! It's a pity because the subject interests me greatly and I have never managed to find stories that left me satisfied. Therefore, if Armando is so well documented, would it be too much to ask you for a brief summary of what you wrote in German?
Several months after this discussion, I am resuming it because I have had the opportunity to delve deeper into it, and I will express to you the conclusions I have reached, which I will also publish on my blog.
Certainly, one of the greatest unsolved Beethoven mysteries concerns the most famous bagatelle in the world: Für Elise, an essential page for any amateur pianist.
The mystery stems from the fact that this small piano piece was only discovered, as a completed work, on August 5, 1865, by the young musicologist Ludwig Nohl, who found it in the legacy of Therese Malfatti.
On the manuscript, according to Nohl, there was supposedly a handwritten note by the composer: "Per Elisa, April 27, in memory of L.v. Bthvn": the conditional is mandatory because this manuscript is untraceable and the musicologist was the only one to have seen it. The score of the bagatelle that we listen to today is the product of a transcription made by Nohl himself.
The matter, undoubtedly, appears very mysterious, first because it is the only missing manuscript from the Malfatti legacy, second because it is not understood why the dedication was to such an Elise and not to Therese, especially since it becomes very difficult to put a face to a woman with this name who could have known Beethoven.
The only thing that could coincide is April 27: indeed, in April 1810, Beethoven proposed to Therese Malfatti, and on May 2, he wrote to Franz Gerhard Wegeler in Koblenz to obtain his baptismal certificate, which would have been needed for the marriage. However, the mystery of the name remains; in this regard, Max Unger, in the 1920s, hypothesized that Nohl might have misinterpreted Beethoven's handwriting—which is certainly not very clear—confusing Therese, written in Gothic characters, with Elise, which could indeed look similar.
If one adds to these things the fact that in letter 442 to Malfatti, dating from May, Beethoven opens by writing: "Here it is, most kind Therese, what I promised you. And if circumstances had not prevented me, I would have sent you even more, if only to demonstrate to you how, like for my friends, I always do more than I promise (...)
Your piano has been ordered and you will receive it soon. I wonder what difference you will notice between the theme, as I had invented it one evening, and the way I have lately rewritten it for you (...)." (Ludwig van Beethoven. Epistolario volume II 1808-1813. Edited by Sieghard Brandenburg. Skira editore), one might well think that it could be exactly Für Elise to which Beethoven is alluding.
This could be because the only certain thing that has reached us regarding this bagatelle is two sheets preserved since 1890 in the archives of the Beethoven-Haus, belonging to the collection of Johann Nepomuk Kafka, which, from the analysis of the watermarks, could date back to the years between 1808 and 1810, while a first sketch is found in the notes taken by Beethoven when he was working on the Pastoral in 1808.
Now, if one compares the material found in this document with the Für Elise that we are accustomed to listening to, striking differences immediately stand out. The hypotheses that inevitably open up are two: either Nohl told a lie and the manuscript he spoke of was his own invention used to make himself famous, and it was instead he who, working on Beethoven's material, spuriously derived the bagatelle; or, assuming that Beethoven was indeed writing about Für Elise in the letter, one evening he improvised it at the piano for Therese, promising it to her as a gift, and, reworking that material by hand, decisively revised the whole thing.
However, there is another problem that is easily bypassed. The material that has reached us is full of corrections in a fairly fragmentary state, and it is very clear that these are writings attributable to different periods. Barry Cooper was the first to study them in 1984. The first phase was written in dark ink and, without any doubt, relates to the years 1808/10; the second is written in pencil, presents many unknowns, consists of corrections to the original material, at least one erasure, and insertions of new bars, dating back to 1822, when Beethoven—with the aim of publishing "new-old" bagatelles, those of Opus 119—searched through various unfinished sketches from the past. This material was also scanned but, evidently, the composer preferred other pieces.
Barry Cooper, also in 1984, proposed a
reconstruction of how this second version of Für Elise might have been, but it did not achieve unanimous consensus on how Beethoven might have actually reworked it. The question that might therefore arise spontaneously is: but if Beethoven had already composed that first version of Für Elise that we know, why then did he work only on the sketched material to derive a definitive version from it? The answer is obvious: the original score was in the possession of Therese Malfatti, with whom Beethoven no longer had any contact. This answer, while obviously not providing certain proof that the score truly existed and that Nohl was not bluffing, nonetheless does not contradict the fact that it might not have existed.
Now, at the current state of affairs, it is obvious that, unless—if it truly exists—that original manuscript emerges from the dust of history, it will be impossible to say a definitive word on this matter. This does not change the fact, however, that musicologists and Beethoven scholars could, by analyzing the existing score and the existing sketches, open a discussion on this topic; but, to this day, it does not seem to interest many, given that only Luca Chiantore in his book “Beethoven al pianoforte” published by Il Saggiatore has attempted to raise this doubt, preferring the hypothesis that Für Elise is spurious because it was heavily reworked by Nohl.
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Thanks Daniele also for this last intervention
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I am reporting this article by Roberto Prosseda
Per Elisa o Per Teresa?
http://www.cremonapianoforte.it/2015/06/15/per-elisa-o-per-teresa/
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I really liked Prosseda's interpretation; I will let my son listen to it this evening.
