Ludwig van Beethoven | Autograph sketches for the overture "Die Weihe des Hauses", op.124, [1822], UNPUBLISHED

Ludwig van Beethoven

Autograph sketches for the overture Die Weihe des Hauses ("The Consecration of the House"), op.124

a multi-layered four-page composing manuscript, a sketch-draft for the first section [maestoso and sostenuto], bb.19–50, including the whole of the main theme from the forte restatement, and the following fourteen bars [un poco più vivo], notated in dark brown ink and pencil on two eight-stave systems per page, without instrumental designations, the upper half of the system containing music for violin I and bass, the lower half music for winds, the chief parts entered first in ink, with additional entries and corrections made later in pencil and also in ink with a thicker nib  

4 pages, oblong 4to (c. 248 x 310 mm), a bifolium of 16-stave paper, bookplates of Yale University Music Library and Edward Francis Searles to lower pastedown, with a letter signed from Sir George Grove to Arthur Hill, advising that the manuscript be shown to the Beethoven scholar J.S. Shedlock, 4 pages, 8vo, London, 7 June 1893, and an autograph letter by the violinist Joseph Ludwig to Hill, identifying the work, 2 pages, 8vo, Maida Hill, 17 July 1893, mounted on the front pastedown, together with (all loose) autograph letters to Hill by Shedlock, discussing the sketch, 2 pages, 8vo, St John’s Wood, 2 August 1893, and Otto Goldschmidt, discussing the prices of the sketches and other manuscripts to be sold by Messrs. Puttick & Simpson, 4 pages, 8vo, South Kensington, 24 April 1894, an incomplete letter signed by Hill to Searles, congratulating him on his acquisition of the sketch, 2 pages, 4to, [1894], and the catalogue entry for the sketches in the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ Loan Exhibition, June–July 1904 (no.483a), laid down on headed paper of the exhibition committee, binder’s label to front pastedown (“Bound by G.A. Brown & Co. 1 Avery Row New Bond Street…”), mounted at spine to lower cover, late nineteenth-century/early twentieth-century yellow morocco, with black morocco title-piece gilt (“M.S. / Beethoven. Part of a Sketch Book.”) and black and gilt decorative border, [Baden, September 1822], some discolouration to outer pages, light scattered spotting, vertical creases, a few tiny marginal tears

THIS IS A SPECTACULAR WORKING MANUSCRIPT FROM BEETHOVEN’S LATE PERIOD.

ONCE OWNED BY THE LEGENDARY NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOPRANO JENNY LIND ("THE SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE"), IT HAS NOT BEEN AVAILABLE TO MODERN BEETHOVEN SCHOLARSHIP AND REMAINS UNPUBLISHED.

LITERATURE:

Emily Anderson, trans., and ed., The letters of Beethoven, ii (1961), pp.970 and 973–974; F. Lorenz, 'Franz Gläser: Autobiographie—Erinnerungen an Beethoven', Die Musikforschung, xxxi (1978), pp.43–46; Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, Robert Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks (1985), pp.275, 394–396; Beethoven: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, ii/1 (1974), passim; Barry Cooper, ed., The Beethoven Companion (1991), pp.252–255; Ludwig van Beethoven. Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, i (2014), pp.803ff., especially 808 (source I/1/3)

PROVENANCE:

In the possession of the singer Jenny Lind (1820–1887), "for more than thirty years" (see above letter of her widower, Otto Goldschmidt); Otto Goldschmidt (1829–1907), until 1894; Edward Francis Searles (1841–1920), Methuen, Massachusetts, from 1894; Yale University Music Library; Christie’s, London, 24 June 1992 (lot 3)