Saturday, October 15, 2005

A Historic Discovery, in Beethoven's Own Hand

An interesting article on the discovery of an autograph manuscipt of the piano version of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge on the bottom shelf of a archival cabinet. A monumental work or transcription near the end of his life. =)

Here's the article.

2 comments:

Hucbald said...

WOW! That IS amazing! That was actually worth the trouble of registering to read. Personally, I think the quartet should be played with the Fugue as the finale, but my favorite recordings of it have both, so the listener can decide and compare.

If I recall correctly, the "new" finale was actually an older sketch B had lying around, which I think makes the case for the original fugal finale stronger.

Anonymous said...

Hi, I thought you might find my post on this interesting (click on the link above to go to my blog). I hope to interview my mom and post the story of how they found it (if she'll let me). She is dean of the school where the manuscript was found. I have uploaded some photos of the manuscripts to Flickr, and I hope to have more uploaded after the sale in December.