BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tuesday, February 7, 1826 (approximately)

Beethoven begins using Pocket Sketchbook Bonn BSk 22 and Mh 96 about now, and continues to use it for around a month to six weeks. This little pamphlet of 16 leaves was assembled and stitched together by Beethoven, and originally was part of Autograph 9, which is held in Berlin, but it was separated by Anton Schindler in September of 1827 and given to Beethoven’s friend, pianist Ignaz Moscheles. In 1845, one leaf from the book was given by Moscheles to Professor Ernst Hähnel at the unveiling of the Beethoven monument in Bonn. Both pieces of the sketchbook were in the H.C. Bodmer collection, which was acquired by the Beethovenhaus, and catalogued separately as Bsk 22 and Mh 96. The book was also owned at one time by famed violinist Joseph Joachim. The book is in a green cardboard cover, which Moscheles probably added to it. At some point, possibly when Moscheles had it bound, the pages got rearranged, explaining the discontinuity for the plan for the theme and variations in the fourth movement starting on page 8 and continuing on pages 13 and 14. In addition, two leaves are missing from the end of the book, and their whereabouts is unknown.

The sketchbook is entirely devoted to the string quartet in C-sharp minor, op.131. The first four movements of the quartet are represented here, although the third movement only takes up part of one page. Besides the Kullak desk sketchbook that Beethoven was working in at this time, other sketches for these first four movements appear in the manuscripts Artaria 210 at the Berlin Staatsbibliothek and Artaria 211, which is at the Biblioteka Jagiellonska in Krakow, as well as scattered leaves found in the Library of Congress, the British Library, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, and the Paris Bibliotheque National.

Sometime about now, a second copy of the op.132 quartet is sent to Prince Nikolai Galitzin in St. Petersburg via letter post; the first copy that was sent last fall apparently was lost and was never received by Galitzin. If Beethoven included a cover letter with the quartet, it does not survive.