Two-Voice Counterpoint Exercises for Haydn, Hess 233 (16 MB)

Counterpoint Studies with Haydn, Hess 233 (1793)

Beethoven had gone to Vienna in 1787 to study with Mozart, but before he was able to begin he was brought back to Bonn due to his mother's illness and death. A few years later, under the sponsorship of the Elector of Bonn and Count Waldstein, he returned to Vienna in order to get the training that had been prevented earlier, at the feet of Franz Joseph Haydn, then one of the greatest living composers.

Beethoven studied with Haydn for about thirteen months. While we know that in the course of those studies he improved and changed the previously-composed wind quintet in E-flat Hess 19, the octet for wind instruments op.103 and the now lost oboe concerto Hess 12, the principal tangible evidence of his education with Haydn is a bundle of 27 leaves (which once numbered 30, but a few of them have been lost over the years), now held by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna (GdM), catalogued as Autograph A 75, Bundle I (the other bundles in A 75 include the materials from Beethoven's studies with Albrechtsberger and Salieri).

Beethoven carefully preserved these documents throughout his entire life and through his many changes of residence. They obviously had great importance to him, and the counterpoint and fugal studies that he made in his first years at Vienna were profoundly influential. Until the very end of his life, with the composition of the Grosse Fuge op.133, he was always fascinated by counterpoint, fugue and canon, many examples of which can be found on this website. The manuscript was purchased by Beethoven's friend and publisher Tobias Haslinger in the auction of Beethoven's estate.

Bundle I has Beethoven's title "Übüngen [sic] im Contrapunkt." (Exercises in Counterpoint), written in his best hand, on the front cover. Within are 247 exercises (though another 25 or so are missing today). They are clearly a fair copy from exercises worked out elsewhere, since in several places Beethoven makes some copying errors that he either corrects or he crosses out the erroneous exercise and begins again.

Forty-eight of these exercises were published by Gustav Nottebohm in his 1873 Beethovens Studien; 19 others were published by Seyfried in his 1832 book "Ludwig van Beethovens Studien im Generalbasse, Contrapunkte". As Nottebohm pointed out in Beethoveniana (1872) pages 154-203, Seyfried used these exercises without distinguishing them from those copied from Fux and other noted authorities on counterpoint. Nottebohm did identify which exercises in Seyfried's book were actually by Beethoven. These papers have otherwise been difficult to access ever since Nottebohm's work with them in the 1870s, due to the GdM's obsessively strict limitations upon them. However, the Beethovenhaus at last has been able to publish and make public these pages, and you are amongst the first to be able to hear them.

From the contents of this bundle we see that Haydn used as the basis of Beethoven's training Johann Joseph Fux's classic 1725 treatise, Gradus ad Parnassum, which was also part of Albrechtsberger's regimen. The exercises we have are highly systematic. The basis of each exercise is a cantus firmus in whole notes in one of the six church modes, in order: Dorian in D; Phrygian in E; Lydian in F; Mixolydian in G; Aeolian in A, and Ionian in C. These chants were adapted by Haydn from Fux's examples. They are then set systematically in two-, three- and four-part counterpoint. Each of these has a leading voice that moves, and all other voices continue in whole notes against the cantus firmus. Each exercise is quite short, with only about six bars of eight counts each (presumably to be played in cut time, though it is not marked as such).

Each of these in turn has the leading or moving voice set out in each of the five species of counterpoint: 1) 1:1, or whole note against the whole note cantus firmus; 2) 2:1, or half notes against the whole note cantus firmus; 3) 4:1, or quarter notes against the cantus firmus; 4) half notes tied together and syncopated against the cantus firmus; and 5) "florid counterpoint," which allows for any combination of the four preceding types.

In each of the five species of counterpoint, Beethoven was assigned to set the leading voice in specified ways: in two part-, he was to set the leading voice both below and above the cantus firmus before moving on to the next mode. In three-part counterpoint, he was assigned to provide a counterpoint to the cantus firmus appearing in each of three registers, while in four-point, he set the leading voice (rather than the cantus firmus) in each of four registers (soprano, alto, tenor and bass). Thus, there will be at least two settings for each mode for two-part, three settings for three-part, and four settings for four-part. In a few instances, Beethoven provides more than one solution to the same setting, but usually numbers them as "1)" and "2)". This highly systematic approach allows us to determine exactly where pages are missing and how many. For these, in the sound file we have left a somewhat longer space in between exercises than normal to signify the missing pages.

For the record, after page 6 there is a leaf missing from the end of the two-part counterpoint exercises (after nr.48), so we are missing the Ionian (C) settings for the 4th species and all of the 5th species exercises for the two-part settings. Likewise, after page 22 in the three-part exercises (after exercise nr.118) there are two leaves (four pages) missing, so we do not have the last five or six of the 4th species and are missing the first twelve of the 5th species. All of the four-part exercises are present in the manuscript, except Beethoven seems to have failed to copy over the 3rd species exercise in C (Ionian) with the moving voice in the alto; since that occurs at a page turn that may be the explanation for that one missing exercise as a simple copying error.

Haydn typically entered his corrections in pencil. He did not enter any corrections at all onto the two-part counterpoint exercises (although Albrechtsberger later made a number of marginal notes of instruction on them). Haydn did, however, make corrections on the more complex and troublesome areas of three- and four-part counterpoint (notably the Phrygian cadence, which Beethoven had some difficulty with, as did the student portrayed in Fux's treatise). It is clear that much of the training was verbal, since in a number of places Haydn marks Beethoven's errors with a cross or X but does not actually enter the correction as he does in other instances; in a few places he writes "NB" alone, which apparently refers to a correction on a separate paper now lost.

We present here the uncorrected version of each of the two-, three- and four-voice counterpoint exercises, and also separate sound files incorporating Haydn's corrections to the three- and four-part exercises.

For our purposes, we have separated out as separate sound files the two-voice, three-voice and four-voice exercises. We have set the exercises with an organ in various registers always playing the cantus firmus laid out by Haydn, and then we have used various instruments of a string quartet (using two violas instead of two violins due to the range requirements), brass quartet and a woodwind quartet to provide some variety in the counterpoint. In the four-voice exercises, the fourth setting for each mode is performed with one instrument from each quartet, so the string-only setting will always signify the start of a set of exercises in a new mode.

These exercises show a different side of Beethoven; since they are based on ancient church modes and a 1725 treatise, they unavoidably give us an indication of what he might do within the baroque style. While these pieces in their monotony may not make for the most fascinating listening, they are undeniably important in Beethoven's education and his formation as a composer.

Hess: 233

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