Canon in A-flat, Hess 275 (mp3)
This untexted canon is found in the "Eroica" sketchbook (Landsberg 6), presently held in Krakow. Hess mistakenly listed this canon once again in his catalog, as Hess 328.
Willem : "Because it is in the same key (A-flat), has the same metre (3/8), and vaguely the same melodic outline (upwards tonic triad), I thought that there might be a connection between this canon and a certain passage from the Andante of the Fifth Symphony. These resemblances may not be coincidental because the first sketches for the Fifth, like this canon, are in the Eroica sketchbook. The Hess 275 canon may then have been the genesis for what would eventually become bars 184-191 of the Andante. Here, in Hess 275, we have a perfect canon on a so-so melody; there, in the symphony, we have a magnificent melody with the superficial impression of a canon (the woodwinds imitate only loosely the string melody). Beethoven must have concluded that a strict canon on the actual melody of the Andante was impossible, and therefore settled for the mere illusion.
I thought I mention this; just a hypothesis for others to debunk."
Hess: 275