Canon, 'Ich blase das Fagot,' Hess 304 (1825) (mp3)
According to Georg Schuenemann ('Neue Kanons von Beethoven', in Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag Arnold Scherings, Berlin, 1937) this 3 bar long draft may have been part of a larger comical canon, the rest of which is however so badly faded that it has become indecipherable. The date of the draft is unknown. A minor mystery is posed by Hess, who claims 'Ich blase das Fagott' ('I play the bassoon') to be in G major, when it's clearly in C.
The draft has been worked out as 3 part round, and is predictably scored for 3 bassoons.
The short draft is found in Artaria 205, Bundle 7, on leaf 4, held by the Berlin Staatsbibliothek. The remainder of this gathering of leaves (not considered a proper stitched pocket sketchbook by Johnson, Tyson & Winter) is devoted to the third and fifth movements of the quartet op.132. This quartet was being worked on from 1824 to 1825. The paper used in this bundle is paper type 28, which also used for Autograph 8/1 (fall 1823); Autograph 8/2 (winter of 1823/24), Artaria 205/4 (Feb to Sept 1824), Grasnick 4 (Oct to Dec 1824), and Moscow (May to July 1825). Beethoven was using this paper pretty steadily from fall 1823 through July of 1825. The Moscow Sketchbook contains other sketches for the movements 3-5 of op.132, and Artaria 205/7 has sketches for movements 3 and 5, plus the Tedesca for op.130, which was intended to be in op.132 until very late in the composition process. We are therefore quite confident in the dating of this canon to the early summer of 1825.
Contrary to Schuenemann's comments, the succeeding bars are not really illegible, but they also don't seem to be connected to this canon.
Page 4 of Artaria 205, Bundle 7. Hess 304 is seen at the start of the second staff.
Our sincere thanks to our good friends Armando Orlandi and Il Centro Ricerche Musicali for their identification of the source of this work.
Hess: 304