Few subjects in the history of genetic criticism have received as much attention as that of the Eroica. The bibliography dedicated to it bears witness to the entire history of the discipline, from Gustav Nottebohm’s research on the ‘Eroica Sketchbook’ (1880) – a seminal publication and one of the first monographs on a Beethoven sketchbook – to Lewis Lockwood and Alan Gosman’s 2013 edition of the same sketchbook, ‘Landsberg 6’, conceived on the model of modern historical-critical editions.1 The 130-year period delimited by these two publications includes a phase of significant expansion in the study of Beethoven’s sketchbooks, culminating in the comprehensive study by Alan Tyson, Douglas Johnson and Robert Winter.2 This period also saw the rise of the study of the creative process in a broader sense. These studies took as their point of departure the concept that compositional activity continued well beyond the use of the sketchbooks – persisting throughout the writing of the autograph score, the creation of its copies and parts by copyists and the correction and editing of the first printed editions.3 Thanks to an exemplary contribution by Michael C. Tusa (focused specifically on copies and parts), studies of the Eroica’s genesis have once again signalled a new direction.4
The sections of this chapter are conceived as discrete parts, each dedicated to a different phase of the creative process. The aim is to organise the knowledge acquired so far on this topic, in order to provide a complete overview, and to add new information wherever possible. This chapter also seeks to raise awareness of the variety of methodological approaches developed by musicologists during nearly two centuries of the discipline’s existence. So the boundary between one section and another represents a substantial change of perspective, permitting the reader to develop multiple viewpoints on the topic.
The earliest evidence clearly connected to the Eroica dates from 1803, and consists of two letters written by Kaspar Karl van Beethoven. On 21 and 25 May of that year, the composer’s brother wrote to the publishers Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig and Simrock in Bonn, mentioning the availability of a new symphony, along with other new works, for publication.5 Although the two letters cannot be considered proof of the existence of the completed work, they do testify to the existence of a project related to the Third Symphony, which must have reached a certain state of maturation given that Beethoven had publication in view. Three anecdotal accounts, although mutually contradictory, all suggest that the composer had begun to contemplate the symphony well before that date (around 1801 or even as early as 1798).6 In the absence of direct evidence of precisely when Beethoven began working, an account by Ferdinand Ries provides decisive proof of approximate dating: on 22 October 1803 he mentions a performance of the work on the piano by the composer himself.7 It should be noted that the performance described by Ries does not presuppose the existence of a complete orchestral score.8
In any case, from this time onwards the symphony certainly existed in a fairly complete state, even if not fully orchestrated: references to it appear more and more frequently in the letters of the composer and his circle. Negotiations with both Breitkopf & Härtel and Simrock were conducted in parallel until the end of November or beginning of December of that year, when they were abruptly broken off at the composer’s behest.9 The reasons for this interruption probably pertained to the relationship between Beethoven and the future dedicatee of the symphony, Prince Lobkowitz, who, shortly after October, acquired the exclusive right to perform the work for six months. After those six months, however, Beethoven returned to his original plan, offering the symphony to the English publisher George Thompson and resuming contact with Breitkopf & Härtel.10 Negotiations with the latter, restarted in August 1805, continued until the end of June of the same year: various letters, which will be discussed below, show progress towards a successful conclusion of the negotiations (discussing the format of the edition, the fee, intermediaries responsible for transport of the manuscripts, with a separate page containing a new variant).11 Later on the relationship between the composer and the publisher fell apart. Beethoven was unable to send Breitkopf & Härtel all of the works promised at the beginning, but still wanted the symphony to be published as soon as possible, along with some piano sonatas.12 The publisher, worried about the danger of copies of the work becoming available to someone else,13 pressed for a quick conclusion of the negotiations and proposed a reduction in the fee, which the composer was unwilling to accept. On 5 May Beethoven requested the return of his manuscripts, which he received with a final letter on the subject dated 21 June.14
Sketches and Folded Leaves
The genesis of the Eroica is marked by a well-known peculiarity. Beethoven used a theme in the finale that he had already employed on three other occasions: in the ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, Op. 43; in the Contredanses WoO 14, No. 7; and in the Piano Variations, Op. 35 (see also Chapter 8). Assuming that the composer had this theme in mind for the future Symphony Op. 55, the preparatory materials for its first occurrence are contained in the sketchbook Landsberg 7, now preserved in Berlin.15
The sketches directly linked to the genesis of the symphony have been discovered in two other sketchbooks, and in a miscellany. The Wielhorsky sketchbook, used between autumn 1802 and spring 1803, is traditionally cited first since it contains sketches that seem to have been written earliest: a movement plan (a condensation of the main features of the new projected work) and some other annotations in E♭ major (pp. 44–45).16 Not only the tonality and the metre chosen for the first movement, but also the structure of the main theme (‘a triadic turning-theme’, to use Lockwood’s words),17 allow us to recognise a familial relationship with the Eroica.18 The connection with the Eroica is very strong because the annotations in question, dating back to autumn 1802, are found immediately after the sketches for the Variations Op. 35; they are limited to the first three movements of the symphony, as if the thematic connection envisaged for the finale constituted a predetermined starting point. However, this correspondence is not obvious: the tonality and metre chosen for the second movement of this project (‘Adagio in C dur’ in 6/8), for example, are not those of the future Marcia funebre, just as the ‘menuetto serioso’ is very different from the Scherzo of the future Eroica. For this reason, the annotations in the Wielhorsky sketchbook have been the subject of a debate. On one side are scholars who recognise the beginnings of ideas for the Eroica and speak, not without reason, of an ‘Ur-Eroica’. Their opponents certainly recognise a plan for a symphony in E♭ major with characteristics similar to those of the Eroica, but insist that this symphony, at that particular moment, did not exist; they refer to these annotations more cautiously in connection with a ‘Wielhorsky Symphony’.19 Other sketches for the Eroica have been identified in the sketchbook-miscellany Artaria 153,20 containing counterpoint and instrumentation exercises collected by Beethoven beginning in 1801. These annotations (related to the coda of the third movement) are found on page 12, together with some sketches for the Leonore Overture No. 1 (Op. 138) to Fidelio, and can be dated alternatively between 1803–4 and 1806–7.
Nearly half of the Landsberg 6 sketchbook pages contain annotations that can be firmly connected to the Eroica; these were penned between October 1802 and October 1803.21 The advanced state of these musical ideas is very different to those in Wielhorsky, and for this reason it is assumed that there were other sketches for the Eroica, now lost.22 Some scattered sketches, a ‘cluster of ideas for the symphony’ for the first three movements, are found on pages 4–9. By contrast, pages 11–91 show systematic work on all four movements. Thomas Sipe has noted: ‘in general, the four movements appear consecutively, but the placement of blank or almost blank pages might imply that Beethoven may have set out space for the movements … in advance’.23 The order of the sketches, indeed distributed fairly uniformly in four groupings (beginning on pp. 10, 49, 60 and 70 respectively) and separated by the blank pages mentioned by Sipe, appears to be the result of Beethoven’s preliminary organisation of the sketchbook before using it.
The most recent studies on Landsberg 6 bring to light another physical characteristic of the sketchbook that will require more systematic and deeper study in the future. A number of vertical creases are still visible on many pages of the sketchbook, which demonstrate how these leaves were folded by the composer.24 But this feature is not exclusive to this sketchbook, and new research is gradually showing how Beethoven strategically employed this practice throughout his life.25 Beethoven’s reasons for folding these leaves are clear only in a few cases. Syer and Gosman hypothesise two categories: on the one hand, Beethoven would have used them as a signal (like a ‘dog-ear’) to help find annotations that were unfinished or important for some other reason; on the other, he made folds to take in the annotations he wanted to see at a single glance, without necessitating a page turn. These two categories, however, are insufficient to elucidate all the cases found in Landsberg 6. Moreover, both reduce the phenomenon to a single micro-chronological hypothesis that fails to account for all the existing possibilities in the reconstruction of the sequence of events that constitute every writing process.26 These two hypotheses only apply to a sequence in which Beethoven first wrote his annotations and then folded the pages. In other words, the folds have only been seen as a response to the need to re-read something written previously.
The annotations on pages 82, 84 and 88, in which Beethoven set down three continuity drafts (starting from bar 396 of the fourth movement), seem to suggest a different solution.27 When one considers excerpts from these pages, it is obvious that the first two bars, besides being almost identical in content, have strong similarities in the writing tool and the ink used.28 In the second bar of page 84 the first quaver rest needed to complete the bar is missing.29 Beethoven, in writing his sketches, typically observed very strict economy, often omitting rests this way. However, given the context in which this sketch is located – with all rests complete – this omission must be attributed to momentary distraction, a classic ‘copyist’s error’. The leaves 83/84, 85/86, and 87/88 have been folded so as to leave the annotation on page 82 easily visible and only the left portion of pages 86 and 88 usable, as though the composer, while essaying multiple attempts to arrive at a satisfactory version of the passage, had recopied the incipit starting from his initial model each time.
The annotations on pages 42 and 48, through which the future bars 114–15 of the second movement were worked out, offer a similar example of Beethoven’s use of the folded pages. Although the writing tool seems different from one annotation to the other (the second one seems much thinner or even defective), the pages between them were folded as in the first example, leaving the annotation on page 42 easily visible and only the left portion of page 48 usable.30 The goal, in practical terms, could be the same: once again the leaves could be folded to remove a physical impediment, in order to copy a fragment of text from one point to another of the sketchbook.31 The function of the folds discussed in the cases above thus does not seem merely limited to rereading something already written: if anything, it seems to be another way of materially organising the arrangement of the writing space in the pages of the sketchbook; and, on a purely micro-chronological level, it should be considered to be a constitutive part of the actual ‘writing process’.
The Autograph Score: An Ideal-Typical Reconstruction
The link between the sketches and the copies used for the preparation of the first edition consists of a source which, ironically, remains unavailable: the autograph score in the composer’s own hand. Despite this fact, in tracing the process that led to the publication of the symphony one should imagine that Beethoven must have dedicated the greater part of his time on this work to this document. To get an idea – however vague – of what unfortunately is no longer at our disposal, it is useful to outline some hypotheses and summarise the strategies by which the composer came to produce similar autographs. Obviously, a schematic description of such processes requires simplifying some aspects, so one can only propose a logical sequence of necessary steps. However, using the insights that Beethoven research has accumulated in the past, one can outline the typical progress of the composition of a symphony.
Beethoven collected his musical ideas in his sketchbooks and was usually able to construct a musical framework that allowed him to work out the full score. How he got from the sketches to the score remains largely a mystery and constitutes one of the great questions still open for Beethoven research: not only is it unclear how and when the composer usually moved from his preliminary work to the preparation of the score, but also whether he had a regular practice in this regard. On an ideal-typical level one could imagine that once the preparatory phases of the sketches were completed – in which the various sections were conceived, fixed, elaborated and disposed in a more or less definitive order – the composer would have proceeded according to criteria specific to the genre of the work in question. Drawing a boundary line between the various phases is certainly risky: one cannot exclude the possibility that the sketches were made in parallel with the work on the score or even that the composer used sketches in his autographs.32 Further, one can presume that Beethoven would have begun on the new manuscript when the time seemed right. His predictions were not always exact, though, and the preliminary sketches elaborated in his notebooks – however numerous and detailed – were not always sufficient to clarify all the textual particulars of his works. As obvious as this observation may seem, Beethoven’s miscalculations are evident in the state of the many extant autograph scores, which are full of corrections and even sometimes abandoned in a fragmentary and incomplete state.
In cases where he felt particularly sure of his preparatory work with the sketches, he probably moved immediately to score preparation, according to a practice discernible in the cases of certain works.33 His composition strategy was strongly hierarchical: the continuity draft of the leading voice developed in the sketchbooks – which in the case of symphonic music usually corresponded to one of the string section parts or to one of the winds to which the melodic priority could be assigned – was copied from the sketchbooks into the score and filled out step by step. Working as his own copyist, Beethoven divided such a continuity draft among the various instruments; sometimes he acted as a ‘creative copyist’, allowing himself to make small changes, mainly regarding the pitches or the rhythmical structure of the melody. One does not know how he went on to develop the orchestration, whether bar-by-bar from top to bottom, or by instrument groups (in a gradual additive process). Lewis Lockwood has focused attention on a specific annotation typical of orchestral scores, the ‘cue-staff’ annotation (a guide notation sketched by the composer through the score-manuscript at the bottom of the page, below the full orchestral score), suggesting that such a strategy was reserved exclusively for the instrumentation stages.34
In other cases, Beethoven did not feel entirely satisfied when progressing from the sketches to the actual orchestral score. For this reason, he sometimes used a different method, beginning instead with the Concept, a highly detailed draft – almost a rough copy, similar to a short score – thus adding an intermediate compositional stage between the sketches and the complete score. Beethoven certainly used this expedient during his last years of activity,35 but it has not been demonstrated that he had developed such a practice by the time the Eroica was conceived. Whether or not there existed a Concept for the Eroica Symphony, there certainly was an autograph score, although the composer parted with it before his death: the auction catalogue of his scores contains no mention of this invaluable document.36 One can assume that the manuscript was discarded by the composer himself immediately after the preparation of the principal copy (still preserved in Vienna and described below); according to Jonathan Del Mar, once the copying was completed, the composer would have considered it of little importance and may well have given it to Carl Czerny.37 The geneses of Beethoven’s subsequent symphonies suggest another solution: in these cases the composer retained the autograph scores and even used them to register the corrections and variants made over time on different documents.38 But it has not been possible to establish whether something analogous happened in the case of the Eroica. Alternatively, it could be posited that the autograph was no longer useable due to an excessive number of corrections (and was discarded for this reason) or that it was really lost. A third possibility is that, having been sent in haste to one of the publishers in contention for the first edition (perhaps to Breitkopf & Härtel), it was returned to Vienna after the negotiations had failed, by which time a more up-to-date manuscript had already been prepared (e.g., the above-mentioned copy still preserved in Vienna, which will be discussed in the next section), with which Beethoven would continue working until completion.
In any case, at a certain point the completed score was in the hands of Beethoven, and given to the copyists. They prepared the full score and individual parts for performing purposes; a number of these same copies were also used as models for the engraving of the plates for the first edition.
Copying the Full Score
Fundamental to the reconstruction of the late stages of the genesis of the symphony are two groups of non-autograph documents, whose preparation was carefully supervised by the composer himself: the Vienna score copy, and copies of the instrumental parts, also preserved in Vienna.39 These documents, although penned by copyists, arouse particular interest, not only because of the absence of an autograph score, but also because they reveal something noteworthy: that the genesis of the Eroica reflects Beethoven’s need to resolve some compositional problems at an advanced stage of composition, at a time when the copies had already been completed. In other words, these documents point the way to a deeper understanding of Beethoven’s final phases of composition.40
The copied score, primarily the work of the copyist Benjamin Gebauer, was likely prepared from the lost autograph and was corrected by the composer in several stages.41 Unlike the autograph, this copy remained in Beethoven’s possession until the end, when it was acquired by Joseph Dessauer soon after the composer’s death.42 Its title page bears evidence of his reconsideration of the dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte.43 By reconstructing the stages through which the page came to take on its current appearance, we can identify a total of four different hands. Gebauer wrote most of what is now legible: ‘Sinfonia grande / intitolata <illegible> Bonaparte / del Sigr. / Louis van Beethoven’ (Grand Symphony / entitled <illegible> Bonaparte / by Sigr. / Louis van Beethoven’). The second line of the title, immediately after the word ‘intitolata’,44 was erased with such vehemence that the paper was torn. Then, in pencil, Beethoven himself inserted the words ‘geschrieben / auf Bonaparte’ (written / on Bonaparte), which are particularly difficult to read today, but deciphered in the past by many other scholars.45 A third, unidentified hand then inserted the date ‘804 im August’. Finally, a fourth hand, also unidentified, added two annotations at the bottom: ‘Sinfonie 3’ and ‘Op. 55’. On the same page Beethoven made further annotations: there are instructions for the preparation of orchestral parts (in all three mariginalia), along with other signs, letters and figures, whose meanings remain uncertain.46 The date inserted by the third hand (‘804 im August’) apparently refers to a performance arranged for Prince Lobkowitz at Eisenberg or Raudnitz. However, we can reject the hypothesis that this date represents the completion of the entire score, since the documents concerning the payment of the copyists (hired by Prince Lobkowitz) demonstrate that these parts, extracted from the copy in question, had already been prepared before this date.47
Another much-debated proposition is that the title page of this document may be the one described in the famous anecdote by Ferdinand Ries about Napoleon’s self-coronation, according to which the composer tore out the title page of the score bearing the dedication. Ries – describing Beethoven’s adverse reaction – clearly speaks of a copy (the symphony, according to his account, was ‘schon in Partitur abge-schriben’ – ‘already copied in score’). But the actual title page of the surviving document does not correspond to his description, which reads: ‘at the very top of the title page one reads the word “Buonaparte” and at the bottom “Luigi van Beethoven” … but not a word more’ (‘ganz oben auf dem Titelblatte das Wort “Buonaparte” und ganz unten “Luigi van Beethoven” … aber kein Wort mehr’). Moreover, the title page of the score copy in Vienna was certainly not torn from the manuscript.48 We could conjecture that, over the years, Ries forgot the details, and amplified and dramatised an event that he himself had witnessed, without meaning to falsify his biographical account.49 An alternative hypothesis has been proposed, in which Ries’s anecdote refers to another copy, different from the one prepared by Gebauer, which, just like the autograph, has disappeared.50
Markings in Beethoven’s hand are found on nearly every page of this copy of the score. Taking into account the writing tools and colours of ink employed, at least three different layers of writing are recognisable. In addition to the light brown ink associated with the hand of Gebauer, there are markings in pencil, red chalk and various different types of inks: for the second and fourth movements in particular there is a much darker ink associated with a different writing tool (a quill with a much broader nib than the others). Most of the composer’s interventions are editorial: indications for articulations and dynamics. He probably made the corrections in red chalk, while revising the first edition (to be discussed below), making them so conspicuous as to allow the document’s use as a model for corrections by the publisher.51 In addition to the editorial interventions, the most obvious changes relate to the repeat signs in the Allegro con brio (fol. 19v–20r) and the Scherzo (fol. 149r–v).52 Even if the revisions demonstrated here cannot be comprehensively reconstructed – in the first case up to five different textual stages have been identified53 – and also leave several questions unanswered, one incontrovertible fact emerges: Beethoven needed to revisit the decisions already made about both sets of repeat signs after the score copy had been completed. These changes constitute proof of the continuation of the creative impulse throughout the final stages of the work, focusing on issues of macroformal balance. The problem in the first movement was mentioned by Kaspar Karl during the negotiation with Breitkopf & Härtel in connection with Beethoven’s initial concerns about the length of the piece.54 According to Kaspar Karl’s account, these concerns were resolved during the first performances, leading the composer to reintroduce that previously deleted repeat sign for the exposition. Kaspar Karl indicated in the letter the exact point where the first repeat sign was to be reintroduced (Illustration 4.1) and inserted an additional leaf (a ‘beyliegendes Blatt’) with substitute bars to be inserted next to the second repeat sign in the score that was already in the publisher’s hands. The additional leaf is unfortunately lost.
Illustration 4.1 Kaspar Karl van Beethoven: letter to Breitkopf & Härtel, 12 February 1805. D-BNba, Sammlung H. C. Bodmer, HCB Br 312
The Orchestral Parts (the Copyists’s Workshop)
The other primary resource for clarifying various details of the genesis of the Eroica Symphony consists of copies of the orchestral parts, also preserved in Vienna and bearing evidence of Beethoven’s revisions, like Gebauer’s copy of the score.55 Some of these parts were probably used for the premiere performance in Vienna at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz on 9 June 1804.56 Alongside Beethoven’s corrections are recognisable various interventions made by Ries in his capacity as the master’s assistant in the editorial phase. The complete set contains parts corrected by both Beethoven and Ries (Fl I/II, Ob II, Clar I/II), parts corrected only by Ries (Ob I, Fg I/II, Cor I, Vl I, Va) and parts without any corrections, based directly on the first printed edition. The entire set of Vienna parts is the product of collective work: in total, twelve different copyists’ hands have been identified.57 This should not be surprising. Alan Tyson’s focus on the relationship between Beethoven and his copyists has already elucidated their central role in collaborating with the composer.58 Through examination of anecdotal reports and epistolary evidence, there emerges a picture resembling typical Renaissance workshops, in which the composer works closely with whole groups of copyists, dividing up the tasks and duties and assigning them specific parts of the work. One anecdote in particular from the biography by Wegeler and Ries offers illuminating details of Beethoven’s procedure in this matter and explains how the composer could assign each copyist very small portions of the musical text to be copied.59
Returning now to the Eroica parts: Otto Biba maintains that the first sub-group of parts identified earlier (Fl I/II, Ob II, Clar I/II) coincides with the first to be copied.60 In all these parts we can see corrections made by Beethoven and Ries. Within the set, the parts were not copied uniformly: in the first three movements, for example, one can identify the hands of different copyists (alternately, the so-called copyists ‘8’ and ‘11’), while the fourth movement was entirely entrusted to ‘copyist 9’.61 In addition to showing different handwriting, the fourth movement of each of the parts is always preceded by a title page. On the basis of this fact one could even assume that the last movement of the symphony was copied and performed before the others.62 The handwriting of ‘copyist 9’, responsible for this movement, is not found on any other occasion, almost as if this collaborator had been engaged only for this special task.63 The second sub-group of parts (Ob I, Fg I/II, Cor I, Vl I, Va) contains those that were copied before the first edition was published. In this instance, the individual parts were entrusted to a single copyist. This set does not contain corrections in Beethoven’s hand, but the bassoon parts have corrections by Ries, who worked directly with the composer during the entire redaction phase. The second bassoon part also shows the plate number of the original edition (512) on its first page. This information led Bathia Churgin to assert that this part, together with the first horn part, was used as the Stichvorlage (the model for engraving the plates).64
A further observation can be made about the bassoon parts. The handwriting found here seems to belong to one of Beethoven’s most important copyists, Wenzel Schlemmer, who was to collaborate with the composer until his death in 1823. Several factors contribute to this conclusion: the correspondence of the bass clef, the 3/4 metre and key signature of three flats over the two dots next to the clef, and the word ‘Fagotto’.65 The same bass clef, disposition of the dots and penmanship of the word ‘Fagotto’ are found in another manuscript confirmed as written by Schlemmer (Illustration 4.2) and all these features are comparable with characteristics Tyson reported as typical of this copyist’s writing.66 The presence of other bass clefs of different shapes (starting from the third staff), and certain directions for expression that are sometimes written differently (such as the ‘p’ of piano) do not constitute evidence against this assumption. These elements could have been integrated later, either by an apprentice copyist (who was therefore in charge of simpler tasks), or by one of the musicians who over the following years used the parts in question for the performance of the Symphony. In this regard, it is useful to point out that the pages of the two bassoon parts, not reproduced here, are written in different colours of ink, which tends to confirm this idea. The hypothesis that Schlemmer had already collaborated on the occasion of the preparation of the Eroica parts had been advanced by Tyson on the basis of some epistolary evidence from 1805, but the copyist’s assignment still remained to be clarified. So the identification of Schlemmer’s hand in this document could confirm and specify the intuition of the British scholar.67
Returning to the genesis of the entirety of the Eroica, we could envision how the different sub-groups of parts just specified might actually correspond to different stages in the creative process. In fact, in the third movement (at the end of the second part of the second repetition of the Scherzo) the first sub-group displays the rubric for a ‘prima volta’ that is cancelled by an erasure. This is the same variant present in fol. 149r–v of Gebauer’s score copy. Prevailing opinion has it that the original set was produced before the printed edition was complete, and that certain parts have been replaced over the years. In particular, Tusa claims that the lack of coherence found in this set today is due to problems of wear and tear on the paper and can be further explained by the growth in orchestral forces over the years.68 But one can also consider the hypothesis that the first copies of the parts were prepared for rehearsals with reduced forces, and that the first set produced was therefore incomplete. As for the possibility of the organisation of rehearsals of the symphonies with reduced forces, Beethoven himself wrote about this in a letter regarding the Ninth Symphony, Op. 125.69 Other documents link the Eighth Symphony, Op. 93, to a similar practice.70
Marketing, Packaging and Editing: The First Printed Edition
From the correspondence with Breitkopf & Härtel emerges quite a clear idea of what Beethoven – acting now as his own agent – had in mind for this first edition. Such publications were aimed primarily at professional performers. But the composer, in contravention of the custom of the time, envisioned instead an orchestral score in pocket format. In his farsighted plan, every connoisseur would be able to procure a copy of the score in this format, leading to better sales and distribution of the work.71 He also had clear ideas about the publication of the instrumental parts: in one of the last letters of Kaspar Karl to Breitkopf & Härtel before the collapse of the negotiations, we learn that the first violin parts were to contain many cues for other instruments during the bars of rest (Stichnoten).72 These cues would certainly have simplified the work of the Konzertmeister charged with conducting the orchestra, clarifying his vision of the work as a whole. The Vienna copy, mentioned above, also bears a similar direction: ‘N.B. in die erste Violinstimme werden gleich die anderen Instrumente zum Theil eingetragen’ (‘N.B. likewise in the first violin part cues from the other instruments should be entered’). So the composer’s vision of his desired ‘editorial product’ was precise and well defined. The expedience of the Stichnoten, according to Beethoven, had already been tested with the first edition of the First Symphony, Op. 21.73 But evidently this usage had not yet been consolidated in the typographical practice of the period.
Although Beethoven had wanted to publish his work in score format, the first edition of the Eroica was released only in parts at first; it was issued in October 1806 by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir firm of Vienna.74 None of the details of the negotiations through which the composer granted his work to the small Viennese publishing house have come down to us through correspondence. The first announcement of the publication of the symphony appeared in the Wiener Zeitung of 29 October.75 The parts, eighteen in all, contained many errors; within a few months of publication in 1807, two lists of Errata were made available – both were located after the end of the general comments on the symphony and published independently of the composer’s wishes.76 These lists are primarily concerned with corrections of wrong notes and missing accidentals. One detail in particular has caught the attention of scholars: bars 150–51 of the first movement (the bars that precede the repeat sign corrected by Beethoven in Gebauer’s copy and mentioned by Kaspar Karl during the negotiation with Breitkopf & Härtel) are repeated twice. It is very difficult to understand what might have caused this repetition: either it was a mistake caused by an engraver, confused by the signs of correction and restoration present in fol. 19v–20r of Gebauer’s copy (as maintained by Del Mar),77 or the composer had actually selected this option, introducing what he considered an improvement in one of the last phases of his work (as suggested by Biba and Churgin).78
In any case, Beethoven was not satisfied with the first edition, and continued to make corrections in his personal printed copy, later preserved in the archives of Prince Lobkowitz. His corrections were carried out with various writing implements (red chalk, ink and pencil) and seem to indicate again several distinct phases of corrections, dating back to the beginning of 1807.79 While the cancellation of the repetition of bars 150–1 of the first movement, clearly visible and in Beethoven’s hand, defines the composer’s final textual choice, it fails to clarify whether, at that moment, the composer was emending an error or actually changing his mind about the passage. When the symphony was published again by the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir (1807–8), the repetition of the two bars had definitively disappeared. Two new editions were finally published in score – according to the composer’s wish – by Cianchettini & Sperati of London (1809) and Simrock of Bonn (1822); however, there is no evidence that Beethoven had anything to do with them.
