A paper by Nicholas Kitchen about manuscript markings in Beethoven in general and in particular about their use in Op. 131, expanded from a paper presented for the Boston University Beethoven Institute in April 2017
I am honored to share with you today some of the exciting surprises that have come from rehearsing and performing directly from pdf files of Beethoven's manuscripts.
The Beethoven editions I first encountered (at least for quartets) were the Joachim-
Moser editions, which I now see as lovingly mauled editorial efforts. Regardless of any editions, I heard beautiful performances of Beethoven's music, treasures in my memory that continually inspire my current endeavors to try to bring the beauty of his compositions to life.
But the particular beauty of Beethoven quickly demands from us the realization that the details of our interface with the markings in his music DO matter a great deal, and that they mattered a great deal to Beethoven himself.
Studying at Curtis, I witnessed the transition to Henle Urtext as the trusted source of learning about Beethoven. My single most inspiring class was one led by my teacher
Szymon Goldberg, where all of his students had our Henle piano scores of all ten
Beethoven Sonatas (we also consulted Joachim's solutions to certain issues) and all together we went through all ten sonatas multiple times, with all of us taking turns performing different Sonatas. Mr. Goldberg made vivid to us the concept that