Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - photo 1
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - photo 2
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - photo 3
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - photo 4
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - photo 5
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - photo 6
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - photo 7
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - photo 8

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Lot 93
08.11.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 22 680
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1053207
Lot 93 | Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Estimate value
£ 18 000 – 25 000
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Contemporary scribal manuscript, the printer’s copy for the authentic English edition of the Violin Sonata in A major, Op. 47, n.d. [1805]
The stichvorlage used for the authentic English edition of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata: one of only two primary sources surviving complete for this important work and perhaps the only surviving example of a stichvorlage for one of the ‘authentic’ English editions of Beethoven.

The stichvorlage, in separate parts for violin and piano, used for the authentic English edition, written by a single scribe in brown ink, the violin part on 14 single-stave systems per page, the piano part on seven two-stave systems. Two volumes, 20 pages in total (6 + 14), 195 x 233mm, 14-stave hand-ruled paper, watermark: post-horn within a shield above ‘J HONIG / & ZOONEN’ (Heawood 2740), revised passages in the hand of the scribe on slips of paper pasted into the piano part, contemporary foliation in both parts, title in French in another hand on p.1 of the piano part (‘op.47 ... Sonate de L.v Beethoven avec Violon obligé’), marked up throughout by and for the printer in pencil. Modern half-calf binding, marbled paper over boards, gilt lettered on spine ‘Mendelssohn – Beethoven’.

Provenance:
(1) With the Birchall publishing house, London, from 1805.

(2) Sotheby's, 9 June 2010, lot 8.

(3) Schøyen Collection, MS 5444.

Composed in early 1803, just before the ‘Eroica’, the Violin Sonata in A major stands as a monumental, revolutionary work from Beethoven’s middle period. The autograph composing manuscript for the Kreutzer Sonata is lost, leaving the two manuscript copies from which the first German and English editions were engraved as the principle sources for the transmission of the piece. The stichvorlage for the first German edition – published at Bonn by Simrock in 1805 – is the work of four copyists and bears revisions supplied by the composer in the hand of an amanuensis: this manuscript is today in the collections of the Juilliard School (15 B393s no.9). Our manuscript is the source for the first, ‘authentic’ English edition published almost simultaneously, in May 1805, by Robert Birchall of New Bond Street. It is not a reprint of Simrock’s edition, nor does it faithfully follow the Juilliard stichvorlage. Where the former diverges from the latter – differences which must be explained by changes made in proof – the Birchall edition agrees with the Juilliard stichvorlage in some cases, and elsewhere with Simrock (see A. Tyson, The Authentic English Editions of Beethoven (1963), pp.49-50, for a list of variants between the three). In 1963, Tyson described the direct source for Birchall’s edition as ‘unknown’: the discovery of this manuscript at auction over 50 years later allowed for comparative study between the two stichvorlagen and with their corresponding printed editions. Certain errors in our manuscript appear in Simrock’s edition but have been corrected in the edition published by Birchall – a bar missing from the piano part (bar 353) was given as an example in 2010 – which might suggest that Simrock supplied the present manuscript to Birchall while his own edition was still being finalised.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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