Canon quartet from Fidelio
This corrected copy of the quartet "Mir ist so wunderbar" ("A wondrous feeling fills me") from the opera Fidelio is part of a bundle of nine numbers from the opera which came into the possession of the Beethoven-Archiv with the bequest of the Hans Conrad Bodmer collection. All nine numbers were from the versions of 1805 and 1806 (Leonore), but contain corrections and notes in Beethoven's hand which were mainly done at the time of the opera's revision for the 1814 version (Fidelio). This quartet is not only different from other parts of the opera in that Beethoven set a four-part canon to music. Unlike many other numbers, which he continually changed, this was a version which pleased the composer right from the start. Only on leaf 7r (image 13) did Beethoven shorten the quartet by a bar, joining two bars together. (J.R.)
