Ludwig van Beethoven, Sinfonie Nr. 8 (F-Dur) op. 93, Schluß des 1. Satzes, Partitur, Autograph

Removed ending for the "Eighth"

Beethoven removed the last ten bars of the first movement of the Eighth Symphony op. 93 from the original version and rewrote the coda - the final version was a great many bars longer. However, the discarded ending is not the only version that Beethoven composed. He tried out several endings for the first movement until he finally found the well-known (best) variant. The complete autograph score of the first movement, in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, contains the first idea for a ending, but in this case it is only five bars in length. Beethoven had not written down the wind parts. He had also crossed out the whole page. Another version for the end of the movement appears on the next page. The following leaves in this autograph score, which contain the final ending, were added afterwards. So Beethoven had possibly conceived other versions. For example the fully written-out score version shown here. It is 10 bars in length and therefore longer than the original ending, but was not acceptable in Beethoven's eyes and so he removed it from the original score of the symphony. (J.R.)