Engraver's model long thought lost
The manuscript shown here is a corrected copy of the Sixth Symphony, the "Pastoral". Beethoven sold the publisher Gottfried Christoph Härtel his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies (op. 67 und 68) in September 1808 on his visit to Vienna. The surviving correspondence shows that Beethoven did not give Härtel autograph scores but corrected copies as engraver's models for the original edition
This copy of the score of the Sixth Symphony was removed from Breitkopf & Härtel's archives in the 1830s and was considered lost for a very long time. Even in the 1970s its whereabouts was still unknown. The copy only re-emerged in the 1980s and was acquired by the Beethoven-Haus. With its many corrections, which Beethoven made in a reddish-brown crayon and which the copyist partially went over in ink, it is a valuable document for research. Sadly the manuscript is in a very bad condition having been badly damaged by water; many pages in the last two movements are completely washed out and hardly legible anymore. (J.R.)
