Ludwig van Beethoven, Skizzenblatt zum Klavierkonzert Nr. 5 op. 73, Autograph

Lack of proof

Assigning this leaf is not very easy: Beethoven mainly worked on his last piano concerto in a sketchbook which is today in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz with the call number Mus. ms. autogr. Beethoven Landsberg 5. As with most of Beethoven's sketchbooks, over time single leaves were removed and given away or sold to collectors. Some of these leaves have been identified but with others it is difficult to assign them to a sketchbook. HCB Mh 78 is one of these unsolved cases. This leaf fulfils an important criteria: it contains sketches for op. 73. In addition, Beethoven used the same paper with a Kotenschlos watermark and 16 staves on a page. However, there are no ink impressions which have their counterpart on other pages of Landsberg 5. There are also no stitch holes to be seen. Whereas the leaves in Landsberg 5 have three stitch holes, this is not the case with this leaf. The edge of the leaf might, however, have been cut off, thus removing any stitch holes which might have been there. Clemens Brenneis, the editor of the facsimile of Landsberg 5, writes the following in the commentary to the edition, "Proving that a given single leaf was once part of Landsberg 5 is therefore only in principle possible if it can be directly related to a leaf whose place in Landsberg 5 can be ascertained with certainty." This is not the case with this leaf. This can therefore only lead us to conclude that HCB Mh 78 might have once belonged to Landsberg 5, but also might not have done so. (J.R.)