Ludwig van Beethoven, Bagatelle für Klavier (c-Moll) WoO 52, Autograph

Torn apart and completely twisted: reconstructing a manuscript

If people want to examine the content of the autograph score for the Bagatelle for Piano WoO 52, they are first of all obliged to put it in its original form, because the manuscript was bound incorrectly at some point in its history.

The autograph score has three leaves. The same type of paper has been used for the first two. The third leaf is not only made of different paper but is also in a different kind of writing, and is quite rightly the last leaf (more on this later). The first two leaves belong together but have been completely twisted around.

First finding, leaf 1: This leaf was bound the wrong way round, page 1 (image 4) was really the reverse of the leaf. What is now the left-hand margin is wider than the right-hand one. In addition on the right-hand side there are two torn and torn off places, as would happen if a leaf was torn out of its binding. The wide margin would normally be on the outside. The holes in the right-hand margin would then be on the inside, where the original binding was.

Second finding, leaf 2: Although this leaf has been bound the right way round, the wide margin is on the outside, the torn off corner of the original binding is on the inside (the same height as the first leaf), the leaf is not in the right place. On the reverse (image 7) in the middle of the top (and once again larger on the third and fourth stave) Beethoven wrote "No 10". The bagatelle does actually begin here. The course of the music is as follows: the musical text begins on leaf 2v (image 7), is continued on leaf 1v (image 5), then with the trio on leaf 1r (image 4) and finally ends on leaf 2r (image 6).

Reconstruction: These two findings allow us to reconstruct the original sequence of the autograph score. When Beethoven wrote down the bagatelle he had a bifolium in front of him. He began writing on the left-hand inner page and continued on the right-hand one. Then he wrote the trio of the bagatelle on the two outer pages. In the original what is now the second leaf came first, what is now the first leaf then followed, although the pages were turned around.

As discussed above, the same type of paper was used for the first two leaves. They were probably written on as early as 1795. Two years later Beethoven then turned back to the composition, revised it and changed the metre from 3/4 time to 6/8 time. He used a new leaf for this. This third leaf of the autograph score has a different type of paper. The handwriting also reflects the fact that it was written at a later time. However, the numbering above the beginning of the bagatelle is from a later date. When putting together the edition of his Bagatelles op. 119 at the beginning of the 1820s, Beethoven looked for several older small compositions which he could publish as bagatelles. He numbered these works successively (a list can be found in Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process, Oxford 1990, S. 265), and WoO 52 was given the number 10. (J.R.)