Putting old paper to good use
This pocket sketchbook, named after its previous owner Romain Rolland, is rather unusual. Beethoven normally chose new unused music paper for his small pocket sketchbooks. This is not the case with this one, which still retains the original stitching and is obviously in the state in which Beethoven left it. For this pocket sketchbook he used the copy of J. Stadelmayr's "Tantum ergo" for four voices. Perhaps he did not have any other paper to hand and urgently needed some music paper. The copy was written on paper in an upright format and some of the pages were empty on the reverse. Beethoven folded the leaves in half, cut them apart and then not only wrote his sketches on the pages which were empty, but also on the single empty staves below the copy of the parts. On leafing through the sketchbook three different types of pages are noticeable. There are those on which Beethoven wrote his pencil sketches. There are others which contain a copyist's score of Stadelmayr's "Tantum ergo" in ink. Due to the way the pages were folded when the book was assembled, these pages are now upside down. And finally there are pages which contain both elements: on the upper part there is the copy in ink and Beethoven's pencil sketches on the free staves underneath. All of Beethoven's sketches are for the third movement of the Ninth Symphony. (J.R.)
