Felix Mendelssohn corrects Beethoven's corrections
During his lifetime Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was not only a famous composer but also a celebrated virtuoso and conductor. As one of the forerunners of "historical performance practice" he was always concerned about authenticity and took a critical and scholarly look at original manuscripts, so as to be able to perform works as originally intended. In 1840 Felix Mendelssohn planned two concerts in which all four existing overtures to Beethoven's opera Fidelio (and in its earlier versions: Leonore) were to be performed. At this time such a programme was very unusual, as the different versions of the Leonore overtures did not form part of the common repertoire; the second Leonore overture had not been played since its premiere in 1805! The publishers Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig owned the corrected copy of this overture shown here, the only known manuscript of this composition at the time. Unfortunately several pages were missing, so in 1838 Mendelssohn asked the Viennese collector of manuscripts and dealer Aloys Fuchs (he was a regular customer of Fuchs') whether he might not be able to find another copy. As this obviously did not happen, and Mendelssohn did not want to dispense with this part of the programme, he had the missing pages 102-105 (images 103-106) at the end of the composition replaced by the appropriate passage from the third Leonore overture. In addition there are entries and corrections in Mendelssohn's handwriting in many places throughout the score, such as on page 83 (image 84). On this page there is the famous trumpet fanfare, which is in all three versions of the opera and occurs twice in the third Leonore overture. Beethoven had also intended it to be given twice here, but had then crossed out the first fanfare with a red crayon. There has been a great deal of speculation as to why he did this. Mendelssohn reversed the decision for his concert. In red crayon, he noted above the appropriate place "soll wohl bleiben? FMB" (should remain? FMB) and had it played. Even the score of the overture, which Mendelssohn edited for Breitkopf & Härtel's first edition in 1842, retains Mendelssohn's version, including his corrections and his addition shortly before the end. (J.R.)
