Sketch in C minor: sketch for a movement of a Symphony; unfinished (1785)

Biamonti 11; Hess 298

Beethoven was a meticulous sketch writer and filled pages and pages with often indecipherable music. Some pages he carried around with him to his death when they were sold to the publisher Artaria. One imagines that throughout his career Beethoven was looking for opportunities to clean up early works, which he had a certain fondness for, or else from a cynical perspective, cash in on his fame with pieces that could yield him a quick profit. Most composers - myself included - have piles of early sketches and pieces that they hold on to and hope to resurrect, so in this way these collections are nothing special. One of the most important sources of fragments and sketches from Beethoven's early years is what has been intriguingly refered to as the "Kafka Miscellany." There is no connection here to the writer, but rather to J.N. Kafka, a Viennese musician and collector who owned the pages for some time in the nineteenth century. The miscellany itself was published in an elegant dual volume facsimile and transcription edited by Joseph Kerman in 1973 and is currently in the possession of the British Museum.

Within this collection are numerous fragments and early drafts of known works including this: the first theme and beginning of the second theme of a first movement of a symphony. The first theme is a standard minor Mannheim Rocket (a rapid upward arpeggio) that develops somewhat, the second, a descending scale figure with Lombard snaps (the rhythm: sixteenth, dotted sixteenth or a variant): one of those things that, in good hands, could take off into something quite powerful. But here remains a tantalizing remnant.

The good folks at Unheard Beethoven have created a midi version of this.