Why Beethoven?

Page 12 (right) of Ludwig van Beethoven's original Ninth Symphony manuscript. Ludwig van Beethoven - The website of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin http://beethoven.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/de/sinfonien/9/1/27.html Copied from Wikipedia. Public domain.

Jonathan Del Mar may be one of the most well-known Beethoven editors alive today, in large part due to his respected Bärenreiter performance editions for the Beethoven Symphonies for which he consulted every source he could get his hands on. He relays an impressive backstory. As a child with his conductor father, he would compare differences between the autograph and first edition of Beethoven Symphony No. 9. He was always fascinated by differences in handwriting and developed early skill in writing multiple styles himself. When he became a conductor, studying manuscript sources became a routine part of his preparation.

A turning point came when his friend, Caroline Brown, and the Hanover Band recorded Beethoven’s 5th Symphony on period instruments, using first edition parts. In what must have been a combination of goodwill and audacity, Del Mar called her with a detailed list of textual errors. She took the criticism so well that she sent him on a mission to create a corrected edition for the Band’s next recording project, Symphony No. 4. The rest is history. Del Mar did such meticulous work that the publishing house Bärenreiter contacted him about creating a new performance edition of the Beethoven symphonies by the year 2000. The edition was completed on schedule and now functions, as Del Mar jokes, as “the thing to be seen to be playing.”

My own interest in Beethoven manuscripts started much later than Del Mar’s. To be honest, Beethoven, and other Classical era composers, always intimidated me, 1) because of the perfection required to play them passably, and 2) because the music often felt predictable. Unlike many musicians I knew, I could not hear the way composers set up expectations and then break them. While many of my friends and teachers were extremely picky about sound and timbre, I did not usually know what they were talking about. These musical details did not register in my consciousness, so I always struggled to appreciate musical details and hear my own playing accurately.

I cannot say that I have ever outgrown these conceptual difficulties (I can imagine some teachers and colleagues nodding). However, a turning point came for me during the COVID-19 era which opened up my ears to hearing music in a very different way.

That pivotal moment came about because of hearing Nicholas Kitchen of the Borromeo String Quartet describe Beethoven manuscripts. Professor Kitchen pointed out that Beethoven used a much wider range of dynamics and articulations than we do today in our published editions. He used symbols like double-underlined pp, and “ppmo” which modern editors change to “pp.” He also used varying lengths of staccato marks (Kitchen lists four), of which modern editions portray only two, the dot and the stroke. In addition, he made a distinction between open and closed hairpins (< > vs. ◇ ) which modern edition reduce to simply the open hairpin. Nicholas Kitchen questioned how these symbols might inform performance.

I was no more than mildly interested at first, but soon an opportunity came along for me to use the new markings. During the spring of 2021, ASU orchestras were split into small chamber orchestras which each played very short pieces. Before COVID, we were used to performing full orchestra concerts of 60 to 90 minutes every few weeks, but now we were limited to a couple of 5-10 minute works. With all that extra time, I wanted to do something more in-depth, so I decided to transcribe the manuscript markings from Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62.

That transcription process was transformative. When I sat down with the score for the first time, just putting the measure numbers in required slowing down and great attention to detail (I got my numbering off at least 2 or 3 times and had to erase for several pages each time). Then I started marking down the length of Beethoven’s staccatos and noticed that he consistently gave bass voices longer staccato strokes than soprano voices. He reserved the dynamic marking “ffmo” for the climax of the piece.

With my own combination of goodwill and audacity I reached out to Nicholas Kitchen, the other principal players, and our conductors about my work. Nicholas Kitchen generously agreed to meet with me, and afterward I created a 10-minute “introduction to Coriolan manuscript markings” video for the orchestra. Throughout the process of transcribing markings and then performing the piece, my ears and musical imagination developed in more detail than they ever had before. By the end of our performance, I was a different kind of musician.

Since then I’ve transcribed markings in Symphony No. 7, most of Symphony 5, and some of Symphony 9. Based on my research with Beethoven 9 copyist manuscripts, I found avenues for new work in Vienna. There I hope to examine performance parts of Symphonies 7 and 8 to see how the copyists interpreted Beethoven’s unique markings. So far this might be the most audacious thing I’ve attempted.

Beethoven went from being the composer I avoided to the one I study most. What changed was simply picking something to do well and sticking with it.

Referenced articles:

Del Mar, Jonathan. “Editing Beethoven.” Musical Opinion (September-October, 2009): 10-12.

“I Work with Beethoven.” American Music Teacher (June/July 2020): 22-29.

Kitchen, Nicholas. “Meaningful Details: Expressive Markings in Beethoven Manuscripts, with a Focus on Opus 127.” In The New Beethoven: Evolution, Analysis, Interpretation, edited by Jeremy Yudkin (Published Online: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 274-331