More on Beethoven's note placement

[John Ruggero]

Here are two other examples of Beethoven's meaningful note placement, this time from op. 26, the earliest surviving manuscript of one of his piano sonatas:

In the first movement, Beethoven isolates the chromatic descending lines from the rest by placing them on the top staff, and, in doing so, uses five more ledger lines than if he had placed all the voices on the lower staff, as would have been normal for that time:

op 26.1.png (445.9 KiB) Viewed 11589 times

In the third movement, Beethoven is imitating a wind band or orchestra, so that the main melody lines are sandwiched in between accompaniment notes. He isolates the main melodies in the lower staff and the descant line on the top staff. At A the top line suddenly takes on a life of its own and descends stepwise back to the starting note of the main melody C . Beethoven has the line descend back into the lower staff where it started.

At the arrow, he suddenly changes the approach, possibly forced by the symbol, which left no room for the E and its natural sign in the lower staff.

op 26.3A.png (2.15 MiB) Viewed 11589 times

When the passage recurs, he seems to have learned his lesson and doesn't make the same mistake, but is now forced to place the way to the right:

op 26.3B.png (734.58 KiB) Viewed 11589 times

The note placement was often extensively revised in later editions. Here is an older Peters edition. What an invitation to a massive, ugly, unvoiced performance of this movement:

Peters.png (141.68 KiB) Viewed 11589 times

[Anders Hedelin]

For what it's worth I find your thoughts on this example quite straightforward, as opposed to those on the last example (Beethoven Op. 7, 2nd mov.) in your previous post.

Then, in the example from Diabelli variations (also from your previous post), I'm not so sure. At A, it feels compositionally adequate that the G in the upper part 'branches off' to the second part on the upper staff as you say. But then, it is hard to see how Beethoven could have kept that voice on the lower staff at all, for practical reasons.

Also the placement of the D on the lower staff in the last measure (of the same example) looks puzzling. Did he erase something from the upper staff (it looks a little like that), and then chose to put the changed note on the lower staff to make it look less messy?

It's very interesting to follow your thoughts on Beethoven's notation, John. Sometimes, though, I feel that you go a bit too far in finding explanations for B's, in my view not always explainable notation (or composition, come to that).

[John Ruggero]

I'm glad that you find the examples from op. 26 more convincing, Anders. I didn't do a good job of explaining what I meant concerning Diabelli variation 20, so let me try again.

I was trying to make two points:

1. The older system of treating the grand staff as a unit and avoiding ledger lines and clef changes as much as possible by allowing the hands to play on both staves is superior to the present system of keeping the hands on different staves, because it shows the voice-leading better.

2. Beethoven adhered to this older system, but didn't follow it mechanically. Showing the voice-leading took precedence over mechanical issues like eliminating ledger lines.

So if Beethoven were just trying to avoid ledger lines, he would have placed the D (encircled in the example) on the upper staff along with the higher G. But he keeps the D on the lower staff along with the lower G and C#, because he doesn't want to disrupt the voice leading. For comparison purposes, Here is the example again within its wider context along with the voice-leading:

Diabelli Var 20 MS.png (1.44 MiB) Viewed 11482 times

One has only to compare this to what was done in the B&H complete edition (and followed by later editions) to see the superiority of the older system of note placement and Beethoven's use of it. The voice leading is completely disrupted. Note that even the slurring of the middle voice was altered to fit within this very mechanical approach to note placement:

Diabelli var 20 B&H.png (232.1 KiB) Viewed 11492 times

Thank you, Anders, for your astute observation about the boxed area in the MS example above. I think you are correct. The D was originally in the upper staff and played by the right hand. Beethoven decided that it was more pianistic to place it in the left hand and corrected this later. One can only guess at why he didn't retain the D in the upper staff for the sake of the voice-leading. There are cases where he does decidedly uncharacteristic and inconsistent things for the sake of being clear to the engraver. This was, believe it or not, a major concern to him. There is also the possibility that he is trying to very clear about the hand distribution for the player, since chords of a tenth were not yet so common in piano music.

[Anders Hedelin]

Yes, the B&H version isn't very good.

What about the D in the third measure on the second system?

[John Ruggero]

Our posts crossed, Anders. I am answering that right now and doing some revising.

[John Ruggero]

I neglected to mention one beautiful thing about the first example from op. 26. The converging of the two voices on the unison at the arrows can actually be notated with this style of notation:

op 26.1.png (446.88 KiB) Viewed 11476 times

I believe there may be other instances of such unisons in Beethoven's piano sonata manuscripts.