{"id":32,"date":"2011-11-30T17:04:48","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T16:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.henle.de\/blog\/en\/?p=32"},"modified":"2015-06-26T09:25:26","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T07:25:26","slug":"beethoven-fur-elise-woo-59-%e2%80%93-do-you-strike-the-right-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/2011\/11\/30\/beethoven-fur-elise-woo-59-%e2%80%93-do-you-strike-the-right-note\/","title":{"rendered":"Beethoven, F\u00fcr Elise WoO 59 \u2013 Do you strike the right note?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>d<\/em> or e<\/em> \u2013 that is the question \u2026 when pianists sit down to play Beethoven\u2019s \u201cF\u00fcr Elise\u201d. <\/p>\n

There are a great many questions surrounding Beethoven\u2019s famous piano piece \u201cF\u00fcr Elise\u201d \u2013 for example the identity of the lady mentioned in the title, which is even today not 100% certain, as she might have even been called Therese and not Elise \u2026 Pianists are, however, plagued by one question in particular. Why in measure 7 and analogous passages is there in some editions the root e\u00b9 <\/em>and in others \u2013 as in our current Urtext edition (HN 128<\/a>) \u2013 the seventh d\u00b9 <\/em>to be found as the third from last note? And which is the right one?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The problem is caused \u2013 as is often the case \u2013 by a contradiction in the sources: the note d\u00b9<\/em> can be traced back to a draft Beethoven wrote for the piece that is today housed in the Beethoven-Haus Bonn <\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The note e\u00b9<\/em> on the other hand is to be found in the first printing of the piece, published long after the composer\u2019s death by the Beethoven scholar Ludwig Nohl. He had discovered the autograph of the up-to-then unknown composition and issued the piano piece as \u201cF\u00fcr Elise\u201d in 1867.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Shortly afterwards Beethoven\u2019s manuscript disappeared once again and is still missing today \u2013 meaning that Nohl\u2019s edition is the only testimony we have of the text in the
\nautograph. So we are now faced with a tricky question: If we are to believe Nohl, did Beethoven systematically replace the seventh with the root at this place in his autograph? Or did Nohl make a mistake, meaning that we should edit the text as it has been transmitted in Beethoven\u2019s draft \u2013 that is with d\u00b9<\/em>? We decided on the latter, and are still wondering whether the autograph will reappear one day to give us the definitive answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

d or e \u2013 that is the question \u2026 when … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,276,312,3,345,322,314],"tags":[7,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.henle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}