Many discrepancies have arisen over two centuries in editions of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in C. The new edition by Jonathan Del Mar resolves these.
Beethoven’s first Piano Concerto is a fascinating example of the perennial question facing all Beethoven editors: when autograph and first edition show different texts, which should you follow? The question is not a new one, and our new Bärenreiter edition is not the first Urtext Edition of the work so the surprise has been to find how many highly important elements of text have been suppressed until now. There are far-reaching changes in the solo part, revisions which Beethoven made in time for the first edition (as usual, published only in parts) but which have either been ignored, overlooked, suppressed, or in some cases implausibly imputed to arbitrary changes made by a wayward (but presumably remarkably inventive!) engraver.
We are fortunate to possess Beethoven’s autograph for op. 15, for few autographs of Beethoven’s early (pre-1804, say) music survive. Three notable exceptions, however, are those of his first three piano concertos. So, to return to the question: when autograph and first edition differ, which is valid? As a general principle, the answer must be that if the difference could easily be explainable as an error such as a slur missing, or obviously extending to the wrong note, we follow the autograph; but if the first edition has something – as is frequently the case in op. 15 – that is entirely different music, the only sensible judgement is that here Beethoven made a revision. Yet in more than 30 cases many of them highly interesting and significant, these revisions have remained unobserved in performing editions, though they survived in the Eulenburg miniature score which descends directly from the first edition.
But there is a further complication to the text of op. 15, a further turn of the screw which in 17 separate places renders the determining of Beethoven’s final text more than usually difficult. The very first bar is marked p in the autograph, but consistently pp in the first edition. From what has just been said above we would conclude that since all the parts are different from the autograph, this cannot possibly be ascribed to an error, so must be a revision, and we follow the (obviously later) pp in the first edition, a more original and startling dynamic marking for the opening of a concerto. But we look more closely at the autograph and horrors! – what do we see? In every part, Beethoven originally wrote pp, but this is crossed out, and p is written in its stead. By the rule as outlined above, we would now have to believe that he first wrote pp, then changed it to p, then thought better of it and returned to pp after all. And were this an isolated case, we might indeed conclude that this is exactly what happened. After all, Beethoven was perfectly capable, even quite frequently, of crossing out two or three bars in his autograph, then restoring them with the word “stet”, or “gut”. But in the present work, there are no fewer than 17 places where, as we have said, the reading in the (later!) first edition is found already in the autograph, deleted. And with 17 such last-minute revisions (or, arguably, later-than-last-minute!), it is no longer plausible to suggest that Beethoven was so indecisive at such a late stage, as to revoke so many precisely thought-out adjustments; and indeed, recent editions have agreed with this judgement, and the text we are used to hearing rightly follows Beethoven’s latest, final text in the autograph.
We may ask: what did Beethoven think he was doing, making changes to the piece after it had already been published? How could he ever expect these final revisions to see the light of day? It can be shown that he really thought these were last-minute revisions, that he did not know exactly how far the engraving process had yet progressed, and hoped that there was still time to incorporate them. In these hopes, he was of course largely – but fascinatingly, not completely, so that the first edition does exhibit some inconsistencies because of them! – disappointed.
Beethoven wrote three cadenzas for the first movement, one short, one long, and a third of which only a (substantial) fragment survives. These have so far received little scholarly attention, and it has been necessary to make a considerable quantity of corrections – even to the extent of the actual number of notes! – to all performing editions.
Jonathan Del Mar
(from [t]akte 1/2013)