Hit and miss? – A purportedly wrong note in Beethoven’s Sonata op. 14 no. 2

For almost ten years now I’ve been working with Murray Perahia as co-editor of a new edition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Ten sonatas have appeared meanwhile, and I promise you it won’t take another twenty years to get the other sonatas ready!

Among the already published sonatas is that in G major op. 14 no. 2 (Sonata ‘No. 10’ in case you’d rather count them). Sad to say, as is the case with all the sonatas through Op. 22, it happens that there is no autograph for the G-major sonata. We don’t know a thing about the origin of this sonata, not even when exactly it was composed. Sources such as sketch material usually available for dating are totally lacking. To help us place this sonata chronologically is merely an advertisement from 1799 in the Wiener Zeitung for the publication of the original edition. Even whether the Sonata was composed the year it was published or a year or two earlier instead, has to remain open.

In the absence of a manuscript document, only the first edition can serve as a source for an Urtext edition (Beethoven most probably had no influence on later editions of the Sonata). This edition brought out by the publisher Mollo in Vienna poses something of a riddle for us in the 1^st movement of the Sonata op. 14 no. 2, that, mind you, no matter how it is solved leads to a clearly audible difference in playing the sonata. Here it is:

We’re in the development of the 1^st movement. Do you see which enigmatic note I’m talking about? Perhaps you’ve already played the sonata yourself? If so, then you’d have most likely stumbled over the d flat², the 1^st right-hand note in the 10^th measure of our example. Most, if not all, modern editions print d² instead, hence differing from the only source for this work. Doubtless, there are basically three reasons for this:
(1) The harmonic progression of the five-measure group from the 1^st forte is: three measures in A-flat major; one measure, dominant-seventh chord on d, one measure diminished seventh chord on f sharp. The next five-measure group would accordingly have to begin with three measures in g minor and not have a diminished chord already in the third measure.
(2) In the measure with the d flat² there is an essential flat sign missing before the b¹. That’s why
(3) the engraver presumably made a mistake (after the page turn) and inadvertently stamped the flat sign a third too high.

It’s our opinion, however, that there are likewise three reasons not to depart from the source:
(1) In Beethoven’s time it was still not customary to engrave essential accidentals again in the case of note repetition or the repeat of note groups beyond a bar line. Similar situations are very often found in Beethoven’s manuscripts where these accidentals are NOT repeated after the bar line. Thus, it could easily be that also in our case there is no flat sign in Beethoven’s autograph before the b¹ and so the engraver did not engrave it. (In the 3^rd measure of the 1^st group, for example, the flat sign was missing before the lower e in the upper stave.) It just might be that the engraver did not make a mistake, but engraved the measure just as it was in the manuscript.
(2) Robert Levin once wrote: ‘Editors want uniformity, artists love variety.’ 🙂 Why in the 2^nd group should Beethoven have literally repeated the harmonic progression of the 1^st group? Two measures later, in the 5^th measure of the 2^nd group, he also made a change in comparison to the 1^st group!
(3) The d flat² is definitely not wrong harmonically, only unexpected.

So, we’ve decided in the music text of our edition to go along with the sole source and publish the d flat² with an appropriate footnote. Give it a try! I’ve heard it in concert on a number of occasions by Maestro Perahia. I really like it. How about you?