Think of a letter

WILLIAM. DRABKIN assesses the new collected edition of Beethoven's correspondence

Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel: Gesamtausgabe, Edited by Sieghard Brandenburg on behalf

of the BeethovenHaus, Bonn Henle (Munich, 1996-98).

vol.l (1783-1807); xxxix, 334pp; ISBN 3 87328 055 8. vol.2 (1808-13); xix, 388pp; ISBN 3 87328 056 6. vol.3 (1814-16); xxii, 368pp.

ISBN 3 87328 057 4. vol.4 (1817-22); xxiv, 560pp.

ISBN 3 87328 058 2. vol.5 (1823-24); xxiii / 405pp;

ISBN 3 87328 059 0. vol.6 (1825-27); xxii, 397pp;

ISBN 3 87328 060 4. vol.7 (Register); x, 319pp;

ISBN 3 87328 061 2.

FIRSTLY, SOME FIGURES: 2292 letters written by Beethoven, written on his behalf, or addressed to him; seven volumes containing 2975 pages of text, commentary and appendices, 13 indexes (but, surprisingly, no bibliography). A project which, though already fifteen years in the making, is not yet finished: a further volume of documents - contracts, receipts, published communications, court acts, deeds, and the like - is scheduled for publication. Where did it all begin?

The earliest attempt to collect and record Beethoven's letters dates from 1865, not quite forty years after the composer's death; edited by Ludwig Nohl, it contained just over 400 items. Since then, the number of letters generally known has been increased both by books with such titles as Neue Briefe Beethovens (ed. Nohl, 1867), Beethoven letters in America (ed. OG Sonneck, 1927), New Beethoven letters (edd. D. MacArdle and L. Misch, 1957) and by articles in specialist publications. From among the latter, Alan Tyson's `Prolegomena to a future edition of Beethoven's letters', published in Beethoven studies 2 (London, 1977), is particularly noteworthy

If the gradual accession of new Beethoven letters has been generally welcomed, the efforts to assemble editions of all of Beethoven's known correspondence have, in general, not done the composer justice. Three major German enterprises, none of which could be called a `critical edition', came to fruition in the early years of the 20th century. Two were begun at the same time and ran to five volumes each: one by the Beethoven scholar Alfred Kalischer (Berlin, 1906-08), the other by Fritz Prelinger (Vienna, 1906-11). Kalischer's revised second edition was completed by another Beethoven expert, Theodor Frimmel (1909-11). A popular one-volume edition, brought out by Emerich Kastner in 1910 and revised by Julius Kapp in 1923, proved more durable than either of the multi-volume works, and its reprinting in 1975 increased its longevity by a further twenty years. More serious enterprises, aimed at rendering Beethoven's texts from their original sources, involved such eminent musicologists as Max Unger, Otto Erich Deutsch, and Joseph Schmidt-Gorg, the musicological director of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn from 1946 to 1972; none of these projects were completed.

Ironically, the best collection of Beethoven letters made in this century has been an English translation, prepared by Emily Anderson, which appeared in 1961 and comprised 1570 numbered items and a range of other documents in three volumes. For thirty-five years Anderson has been without rival, the only edition to be based on the original sources of the texts in order to arrive at the best possible readings and interpretations of the letters, with judicious annotations based on previous Beethoven research.

If a scholarly edition of the letters in their original languages has been a major priority throughout the 20th century, the delay of its appearance until now may yet be seen as a blessing: for the last quarter of a century, Beethoven studies has benefited from the two indispensable ingredients of a successful enterprise: a group of outstanding biographers and musicologists, led (in the chronological sense) by Tyson, and a well-resourced institute, the Beethoven-Haus. Though his name appears in small print, as a member of the editorial board, the importance of Tyson's work for the new edition cannot be overestimated; indeed, the value of his recommendations, which have all been adopted here, is richly acknowledged by the editor-in-chief, Sieghard Brandenburg.

When the editorial board comprising scholars from Germany, Britain, the USA and Austria was formed in 1983, a pilot project was undertaken. Two years later there appeared a collection of Beethoven's correspondence with the Mainz publishing house of Schott: a 106-page volume `edited by the Beethoven-Haus Bonn' comprising 72 items, together with a concordance, indexes, illustrations, a bibliography and - perhaps the most interesting thing of all - a comprehensive history of past efforts to compile editions of Beethoven's correspondence. This fascinating and beautifully told story of Beethoven's letters, beginning 130 years ago with Nohl's cautiously titled Briefe Beethovens, has been much scaled down in the foreword to Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe (hereafter BBG); perhaps Brandenburg felt it improper to present his own work as the triumphant outcome of a century of failures and missed opportunities. Comparing BBG to any of its predecessors, though, it is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion: this is it, the edition we have all been waiting for.