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Ludwig van Beethoven, Skizzenblätter zu Fidelio op. 72 und anderen Werken, Autograph

Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Sammlung H. C. Bodmer, HCB BSk 17/65a

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Things worth knowing
Mozart and Cherubini as models

This sketch leaf is from 1804, when Beethoven was working intensively on his opera Fidelio. This is not only shown by the sketches for the duet Marzelline-Jaquino on leaf 2r, 3r and 3v (images 3, 5 and 6), in which Beethoven is mainly concerned with Jaquino's sentence "Da war ich so herrlich im Gang und immer entwischt mir der Fang" (I was getting on so well and now once again my prize escapes me). At this point he obviously intended Jaquino and Marzelline to sing after each other, although in the finished opera they sing their lines together. Copies from other operas also bear witness to the fact that Beethoven was working on his own opera. While composing Fidelio, Beethoven studied many ensembles from Mozart's operas. In so doing he only copied the vocal parts in the hope that he might be able to learn something from Mozart (Beethoven was a master of orchestration and so saved himself the effort of copying orchestral parts). The leaf shown here also contains an extract from an opera by Mozart. On leaf 1r (image 1) Beethoven copied out eight bars from the quintet sung by the three ladies, Papageno and Tamino from the first act of The Magic Flute. They are the eight bars with the text "denn durch sie wird Menschenglück und Zufriedenheit vermehrt", (for human happiness and contentedness will be multiplied through it [the magic flute]) in which the phrase departs from homophony, i.e. the voices give up their dependent movement and fan out. Beethoven was very interested in such complicated vocal settings - small wonder that he noted them down. On the reverse of the same leaf there are further copies from an opera, which for a long time remained unidentified. In the meantime we know that they are from the extremely successful opera of the time "Les deux journées" by Luigi Cherubini (also known as "The two days" or "The Water Carrier" from its German title "Der Wasserträger"). Beethoven copied out extracts from the trio and the finale of the first act. Once again the dovetail musical structure is at the fore. (J.R.)

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