Beethoven's Piano Sonatas

[kishnevi]

Ronald Brautigam, Jeno Jando, Peter Takacs, Gerard Willems

Thanks.  Brautigam is likely my next set when the box comes out.

[Madiel]

I'll try to wrap this up from my end.  When EMI splashed a "Complete Piano Sonatas" on the front cover of the set, they knew very well that most potential buyers would assume a set of 32 specific solo piano sonatas.  I have no problem with offering less than the 32; my problem is with EMI's deceptive packaging and disrespect for its customers.

Fair enough. But it does lead me to ask why there is not similar outrage over the fact that the first 3 sets of "complete piano trios" I just found online have 10, 11 and 13 works on them.  The set of 'complete piano trios' with 11 works even numbers them as 1-9, 11 and 12!

[Brian]

Thanks.  Brautigam is likely my next set when the box comes out.

Be warned the Brautigam box is being promised as 9 CDs and the individual discs are up to 13 or 14, so the electoral sonatas might not be included.

[kishnevi]

Be warned the Brautigam box is being promised as 9 CDs and the individual discs are up to 13 or 14, so the electoral sonatas might not be included.

They are.  but at that price I may not get it.

[Leo K.]

Fair enough. But it does lead me to ask why there is not similar outrage over the fact that the first 3 sets of "complete piano trios" I just found online have 10, 11 and 13 works on them.  The set of 'complete piano trios' with 11 works even numbers them as 1-9, 11 and 12!

Exactly.

[Marc]

Lortie included Op. 6 in his set.
I do not have that many sets, ten or twelve I think,  and of them I think only Buchbinder included the Electoral sonatas.  Has anyone else included them in a complete cycle?

Ronald Brautigam, Jeno Jando, Peter Takacs, Gerard Willems

Malcolm Bilson et al.
Label: Claves.

http://www.claves.ch/categories/piano/albums/beethoven-the-complete-32-piano-sonatas-on-period-instruments-in-addition-the-three-bonn-kurfursten-sonatas

[Todd]

Ronald Brautigam, Jeno Jando, Peter Takacs, Gerard Willems

And Yamane and Nodaira.  It should be noted that the Willems recordings of the WoO works came years after the original; the original set was envisioned as the 32 by ABC and Willems and recorded thusly.

In fact I'm not sure there's any evidence at all of Beethoven numbering his works or caring about the topic.

So what?  Beethoven also didn't care about recordings.  Recordings and the concept of cycles, complete or otherwise, are products of the 20th Century.  The established practice when someone records a complete cycle is to record the 32 established as the complete sonatas.  Dropping a couple and still calling it a complete set is a gimmick. 

I suppose musicologists might have reason to worry a great deal about opus numbering, and what constitutes an accurate or meaningful sequence, and perhaps a musicologist will establish a new practice that gains wide acceptance.  That is distinct from recordings and recording practices, at least for now. 

[Madiel]

So what? 

I was addressing an argument put to me that Beethoven was conscious of the opus numbering of his works. If you think that argument is hogwash, you need not concern yourself with its refutation. You can just continue on, comfortable in the knowledge that Schnabel's decisions were intrinsically and inherently right - or whatever it is you know.

I agreed with you, by the way, that Lim was engaged in a gimmick. All I said to you was that deciding to record 32 sonatas was every bit as much a 'gimmick', and just because a lot of people repeat the same 'gimmick' for decades and turn it into a 'tradition' doesn't make it an objective truth.  Liszt's 'gimmick' was to perform from memory, and then it became standard practice. That doesn't mean that all pianists before Liszt were inherently inferior and incompetent because they used sheet music.

I also agreed with Sammy that, given the current state of affairs, people are likely to feel misled by a package that is labelled 'complete piano sonatas' and which has 30 piano sonatas rather than 32. That still doesn't make it true that a set of 32 piano sonatas is objectively and inherently complete. It quite clearly isn't entirely 'complete' by virtue of the fact that people have produced recordings of 35 piano sonatas, with 35 being a larger number than 32. It's just that 'sonatas with opus numbers' has become the standard criterion for the piano sonatas - in stark contrast to the piano trios, where the notion of what makes a set 'complete' is highly variable.

[Pat B]

We are. The point is that saying "we can call it complete if we have all the ones with opus numbers, and ignore the ones without opus numbers" is every bit as arbitrary as saying "we can call it complete if we have all the ones we're confident Beethoven intended to publish soon after composition, and ignore the ones that languished for years". Opus numbers are just as arbitrary a criterion as any other.

The fact that the piano sonatas managed to avoid having a lot of really obvious inconsistencies and anachronisms in their numbering does not mean that Herr Beethoven somehow lavished particular special care over the numbering of the piano sonatas while letting his other works go hang. Seeing them as a well-planned set is an anachronism. I'm not at home so I can't check the email again right now, but I'm pretty sure that Barry Cooper gave me op.31 as an example of a set of works that were not originally published with the numbering we now treat as an immutable, fixed quantity.

In fact I'm not sure there's any evidence at all of Beethoven numbering his works or caring about the topic. At that time it was very much the domain of publishers, not composers. The very reason that Dvorak got upset with his publisher is that by Dvorak's time, many composers did use opus numbers for their own purposes. Dvorak's manuscripts have very clear opus numbers on them. I'm not aware of a Beethoven manuscript that does the same. It's also very clear that many sequences in Beethoven's numbering exist because he sold a number of works to a particular publisher as a job lot, and that this drives the numbering rather than any kind of compositional sequence. Cooper's biography has quite a few examples of this.

I agree that the concept of an integral set is anachronistic. But that doesn't mean you can pick any n and declare that to be complete.

The order of opus numbers is independent of which works have opus numbers, and irrelevant to the question of what "complete" means.

Let's suppose you're right about opus numbers being arbitrary. Still:

WoO 47 are clearly juvenilia. Beethoven said as much himself.
WoO 50 is borderline juvenilia, possibly incomplete, and was clearly never intended for publication.
WoO 51 is a fragment; the completion is by Ries.
Op. 49 may or may not have had Beethoven's blessing for publication.

I think that's solid grounds for all of the WoO pieces being optional, and flimsy grounds for omitting op. 49.

BTW Cooper's edition included the 32 with opus numbers and the 3 of WoO 47, but not WoO 50 or WoO 51.

Fair enough. But it does lead me to ask why there is not similar outrage over the fact that the first 3 sets of "complete piano trios" I just found online have 10, 11 and 13 works on them.  The set of 'complete piano trios' with 11 works even numbers them as 1-9, 11 and 12!

The trios are less cut-and-dried than the sonatas. I think the big discrepancy is whether "complete" must include the reductions (one of which was not done by Beethoven, and may or may not have been approved by him). I lean towards yes for op. 36 and 38, but it's more debatable than op. 49.

[Madiel]

The order of opus numbers is independent of which works have opus numbers, and irrelevant to the question of what "complete" means.

As I've already said to you, not everything that has opus numbers now had opus numbers when it was published. I went back and checked, it was indeed opus 31 that had no opus number at the time of publication.  Regardless of the numbers given, why exactly is it important that a publisher fixed a list of works that had opus numbers after the fact?

[Todd]

All I said to you was that deciding to record 32 sonatas was every bit as much a 'gimmick', and just because a lot of people repeat the same 'gimmick' for decades and turn it into a 'tradition' doesn't make it an objective truth.

I suppose tradition may not equate with objective truth.  At the same time, you stating that any given traditional practice is a gimmick does not mean that it's a gimmick.

[Madiel]

I suppose tradition may not equate with objective truth.  At the same time, you stating that any given traditional practice is a gimmick does not mean that it's a gimmick.

You don't think that saying "look, I can play ALL of these" is designed to impress?

[Todd]

You don't think that saying "look, I can play ALL of these" is designed to impress?

It depends on the pianist.  With some younger pianists like, perhaps, HJ Lim or Melodie Zhao, who are trying to establish reputations, it seems probable.  For older, more established artists, maybe not.  They may have other motives.

[prémont]

Yes, but how far, precisely, should it go?  Should sketches be included?

You have got some point there.

IMO the term "Beethovens complete piano sonatas" should include the 32 sonatas with opus numbers and four works without opus numbers: The three Electoral sonatas (which BTW are better than their reputation) and the youthful sonata in C major.

[George]

You have got some point there.

IMO the term "Beethovens complete piano sonatas" should include the 32 sonatas with opus numbers and four works without opus numbers: The three Electoral sonatas (which BTW are better than their reputation) and the youthful sonata in C major.

WoO 51, right?

[prémont]

WoO 51, right?

Yes, right.

[Pat B]

As I've already said to you, not everything that has opus numbers now had opus numbers when it was published. I went back and checked, it was indeed opus 31 that had no opus number at the time of publication.  Regardless of the numbers given, why exactly is it important that a publisher fixed a list of works that had opus numbers after the fact?

Sorry, I misunderstood you -- I thought you meant that op. 31 were originally published with some different opus number(s), not no opus number at all.

I think Beethoven was conscious of opus numbers, not that they are the be-all-end-all arbiter of completeness (I realize this wasn't clear in my earlier posts). But in the case of the piano sonatas, and also the concertos, the set of works that now have opus numbers turns out to be a good functional definition of "complete." There are good reasons to consider the 5 earliest sonatas as non-canonical -- even Cooper omits 2 of them -- but I haven't heard a compelling reason to do the same for any of the traditional 32.

Maybe somebody will eventually uncover some evidence that op. 49 can be considered optional, but Ms. Lim's factually incorrect (regarding relative composition dates of op. 2 and op. 49) blurb doesn't convince.

[aquablob]

Beethoven's general practice was to attach opus numbers to those published works he regarded as most important, but orfeo's right that he wasn't always fastidious about it. Some works with an opus number were originally published with a different opus number. Some were originally published without one, which may reflect the composer's intent, a publisher's mistake, or a miscommunication (or lack of communication) with the publisher. In cases like these, the opus numbers we now use stem from either catalogs of his works that appeared later or (as with the Op. 31 sonatas) subsequent editions.

It's also worth mentioning that for his first ~15 years in Vienna, Beethoven had a secondary numbering system for "less significant" works that he published, such as variation sets. He made a point of having the Opp. 34 and 35 variation sets published with opus numbers, rather than including them in the secondary series.

So he was conscious of opus numbers, but they're not totally reliable (just as Pat B said).

[jlaurson]

Notes from the 2014 Salzburg Festival ( 10 )
Beethoven Sonata Cycle III • Buchbinder



http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2014/08/notes-from-2014-salzburg-festival-10_22.html

[jlaurson]

New find for me:

Rita Bouboulidi

also: http://ritabouboulidi.com/

She also played all the 32 in New York, in the 80s... about which H.Schoenberg writes in the NYT: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9806EEDF103EE631A2575AC0A9679C94619FD6CF