New Beethoven Piano Piece — Ländlerischer Tanz | Classical Cake, Op. 14
A previously unknown Beethoven piano piece was discovered in January 2020 among the archives of the Vienna City Hall Library. The piece was found by Dr. Jochen Reutter, editor-in-chief at Wiener Urtext Edition, and we discuss this exciting new find.
In this episode, you’ll:
Learn about the discovery and listen to the new piece: Ländlerischer Tanz
Listen to a Ländler, a type of dance related to this newly-found Beethoven work
Understand the difference between opus numbers vs WoO numbers
Question if there are other pieces by Beethoven left to be discovered
For the best experience, please watch the video at the top of the page.
Episode Transcript and Timestamps
DANIEL ADAM MALTZ: Grüß Sie from Vienna, Austria.
Welcome to Opus 14 of Classical Cake, the podcast where we discuss topics relating to Viennese classical music and Austrian culture while enjoying one of Vienna's delicious cakes.
I'm your host, Daniel Adam Maltz.
If you're new here, welcome! Please subscribe and make sure you visit ClassicalCake.com for more content.
In January 2020, a previously unknown piano piece by Beethoven was discovered among the archives of the Vienna City Hall Library. On February 27, 2020, this piece received its first public performance. I was fortunate enough to attend this exciting event.
My guest today is the person who made this discovery. Dr. Jochen Reutter, the editor-in-chief of Wiener Urtext Edition.
Dr. Reutter, thank you for joining me.
DR. JOCHEN REUTTER: Thank you.
Featured Cake: Topfenstrudel [0:53]
MALTZ: Normally, we enjoy a cake and coffee together while we record in my piano studio. But, these are strange times and we're recording online.
When things are a bit more normal, we'll have Topfenstrudel together.
Topfenstrudel is one of my favorite desserts here.
This creamy dessert features a light filling made of cheese curds and raisins all wrapped up in a crisp strudel dough.
So, let's dig in.
A new discovery during the Beethoven 2020 year [1:18]
MALTZ: In 2020, we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. So it was fortunate that you made this exciting discovery this year. Can you walk us through how you made this discovery?
REUTTER: Yes, I was in the Wien Bibliothek in the Rathaus in Vienna, in the music collection in January. I was looking for another piece.
The reason why I was looking for this piece is my new edition of the complete Beethoven piano pieces I was working on at that time. The piece I was looking for was the little Andante WoO 211. It is notated on a double sheet of sketches on the fourth page. You can discover it very well because it begins at the beginning of a line and you see the little title Andante written over it a little bit in the left margin. I was comparing the autographed manuscript of this little piece for my new edition.
After I finished my work on WoO 211, I went through the whole sketch sheet — the (b) folio of sketches — because it is very interesting.
This sheet contains very different range of notations. You have sketches for piano music, sketches for orchestral music. You have sketches for songs. You have finger exercises and also exercises in the thorough bass.
Among these different kinds of pieces, I found on the first page a piece that starts at the end, or near the end, of a line. I went through and saw there is a melody line notated without interruptions to the end three lines below and there was a final chord. We saw abbreviated notation of a harmony, and of an accompaniment for the left hand in the lower stave. And there you can see notated chords, very widespread chords — about a tenth in the spread. These chords were one bar or half bar chords and abbreviation lines for eighth notes. So, I have the harmony and I have an idea for the rhythmical realization. That was the form the piece is represented in this manuscript. You have a complete melody and abbreviated accompaniment for the left hand.
MALTZ: So the fact that you found this piece on a sheet with all these other sort of segments you said orchestral music, piano music, exercises. Do you think that this is the reason why it was overlooked all of these years? It's just more difficult to see among all of the noise, if you will?
REUTTER: Yes, it is difficult or more difficult to see in so far as its beginning – not at the beginning of a line – beginning near the end of a line. And, this piece does have no title.
MALTZ: It has no title, I see. Yeah. And this sketch, these sketches, these pages where it was found… we're able to date from fairly early work in Beethoven's life, right?
REUTTER: This sketch (b) folio is known for a longer time and it is scholarly examined and we can date it back to the last Bonn years, about 1790 to 1792.
Character of this new piece, the Ländlerischer Tanz [5:46]
MALTZ: Interesting. So why did you call the piece Ländlerischer Tanz?
REUTTER: When you want to publish this piece, you shouldn't publish it without any title. It was possible to say only piano piece, but this was not very specific.
So, I examined the character for the piece and some details of the melody of the rhythm point out that this piece is some kind of a Ländler – a South German or Austrian dance of that time and something in the prehistory of the waltz – with a very great range of limitations.
But, a Ländler was a good character for this piece and so I looked for other Ländlers in the oeuvre of Beethoven. And, there are two collections of Ländlers under the number WoO 11 and 15. They are created in about the year 1800. These Ländlers are called in their first prints Ländlerischer Tanz.
In some details they are different from this newly-discovered piece. But, there are certain principles — for instance, in melody and rhythm, which come very close to the idea of a Ländler. And so I decided to borrow this title of the published collections of Ländlers, and I took the title Ländlerischer Tanz.
MALTZ: And we know that there are other early Beethoven works where he drew heavily on these folk dance rhythms and things. This was not unheard of.
REUTTER: No, you have in the whole oeuvre of Beethoven… he — from time-to-time — wrote dances and dance-like pieces.
MALTZ: So, could you briefly explain the character of a Ländler for someone who has never perhaps been exposed to this?
REUTTER: Ländler is a South German or Austrian folk dance. And you find a definition in the Musikalisches Lexikon by Heinrich Christoph Koch originating from the year 1802. Koch wrote — I’ll use an English translation…
“A Ländler is the melody to a German dance of the same name, which is set in 3/8 time and performed in a moderately fast movement. Its character is skipping joy.”
And there was one problem: Most of the Ländlers are written in 3/4 time. Beethoven wrote his piece in 6/8 time. Now you have heard Koch, speaks about 3/8 time and Beethoven uses 6/8 time. But the rhythmical structure of the piece is so that you can read the 6/8 time as two 3/8 times.
So, you have this rhythmical and metrical structure, which is mentioned in this article by Heinrich Christoph Koch.
Solving the issue of Beethoven’s shorthand notations [9:57]
MALTZ: So as you already mentioned, you wrote that Beethoven notated the melody in full, but the accompaniment of the left hand was left in a shorthand notation, just block chords. Which, of course, we can see in other Beethoven manuscripts that he very often used these shorthand notations. He was constantly trying to save ink and save time, so this is not unheard of. What was your solution on how to play this accompaniment?
REUTTER: I was sure that this accompaniment must be resolved in a form in patterns of accompaniment. We have the idea of an eighth note rhythm. So, another point of view was that Beethoven never wrote a sequence of widespread chords like tenths through a whole piece, which is the case here. So, I supposed that this is only a shorthand notation for some figures you can accompany the melody.
And, there are two patterns you can make a resolution of these widespread chords. One was to play the three chord notes, one after the other. The second was to isolate the bass note first and then play two times the other tones of the chord. This comes a little bit closer to a way to accompany a waltz. But it is also used in Ländlers.
Beethoven Opus numbers vs. WoO numbers [12:12]
MALTZ: So can we assume that this new piece will be given a WoO catalog number — in your new edition, perhaps?
REUTTER: That's not my decision. But, this will be decided by scholars of, for instance, the Beethoven house in Bonn or these scholars who were working on the new Beethoven work catalog. I think this piece will get one of the first free numbers in the WoO sequence.
MALTZ: Can you quickly explain the difference between the Beethoven pieces that have one of these WoO numbers we've talked about vs. a proper opus number?
REUTTER: Yes. We have two kinds of works in the Beethoven oeuvre: one bearing an opus number and the others with no opus number. And all pieces which are bearing not an opus number were listed as WoO: works without opus numbers, in German Werke ohne Opuszahl.
Beethoven started to give opus numbers to his works in his early Vienna period. He opens his official work with his three trios, Op. 1, followed by the three piano sonatas, Op. 2.
I will say the more official works bear an opus number, but, that is not a qualification. You cannot say the opus number works are good works and the works without opus number are not so good. That is no qualification of the work.
For instance, the complete Bonn works have no opus numbers. Among them, there are very, very good and very interesting works. For instance, the three so-called Kurfürsten-Sonaten, his first three sonatas Beethoven ever wrote, or some of the early rondos, or, for instance, the piano concerto WoO 4, some chamber music works.
We see then in the Vienna time a lot of works bearing opus numbers, but there are, by chance, works which haven't got any opus number. I will give you an example. When Beethoven was writing his piano sonata in C Major, the so-called Waldstein sonata, he first composed a very large middle movement, an Andante. As he was at the final period of his composition, he decided to take this long Andante out of the sonata — which was very long — and replace it by a shorter piece: the famous Introduzione. He published the sonata with this short Introduzione as the slow movement, but the Andante he published separately, at the same publishing house, as Andante — later often called Andante favori. You see the sonata has an opus number, the separate publication of the Andante favori doesn't have one.
MALTZ: Yeah, that's a very interesting story of this Andante favori. It's very difficult, I think, you know, something as massive in the piano repertoire as the Waldstein sonata. Most pianists will play this piece or at least encounter this piece. And then we tend to hear these things as set in stone. But it's hard to imagine that Beethoven had a completely different idea at one time for how this piece would play out.
[Music playing]
REUTTER: Or, for instance, the 32 Variations in C Minor. A great work. But Beethoven doesn't give it an opus number. But it's also published in Beethoven's lifetime — a year after Beethoven had written this piece.
Among the WoO pieces, there are, of course, pieces Beethoven never published. Among these is also the famous Für Elise. Beethoven himself never published this piece. It was first published in a book of letters by Beethoven in the 1860s.
And, on the other side, some pieces bearing an Opus number are not published in Beethoven's lifetime.
One very famous work of this is the Rondo a Capriccio, better known as the Rage over the Lost Penny, which is published for the first time in about 1830 by [Anton] Diabelli.
MALTZ: Yes, it's interesting to see how popular some of the pieces that Beethoven didn't publish have become.
Pieces waiting to be rediscovered? [17:51]
MALTZ: Do you think that there are other Beethoven pieces out there just waiting to be rediscovered?
REUTTER: That's a good question. I think you won't find the tenth symphony or the piano sonata number 36.
But, little pieces like this one may be undiscovered, and I would say sleeping among sketches, among collections of Beethoven's exercises for counterpoint, and so on. If you would go through these manuscripts systematically, I won't rule out that there is the one or other piece to be found.
MALTZ: It is exciting to live in a time where there are still discoveries to be made regarding the lives and output of these great composers.
Thanks, Dr. Reutter, for sharing this Classical Cake with me.
REUTTER: Thank you.
Suggested resources to learn more [18:50]
Visit Wiener Urtext Edition to order the Ländlerischer Tanz and other works: wiener-urtext.com