Für Elise: A Song History
The piece everyone knows as Für Elise is Beethoven's Bagatelle in A minor, WoO 59, a short piano work that survives in his own hand only as a sketch and a draft.[1][2] Its melody first appears as a sixteen-bar line in his "Pastoral" sketchbook in spring 1808, and a much fuller draft from spring 1810 is kept in Bonn.[2] In autumn 1822 Beethoven took up that draft again for a planned set of bagatelles in which it was to be number 12, but he did not use it in the set later published as his Opus 119.[3]
François Bonvin, Woman at the Spinet, black chalk with touches of brown and red chalk, 1860. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to Beethoven's piece.
The piece first reached print in 1867, when the Beethoven scholar Ludwig Nohl included it in his book Neue Briefe Beethovens.[3] Nohl had found a complete autograph in 1865 at the Munich home of Babette Bredl, who let him copy and publish it, and he reported that it came from the estate of Therese von Droßdick, née Malfatti.[3][4] According to Nohl, the heading dedicated the piece to Elise on 27 April without naming a year, and the year 1810 has generally been inferred from the dating of the surviving draft.[3][2] That autograph has been missing since the late nineteenth century, so Nohl's edition, which the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn calls "not completely reliable," remains the main witness to the finished piece.[3][1]
Who Elise was remains disputed, and the Beethoven-Haus notes that no woman of that name is known among Beethoven's friends.[1] Max Unger argued in the 1920s that Nohl misread "Therese," pointing to Therese Malfatti, whom Beethoven taught and was attracted to, though the Henle edition says a comparison of Beethoven's handwriting tells against the misreading.[4][1][3] Klaus Martin Kopitz has made the case for the singer Elisabeth Röckel, an identification Michael Lorenz among others has questioned; Rita Steblin has proposed Elise Barensfeld, and Jürgen May has suggested the dedication was added only decades later by a subsequent owner.[4][2][3] Whatever its origins, the piece now ranks among Beethoven's best-known works.[3] Dana Gruber includes its theme in Classical Melodies For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of thirteen classical melodies for chromatic mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[5]
Sources
- Beethoven-Haus Bonn: "Ludwig van Beethoven, Skizzenblätter zum Klavierstück "Für Elise" WoO 59, zum Marsch WoO 19 und zu Egmont op. 84, Autograph".
- G. Henle Verlag: "Beethoven, Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (2014), vol. 2: WoO 59" (PDF).
- G. Henle Verlag: "Piano Piece in a minor WoO 59, Für Elise: Preface" (Joanna Cobb Biermann).
- Klaus Martin Kopitz / The Musical Times: "Beethoven's 'Elise' Elisabeth Röckel: a forgotten love story and a famous piano piece".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Dana Gruber, Classical Melodies For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: François Bonvin, Woman at the Spinet, black chalk with touches of brown and red chalk, 1860. The Cleveland Museum of Art.