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From “Radical Blunders” To Compositional Solutions: A Form-Functional Perspective On Beethoven’S Early Eroica Continuity-Sketches, Thomas Posen

Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies

Beethoven’s sketches to his third symphony, the Eroica, have fascinated scholars since Nottebohm’s pioneering study of the Eroica Sketchbook in the late nineteenth century. More recently, Alan Gosman and Lewis Lockwood finished a complete transcription of the sketchbook, which has led to a resurgent interest in these sketches. In this article, I re-evaluate Beethoven’s approaches to composing the first movement of the Eroica symphony by reappraising two supposed problems with the first two exposition continuity-sketches. Contrary to prior studies, which have interpreted these reputed compositional problems as “failed experiments” or “radical blunders” (Tovey 1941, 80), I interpret them …