An Australian musicologist has discovered what he believes to be the last pianoforte work written by Beethoven.
Peter McCallum, associate prof of musicology at the University of Sydney, base the 32 bars of handwritten music while looking at one of the composer's sketchbooks in Berlin's state library. Most of his books have been studied in detail merely the terminal one has attracted less attention.
McCallum aforesaid that he didn't know instantly that it was a pianissimo piece because Beethoven a great deal used a chaotic sort of shorthand. "The sketchbooks ... are very difficult to read and need a bit of deciphering, just you can work it out if you look at it for long enough," he said.
McCallum said he believed the piece was written in October 1826, five months before Beethoven died.
"It's got a few little unusual sympathetic features which we don't normally companion with Beethoven," he said.
McCallum's pianist wife Stephanie secondhand her husband's transcription to make the first recording of the piece - Bagatelle in F minor � which lasts simply 54 seconds. McCallum aforesaid he believed the patch, although brief, was complete.
"I suspect if Beethoven had come to it as he very often did with these things he would have added more than because it's not very long," he said. reuters
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