A group of music librarians and musicologists are bringing #BTHVN2020 back to life with a world premiere workshop performance from a recently discovered manuscript of a Beethoven quintet arrangement.

Housed in Special Collections in the University of Auckland's General Library, this quintet arrangement of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is believed to date from 1810-1820. The manuscript set consists of four parts – one part was lost at some stage in the past – and was bound into volumes with published string arrangements of Beethoven symphonies and forgotten for some 200 years.

Very little is known yet about the history of the manuscript itself. Experts from Beethoven-Haus in Bonn confirm that the handwriting does not match any known copyist or arranger from Vienna at that period. It is also not in Beethoven’s hand, although he was known to have taken a close interest in the production of arrangements of his music.

Dr Nancy November, from the University of Auckland's School of Music, who has been editing the manuscript for the performance, describes the huge production of arrangements during this period as akin to spin-offs. “Arrangements of large-scale works like symphonies were highly popular in Beethoven’s day and an important means of disseminating music to a wide audience before the days of regular public concerts and before the era of the gramophone."

Presented by Dr November, with players from NZ Barok, and sponsored by the New Zealand Branch of the International Association of Music Libraries, (IAML NZ) one movement of this work was heard for the first time in 200 years at a music librarian's conference at Auckland City Libraries in Nov 2020. This free public workshop and performance of the entire work is being sponsored by The Nicholas Tarling Charitable Trust.

https://www.news.library.auckland.ac.nz/2020/11/02/beethovens-birthday/#.YDDnZ-gzY2w