Landler-like Dance

A newly discovered, previously unpublished Beethoven work! During the research work for an edition of the Wiener Urtext Edition, its editor-in-chief, Dr. Jochen Reutter, examined a double page with sketches by Ludwig van Beethoven from the years 1790-1792 in the music collection of the Vienna Library in City Hall. At the very end of the fourth page, among the multitude of different sketches, a piano piece called Andante had been discovered some time ago. But the fact that a complete little piano piece was also hidden on the first page had remained unknown until then. It has no title and does not begin at the beginning of the page, but at the end of a line, immediately following a previous sketch, which makes it difficult to find. As a hitherto unknown piece, it does not yet appear in the new catalogue raisonné and bears neither opus number nor WoO number. The 16-measure piece has the musical character of a Ländler. Beethoven has noted the melody of this piece without gaps, and in a few places even revised it.