Note 138 — Chapter XXII
Henry Edward Krehbiel translation
Beethoven’s Estimate of the Bagatelles
[138] Dr. Riemann thinks that Beethoven originally wrote “1802” on the autograph, and that subsequently he, or somebody else, changed the 8 into a 7 and the 0 into an 8. (See the facsimile in Frimmel’s “Beethovenjahrbuch” of 1909); yet the German Editor finds suggestions of Beethoven’s latest style in the “Bagatelles” and calls attention to the fact that Beethoven detected intimations of No. 5 in the set Op. 119 in the Kessler sketchbook. Dr. Riemann’s conclusion is thus worded: “If Ries in his ‘Notizen’ meant these ‘Bagatelles’, he was surely in error. Beethoven’s complaint to Breitkopf and Härtel in the letter of October, 1803, ‘since unfortunately so many unlucky old things of mine have been sold and stolen,’ cannot possibly have referred to them. Beethoven himself thought highly of these ‘trifles’, as is shown by his anger at Peters’s depreciation of Op. 119. it is very likely that Ries meant the Two Preludes in all the Keys (Op. 39), which may have been surreptitiously published.”