Beethoven’s lessons in Vienna with Haydn, Albrechtsberger, and Salieri are well known, but considerably less has been written about his earlier studies in Bonn. This article examines what Beethoven may have learned from two treatises that Gustav Nottebohm (1873) connected to Beethoven’s Bonn manuscripts: Johann Philipp Kirnberger’s Die wahren Grundsätze zum Gebrauch der Harmonie (1773) and Georg Joseph Vogler’s Gründe der Kuhrpfälzischen Tonschule in Beyspielen (1776, revised in 1778). I corroborate the evidence that links these treatises to Beethoven, analyze and categorize their contents, and suggest some parallels between materials in these treatises and Beethoven’s Bonn works including his “Elector” piano sonatas (WoO 47; 1783) and his two unusual preludes for piano or organ (op. 39; 1789, published in 1803).

From what we know of Beethoven’s studies in Vienna, several pillars of standard eighteenth-century musical education are missing: the study of solfeggio, thoroughbass, and harmony. This article makes the case that Beethoven encountered this training in Bonn. From Kirnberger’s Grundsätze, he would have learned about the fundamental bass, harmonic function and progression, and the principles of prolongation. In Vogler’s book, he would have encountered solfeggio exercises, common thoroughbass patterns including the Rule of the Octave, invertible sequences, diminution patterns, modulations schemes to every key, the fundamental bass, and more. Although these two treatises were not the only books Beethoven likely studied in Bonn, they offer probable windows into his formative lessons in music theory, improvisation, and composition.

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 as compositional solutions.

To reappraise Beethoven’s early sketches, I reconstruct his first two exposition continuity-sketches as if they were symphonic piano reductions, analyze their phrase structures, and perform them as if they were viable published pieces. I suggest that the sketches show Beethoven’s multiple innovative approaches for problematizing the normal rhetorical forces of the subordinate theme, which helps to elevate and further motivate the new lyrical theme planned for the development. By validating the first two sketches with the well-defined theory of formal functions (Caplin 1998, 2013), instead of critiquing them with traditional sonata theories, I offer new perspectives into Beethoven’s compositional process to the first movement of the Eroica symphony.

This dissertation studies Beethoven’s compositional process to the first movement of his third symphony, Op. 55, the Eroica, through the analysis of its sketches. Using the complete transcription of the Eroica sketchbook developed by Lewis Lockwood and Alan Gosman (2013a; 2013b), the single-voice exposition sketches are reconstructed by interpreting their implied harmonies and bass voices. Thereafter, the reconstructed sketches are analyzed with a theory of formal functions (Caplin 1998; 2013) and Beethoven’s developing compositional intentions are interpreted. What results is a new approach for Beethoven sketch studies that grants insights into his compositional process for the Eroica.

Throughout this study, Beethoven’s continuity sketches are viewed as viable alternatives rather than problematic experiments. This perspective reappraises commonly held views about Beethoven’s compositional process for the piece that were advanced by Gustav Nottebohm in the late nineteenth century. In essence, this dissertation reframes the analytical objective from one that uses ill-defined sonata theories and the final piece as a type of procrustean bed to find weaknesses in the sketches, to one that uses the well-formed and aesthetically neutral categories of the theory of formal functions to search for, and explain, their strengths. Such a perspective affords a more complete view into Beethoven’s workshop that improves our understanding of his compositional process and style.