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Scholars' Abstracts, Biographies, & Websites
Beethoven Conference
27-30 March 2026, London
Siân Derry
Professor| Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
ABSTRACT: Through the Eyes of Beethoven: Clues to Performance Practice and Keyboard Technique via his Manuscripts and Sketches
In 1845 Franz Wegeler published a letter from Gerhard von Breuning, recalling a conversation in which Beethoven declared ‘I felt like writing a piano tutor myself once, but never found the time for it; I would have written something quite unconventional though’. Thus – unlike other composer-pianists such as Czerny (1839) and Hummel (1827) who published multi-volume method books or ‘Pianoforte Schule’ – when searching for clues on performance practice for Beethoven, one must often turn to other contemporary sources in the form of historical treatises, or anecdotes and reminisces about his performing preferences from friends and contemporaries.
However, an examination of his sketches and other manuscript documents provides a surprising number of clues that reveal Beethoven’s own views on performance practice, some of which directly contradict advice found within published treatises. A number of piano exercises devised by Beethoven himself can also be found within these manuscripts, and these further illustrate his approach to piano technique – sometimes including his own commentary on their execution – and therefore providing a glimpse at Beethoven’s self-proclaimed ‘unconventional’ piano tutor were it ever to have been published.
This paper brings together a collection of these clues and exercises to provide a discussion of and new insights into performance practice, as seen through the eyes of Beethoven.
BIOGRAPHY
Siân Derry is Assistant Director of Postgraduate Studies at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Her interests include piano organology, pedagogy, and performance practices of the 18th and 19th Centuries. She has published on Beethoven’s Fingering Indications for the Fourth Piano Concerto, Op. 58 (Bonner Beethoven Studien); Beethoven as a Child Prodigy (Oxford University Press); Beethoven’s Tied-Note Notation (Hochschule der Kunste Bern / Conservatorio Scuola universitaria di musica); and Charles Hallé as a Beethoven Champion (Manchester University Press). Her forthcoming edition for Bärenreiter Verlag is entitled Figurations and Exercises for Piano. Beethoven on Piano Playing and she is currently preparing a monograph on the Fourth Piano Concerto (Routledge).