Lo spazio, il tempo, la logica della composizione: uno schizzo per l’op. 102/2 di Ludwig van Beethoven

In his pivotal 1999 essay, Bernard Appel proposed a long-awaited definition of the textual status of musical sketches and drafts. Among the various characteristics, the spatiality of the annotations of a preliminary manuscript, i.e., the set of their topographical relationships, is identified as the main testimony to both the temporality of the creative process and the ideal logics that guided it. I examine the still unexplored importance of a ‘spatial’ approach to genetic materials, focusing on a case study: the unpublished annotation of the manuscript HCB Mh 92 for Ludwig van Beethoven’s Cello Sonata Op. 102 No. 2, that is one of his first score sketches, a frequent type of annotation in later Beethoven’s genetic materials. I will do so by illustrating the creative process on the manuscript and reconstructing, from spatial data, the writing process of its most troubled point. I will then delve into the compositional logic that motivated the adoption of certain technical solutions and conclude with some general reflections on the weight of the connection between topography, chronology and functionality, in other words, between space, time and logic of composition.