The music publisher Mathias Artaria had agreed to pay Beethoven 12 ducats for his piano four-hands arrangement of the Grosse Fuge (Day 359). In early September, Beethoven sent Karl Holz to the publisher with the manuscript and a five-part canon with the text:
Da ist das Werk; sorgt um das Geld! Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn, elf, zwölf Dukaten!
There’s the work; see to the money. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve ducats!
The autograph of the canon appears right before page 497 of a 1945 article by Otto E. Albrecht in The Musical Quarterly: “Adventures and Discoveries of a Manuscript Hunter”. The article claims that this canon was sent not with the piano four-hands Grosse Fuge but with the replacement last movement for Opus 130. That supposition is no longer believed to be correct.
The belief that the canon accompanied the delivery of the replacement last movement was also shared by Willy Hess, when he called this canon “Beethoven’s Last Composition”. It is not.
#Beethoven250 Day 360
Canon “Da ist das Werk” (WoO 197), 1826
A studio performance with animated score.