Sketch (music)

• 1. Defining The Musical Sketch

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  A sketch page of Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano sonata, Opus 101 sits in an archive today. At the upper left corner of that paper lies a theme that opens the final movement. In music, a sketch is simply an informal document prepared by a composer to assist in the process of composition. These documents range greatly in scope and detail from the smallest snippets to full drafts. Dean writes that Beethoven's sketchbooks include every imaginable state between unaccompanied melodic motifs of a few notes to thoroughly worked-out full scores. Even his fair copies of essentially finished works show signs of continuing composition.

• 2. Motivations For Composition

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  One reason for sketches is the fallibility of human memory. But there are more sophisticated reasons to sketch. Most classical music arranges the themes of each movement into a substantial architecture involving sonata form. Eighteenth century theorists H. C. Koch and J. G. Sulzer suggested that composers should prepare sketches to lay out how various themes would be arranged to create overall structure. Marston adds that these recommendations accord well with what scholars call a continuity draft. This notational form allows a composer like Beethoven to fit together fragmentary ideas made earlier into a coherent whole.

• 3. Musicological Study Methods

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  Since the mid-19th century the study of composers' sketches has been a branch of musicology. Nicholas Marston lists three reasons why this study can be of interest. The history of how a work was created serves as data for biographical accounts of composers. It tells us whether a composition was the product of years of work or quickly achieved. Sketches are occasionally used by composers in attempts to write convincing completions of works left unfinished at death. Above all there is the interest widely shared among devotees of music in how compositions were created. Scholars view them as showing the workings of a composer's mind rather than just the final result.

• 4. Bach And Early Drafts

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  Surviving sketches by Johann Sebastian Bach include O Traurigkeit o herzeleid which appears as a fragment of a chorale prelude in the Orgelbüchlein manuscript. BWV Anh 2 outlines a cantata for Trinity XIX containing only six bars. BWV 149/1a represents an instrumental opening movement breaking off after the first word with which singers enter. This serves as an alternative abandoned draft of the only Bach cantata that opens with that specific word. The Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach contains a sketch of what evolved into the first prelude of The Well-Tempered Clavier alongside several comparable early versions of compositions.

• 5. Mozart Retention Practices

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  The body of sketches by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is very substantial. Watermark studies by Alan Tyson yielded the conclusion that Mozart would sometimes leave a work only partially complete for a number of years. He then finished it when an opportunity for performance arose. This practice supports the view that Mozart carefully retained his sketches simply as good business practice. He kept open the possibility of future performances and publication for works not immediately promising in this respect. Some were given away to friends as keepsakes following his death and lost.

• 6. Beethoven Arduous Process

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  The corpus of Beethoven's surviving sketches illustrates his method of work which was often slow and arduous. Commentary on finished works points to the extremely primitive or unpromising character of themes as they first appear. Antony Hopkins remarked that sketch material for the Second Symphony bears more resemblance to a bugle call than a symphony. One wonders why he bothered to commit such banalities to paper at all but it seems to have been essential part of his creative procedure. These fragments can be seen gradually evolving toward the actual main theme of the first movement as it appears in the symphony.

• 7. Schubert Unfinished Works

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  Sketches by Franz Schubert include the abandoned third movement of his Unfinished Symphony. The fragment known as Piano Sonata in E minor D 769A also survives among them. Several sketches exist for a symphony in D major grouped under different designations apart from the early completed Third Symphony D 200. At least four independent sets of sketches for a symphonic work in that key remain extant including piano sketches of two movements from 1818 and piano sketches of all three movements from 1828. Four movements of his Seventh Symphony D 729 survive only as sketches.