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I
Introduction
Until the 1980s, Beethoven's Tenth Symphony was regarded as an elusive, legendary work that many did not believe had ever existed except, perhaps, inside Beethoven's head, and no sketches had been identified with any certainty as belonging to it. Two recent articles, however, have proved conclusively that a significant number of his sketches from the period 1822-25 were intended for the symphony.1 These discoveries have created the possibility of producing a performing version of at least one movement, if not the whole work, after the manner of recent compositions of such works as Berg's Lulu, Mahler's Tenth Symphony, and three unfinished symphonies by Schubert. Completing the whole of Beethoven's Tenth would be much more complicated and difficult than any of these works, for far less material survives altogether and what does exist is very fragmentary; no fragment contains more than about thirty measures of continuous music and there are only occasional indications about orchestration. But it is now clear that it is possible to complete at least the first movement without wandering too far into the realms of fantasy.
How useful it is to complete an unfinished work depends on several factors. First, how near is it to completion already? How accurately can the missing material be guessed? Did the composer himself intend to complete the work? How significant is it historically? And what is the quality of the surviving material?
In the case of the Tenth Symphony Beethoven definitely intended to finish it, for he indicated as much in a letter written only eight days before his death (Anderson no. 1566)2; it is also undoubtedly of great historical importance in view of the success of the other nine; and the quality of the sketches is extremely good. Moreover, although he was a long way from finishing the work (and his late style is very hard to imitate), a close examination of the sketches reveals that there is enough basic motivic material to fill a complete first movement, if it is developed along the lines Beethoven habitually adopted. Thus with sufficient knowledge of his customary composing methods and his musical style, both of which to a certain extent follow a regular pattern, it is possible to realize a first movement fairly close...