Beethoven's Conversation Books, Volume 1: Nos. 1 to 8 (Februar y 1818 to March 1820) transed. by Theodore Albrecht (review)

Beethoven's conversation books are a direct result of his increasing deafness, which had become so bad by 1818 that he began acquiring notebooks for his friends to use when addressing him, and from 1820 the books became a regular feature of his life. Most of his replies were oral, but he sometimes added comments in the books, as well as writing shopping lists, copying newspaper advertisements, or even making short sketches for works being composed. Altogether 139 books survive, which were painstakingly transcribed and extensively annotated by a German team led by Karl-Heinz Köhler (eleven volumes [Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1968-2001]). That edition, which followed a couple of aborted earlier attempts, has until now been available only in German, although a few short extracts from the original books have appeared in English from time to time.

The task of preparing a complete English translation of the German edition is one that several scholars have shied away from, or at best offered to translate only selections. Thus, Theodore Albrecht is to be warmly commended for taking on such a massive project almost single-handedly. He has, of course, consulted numerous other scholars, whose names duly appear in his Acknowledgements, but he has had overall responsibility for every word in the translations and commentary. He has also revised and amplified the original annotations very considerably, so that the English edition is projected to occupy twelve rather than eleven volumes, with Volume 1 containing only eight books whereas the German one has ten. When Albrecht wrote his General Introduction in 2015, it was expected that the first three volumes would be published together, but in fact Volume 1 has come out on its own.

The new edition provides a useful introduction that describes the books, their context, and how to approach the English text. Albrecht explains here that reports that there were originally about 400 books are based on a misunderstanding. There are substantial gaps between those that survive, however. The main reason is probably the loss of a large number of them, including all those from 1821, in November 1822 during one of Beethoven's many changes of residence. Albrecht has calculated that, had all books survived, there would have been around 300.

The layout of the entries is a significant improvement on the German edition, with the annotations now being helpfully placed as footnotes on the relevant page instead of endnotes at the back. Most usefully, a running head appears on each page, giving book number with dates of use of the book, and folio number of the first entry on the page (though not the date of the actual entry, for which one has to search in the main text). The most conspicuous innovation, however, is the manner in which Albrecht, by reading between the lines, has often been able to work out the precise date, likely place, and even the approximate time of day when particular entries were made. Thus, each group of entries is headed by a likely location and date, such as "probably at Beethoven's apartment on the Glacis; probably late morning or early afternoon, Thursday, December 16" (p. 139). Each group is thereby separated from the next group, whereas in the German edition, as in the original books, all the entries run consecutively. The German edition does, however, give the main evidence for dating each sketchbook, in a list given at the beginning of the relevant book. This useful overview of the dates is unfortunately omitted here, though it is partially compensated by the detailed datings mentioned above. An extensive bibliography is included, but some relevant literature that throws light on particular conversations has been omitted, and greater comprehensiveness in subsequent volumes would be welcome.

The editorial annotations in the German edition give brief biographical...