Autograph Sources

Wagner, Richard, Beethoven (Richard-Wagner-Stiftung Bayreuth, NA BII d 6–7).

B II d 6. Working Draft (Urschrift): 28 pages in Wagner's hand, numbered consecutively. Dated 7 September 1870. Draft of Foreword (unnumbered) appended and dated 11 September 1870.

B II d 7. Fair copy (Reinschrift): 54 pages in ink in Wagner's hand numbered consecutively from page 5 onward (MS). The Annexe (undated) appears to be a later addition in pencil and occupies the remaining space on page 54 and page 55.

At some point following the completion of Beethoven in September 1870, Wagner penned a strongly polemical and strident annexe in which he laments the fact that the military victories of 1870 had not been accompanied by an equivalent cultural enhancement. The draft text is appended to the fair copy in Wagner's hand (B II d 7, pp. 54–5). Presumably, Wagner then changed his mind, as it is not included in the first printed edition (1870) or in the text as included in the first collected edition of the prose works prepared under Wagner's supervision: Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, 10 vols (Leipzig: E. W. Fritzsch, 1871–73), vol. 9, pp. 77–151. It does, however, appear among miscellaneous pieces in the later collected writings: ‘Ein nicht veröffentlicher Schluβ der Schrift “Beethoven”’ (SSD, vol. 16, pp. 108–10).