Beethoven | Violin Romances in G major Op.40 and F major Op.50 |+Piano

Description

Not until the latter half of the eighteenth century did it become customary to use the term “romance” as a title for pieces of purely instrumental music. The earliest instance occurred in France, where F. J. Gossec, for the first time, referred to the slow movement of his Symphony op. 5, no. 2, of 1761–2 as a romance. In Vienna, the first composer to use the term was probably Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, who applied it to the slow movement of his Symphony, op. 7, no. 1, of 1773. Later Haydn adopted it for his Symphony no. 85 and Mozart for his d-minor Piano Concerto (K. 466) and “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” (K. 525). The feature common to all these movements is a distinctively songlike quality. IV Apart from that, the term was not firmly associated with any particular genre or form. Beethoven may have turned to the term Romanze for his opp. 40 and 50 because no other title was at hand, the two works being, after all, isolated pieces without predecessors (his Romance cantabile for piano, flute, bassoon and orchestra of 1792–3 was destined to remain incomplete). The autograph manuscript of op. 40 (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn) is headed Romanze per il violino, that of op. 50 (Library of Congress, Washington) simply Romance. Both first editions preferred the French spelling. Little is known about the circumstances that gave rise to the two romances. An entry in conversation book no. 109, dated April 23rd, 1826, suggests that Beethoven wrote them for the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh (“He will play one of the romances that you wrote for him”).

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