Seemingly more light-weight than its sister work, the Seventh Symphony, and often overshadowed by the Ninth, “the Eighth Symphony, which gambles with expectations” (Peter Gülke) reflects musically on its own formal models—subtly, self-ironically, and with such artistry that Beethoven did not compose another symphony for nearly ten years thereafter.

In his Introduction, Peter Gülke explains which listener expectations Beethoven breaks with here and unravels the inner logic of the musical development. Drawing on selected passages from the manuscript, he and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen also demonstrate how Beethoven worked and notated, and what interpretive questions emerge from these practices. Martina Rebmann traces the manuscript’s journey from Beethoven’s possession to its place in the collection of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

Beethoven wrote the four movements alternately on portrait and landscape-format paper. The facsimile, printed in high-quality four-colour, reproduces the autograph in its original size. The inclusion of movement and folio numbers, as well as the measures shown on each page, facilitates the search for specific passages in the work.

Facsimile: Sinfonie No. 8 op. 93
I. Allegro vivace e con brio
II. Allegretto scherzando
III. Tempo di Menuetto
IV. Allegro vivace

Kommentar = Commentary
Bei der Lektüre von Handschriften = Reading Manuscripts
Uraufführung und Rezeption = Premiere and Reception
Konzeption und Erwartungen = Concept and Expectations
Tempi: Beethoven und das Metronom = Tempi: Beethoven and the Metronome
Das Autograph: Arbeitsprozess und Notationsweisen = The Autograph: Compositional Process and Notation
Nachwort = Postscript
Zur Geschichte der Beethoven-Sammlung in Berlin = On the History of the Beethoven Collection in Berlin