LIVme sonate / composée pour pianoforte et dediée à Monsieur le Comte François de Brunsvik par Louis van Beethoven. Op. 57 [Appassionata]

Vienna: Au Bureau des arts et d'industrie. [1807]. First Edition. Oblong folio. Title; 2 - 25 pp. Engraved throughout. [PN]521. Price of 2 f -30. Scattered spotting particularly to the first three and final two leaves, outer edges toned, overall a fine and wide-margined copy of this exceedingly rare score.  Kinsky-Halm, pp. 135; Hirsch IV, 297. Leicher-Olbrich p. 17. 

Perhaps the rarest of all the Beethoven piano sonatas, we have traced only one copy at auction in over 50 years of records. 

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 (colloquially known as the Appassionata) is among the three famous piano sonatas of his middle period (the others being the Waldstein, Op. 53 and Les Adieux, Op. 81a).  Composed during 1804 and 1805, and perhaps 1806, it was dedicated to Count Franz von Brunswick and the present first edition was published in February 1807 in Vienna. Unlike the early Sonata No. 8, Pathétique, the Appassionata was not named during the composer's lifetime, but was so labelled in 1838 by the publisher of a four-hand arrangement of the work. The numbering on the title page "LIVme Sonata" (like that of the first edition of the op. 54 sonata as "LIme Sonate") has been puzzling the musical world for over two centuries, with no satisfactory explanation having been offered thus far.  (15671)

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