ABSTRACT
In the cadenza Beethoven dissociates himself from a work, indeed from a style, to which he could no longer subscribe. If the cadenzas do date from roughly 1809, it is worth noting that they were written at a time when Beethoven had begun to take seriously his commitment to the instruction of the Archduke. In Mozartean cadenza, the tonal spectrum is more exclusive still: B major is an implausible key, and a misplaced locus for any of the principal themes, which in Mozart's cadenzas are relegated to the tonic alone. The estimable Franz Kullak, whose sense for textual integrity and whose profound knowledge of the Beethoven concertos was probably unequaled in the late nineteenth century, tucked the cadenzas away in an Anhang to his edition of the Concerto, favoring cadenzas by Johann Nepomuk Hummel in the text proper.
