ABSTRACT
The sonata appears to have been completed by mid-1798, and Beethoven began writing out a score, but abandoned it after only two bars, and in 1801 he incorporated the leaf into the homemade sketchbook Landsberg. The Pathetique is unusual in having much preliminary material that fed into the sonata, but no known source of detailed sketching. The sketches for the embryonic sonata have been dated to late 1797 or early 1798, and may therefore have been intended for a companion to the C minor sonata. The 'Allegretto' was by no means promptly abandoned but was taken up and greatly developed in some further sketches, which are sandwiched between some for the String Trio Op. 9 No. 1 and the Clarinet Trio Op. 11. A part of the same group of sketches, however, shows figuration that is idiomatic to the violin rather than piano, with widely spaced chords suited to triple stopping on the violin, followed by rapidly repeated quaver triplets.
