Sometimes Beethoven would include little pieces of music in his letters to friends, like a singing telegram but without any actual singing. These curiosities are known as “musical jokes,” and they are generally regarded as the least important music that Beethoven composed.
One of Beethoven’s musical jokes is a short 3-part canon originally catalogued as Hess 276 but recently also catalogued as WoO 221. It is known only through a fragment in one of Beethoven’s sketch books.
The WoO 221 canon consists of a little message to Beethoven’s friend Nikolaus Zmeskall, who was known as the Musical Count: “Count, I come to ask how you are, whether you slept really well and had pleasant dreams, and if nothing distressing happened to you.”
Beethoven’s musical jokes were intended only for viewing and not for performing. It is likely that most of Beethoven’s musical jokes were not performed until record companies decided to record even the most obscure and bizarre of Beethoven’s music.
#Beethoven250 Day 92
Canon “Herr Graf, ich komme zu fragen” (WoO 221), 1797?
A one-minute three-part canon that basically asks “How are you doing this morning?”