Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Autograph manuscript signed (on the viola part, 'Benjamin Britten') of his transcription for piano trio of Beethoven's 'Rondo a capriccio' op. 129, [7-9 April 1931]
Britten's youthful reverence for Beethoven: an unpublished transcription.

Autograph score for violin, viola and piano on four systems of four staves per page, 18 pages, 357 x 263mm, 'signed' as L. Van Beethoven, rehearsal numbers added in orange pencil; and separate autograph part for viola, with emendations and additions, 4 pages, 357 x 263mm; with a copyist's manuscript of the viola part of Britten's Phantasy oboe quartet op. 2 (1932), brown paper wrappers of Oxford University Press; and an unidentified manuscript for piano, undated.

Provenance:
(1) Sotheby's, 12 June 2009, lot 21.

(2) Schøyen Collection, MS 5431.

Britten was at this period a scholarship student at the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with John Ireland, although continuing his private studies with his early mentor, Frank Bridge. Britten revered Beethoven in his early years – he claimed that 'between the ages of thirteen and sixteen I knew every note of Beethoven and Brahms' – although his admiration cooled considerably in later life. The transcription of Beethoven's 'Rage over a lost penny' is recorded in the Britten Thematic Catalogue as BTC715, which provides the date. It remains apparently unpublished and unperformed.