There are probably very few piano students who have not tried their hand at this piece; it is undeniably one of the most popular classical piano pieces today. And yet unanswered questions still remain. They not only concern details in the musical text but also its famous nickname: Is “Elise”, the reading in the dedication in the autograph, even actually correct? Or should it read “Therese”? And whom might Beethoven have actually meant? The most recent findings with regard to these questions are documented in our Henle Urtext edition. The revised musical text is now being published in advance of the long-awaited volume “Piano Pieces” in the Complete Edition, prepared by the Beethoven scholar Joanna Cobb Biermann.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French