Beethoven dated the last page on Christmas Day 1821, in Vienna, and sent the manuscript to Berlin a fortnight later. What left his desk — today Mus.ms.autogr. Beethoven, L. v., Artaria 196 in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin — was the complete autograph of the Piano Sonata in A‑flat major, Op. 110, the penultimate of his thirty‑two sonatas.
A Trilogy Promised to Adolph Martin Schlesinger
The sonata belongs to a group of three, Opp. 109, 110 and 111, offered together to the Berlin publisher Schlesinger. Beethoven had taken the commission in 1820 but was slow to deliver; illness cost him the summer of 1821, and work on Op. 110 ran alongside the Missa solemnis, whose sketches share the pages of the same sketchbook.
A Fair Copy That Refused to Stay Finished
The manuscript is a fair copy and a working copy at once. Beethoven wrote it out as a clean text, then kept intervening, above all in the finale, where a slow lament and a fugue are bound into a single movement. The date at the end records a moment of completion that the revisions of early 1822 went on to unsettle.
The Source Behind the Printed Sonata
Written to serve as the engraver’s copy, these pages carry the version the first edition would follow. They stand close to the printed sonata of 1822, and closer still to the hesitation that preceded it.
A date in ink, then second thoughts: the manuscript keeps both, and refuses to let the work look inevitable.
We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Piano Sonata No. 31 in A‑flat Major, Op. 110 by Ludwig van Beethoven": Klaviersonate As-Dur Opus 110. Ludwig van Beethoven facsimile edition, published by Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1967
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