An interesting article on Beethoven's possibly final composition for the piano:

http://www.pianostreet.com/blog/piano-news...-in-berlin-352/

Oh dear, I knew Herr Beethoven had poor penmanship, but I didn't expect it to be THAT POOR...
Would he even understand his own handwriting a few years after putting a manuscript aside? Sometimes I don't even recognise my own handwriting from years ago...

Maybe I'll go try out the short piece

Seems to me more like his first piano piece than his last !

Looks like my doctor's handwriting!!!!

I may be cynical - but I'm very doubtful that anybody can interpret that scrawl reliably.

I believe Panthera started a thread about a newly found piece by Beethoven a while ago.

Well done to anyone who can decipher his scrawl...although in his defence, his father took him out of formal schooling at the age of ten to become a "prodigy" á la Mozart. Beethoven never had formal schooling again. And he was always in a hurry to jot down his ideas as they came to him.

I agree with F#m..looks like an early sketch to me...

My partner has a notebook in which all his composition/songwriting ideas get scribbled down. Sadly it doesn't include manuscript paper...

You can imagine the situation when we try and figure out weeks later what he was getting at! I imagine Beethoven was much the same.

I guess we can't really blame Mr Beethoven... His traumatic life, his unbelievable passion for music. There was just no time for good penmanship.

I looked back at my scribblings on software design. Boy, are they as good as my doctor's handwriting!