Für Elise

One of Beethoven’s Most Familiar Melodies

Für Elise, WoO 59, is one of Beethoven’s most widely recognized piano pieces.

Even those who may not know the title are likely to recognize its famous opening, with its delicate alternation between E and D-sharp. Today, the piece is familiar far beyond the world of classical music and has also become a standard part of the repertoire for generations of piano students.

The work is a bagatelle in A minor — a relatively short piano piece. Its gentle and instantly recognizable main theme returns several times, but between these appearances are contrasting episodes with very different characters. Some passages are light and flowing, while others become much more dramatic, with rapid movement and forceful repeated bass notes.

As a result, the complete piece offers far more variety than its famous opening alone might suggest.

A Piece Beethoven Never Published

Beethoven wrote Für Elise in April 1810, but despite its enormous popularity today, the piece was never published during his lifetime.

It did not appear in print until 1867, around forty years after Beethoven’s death, when the German scholar Ludwig Nohl published an edition after claiming to have seen Beethoven’s original autograph manuscript.

That manuscript subsequently disappeared and has never been recovered. The surviving material in Beethoven’s own hand consists of sketches, meaning that the version of Für Elise familiar to us today has largely been transmitted through Nohl’s nineteenth-century edition.

There is another intriguing detail in the work’s history. Surviving sketches show that Beethoven returned to the piece around 1822, roughly twelve years after its original composition. At the time, he was reviewing several smaller piano works and considering them for publication. He revised material from Für Elise as part of that process, yet the piece was ultimately never published under his supervision.

Who Was “Elise”?

Perhaps the most famous mystery surrounding the piece is surprisingly simple:

No one knows for certain who “Elise” actually was.

When Ludwig Nohl published the piece in 1867, he reported that the lost manuscript carried the dedication Für Elise. Because the manuscript itself has disappeared, however, this can no longer be verified.

One of the best-known theories connects the piece with Therese Malfatti, a woman with whom Beethoven was closely associated in 1810 and whom he apparently considered marrying. The lost manuscript was also connected with material that had belonged to Malfatti.

This has led to the long-standing suggestion that Nohl may have misread Beethoven’s notoriously difficult handwriting, interpreting Für Therese as Für Elise. The theory is plausible, but it has never been conclusively proven, and other possible identities for “Elise” have also been proposed.

It is a fascinating irony that one of the most familiar titles in all of classical music may itself have originated from a mystery that can no longer be solved.

About This Classical Guitar Arrangement

This arrangement presents the complete work for solo classical guitar, without cuts, rather than arranging only the famous opening theme.

Although the opening melody is by far the best-known part of Für Elise, the contrasting episodes that follow are an important part of the character of the complete piece.

By including the work in its entirety, this arrangement allows the listener and performer to experience the contrast between the delicate recurring theme and the more animated and dramatic passages that appear between its returns.