Bagatelle in a minor WoO 59 (Für Elise)

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 musicaltext 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 questionsare 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.