Sketch (music): History and Key Facts

In music, a sketch is an informal document prepared by a composer to assist in the process of composition.

Sketches may range greatly in scope and detail, from the smallest snippets to full drafts; concerning Ludwig van Beethoven's sketchbooks, for instance, Dean writes that they "include every imaginable state between unaccompanied melodic motifs of a few notes to thoroughly worked-out full scores; even his fair copies of essentially 'finished' works show the signs of continuing composition."

Whether a composer's sketches survive past their lifetime depends on the composer's own practice and partly on posterity. Some composers habitually discarded their sketches when a composition was completed (for instance, Johannes Brahms), while others kept their sketches; sometimes in great numbers, as in the case of Beethoven. Mozart kept a great many sketches, but some were given away to friends as keepsakes following his death, and lost.

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