Sketch (music)

A sketch page of Beethoven's Piano sonata, Opus 101. At upper left can be seen the theme that opens the final movement.

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."[1]

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),[2] 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.[citation needed]

  1. ^ Jeffrey Dean (n.d.) "Sketch", in The Oxford Companion to Music, online edition, oxfordmusiconline.com, downloaded 10 November 2017.
  2. ^ Marston n.d.