Für Elise, Bagatelle WoO 59

The Anacrouse collection offers pianists, beginners and advanced alike, a wide choice of classical works from the Renaissance to the present day. It brings together major works of the repertoire as well as rarer pieces, and also offers transcriptions for piano solo or four hands, selected for their musical and educational interest. Each score, available individually, benefits from careful editorial work: a rigorously established musical text, clear and legible engraving, accompanied by a short biography of the composer and a note on the work.

The “Bagatelle in A minor, WoO 59”, universally known as “Für Elise”, is without doubt the most famous piece in the piano repertoire. Beyond its iconic theme, it offers complete pedagogical interest: work on legato and broken arpeggios in the first section, and the study of dramatic contrasts and velocity in its more demanding central episodes.

Although composed by Ludwig van Beethoven around 1810, this score was only discovered and published in 1867, forty years after his death. The mystery of its dedicatee remains: it is now highly probable that a transcription error from the original manuscript, with its difficult handwriting, turned the name “Therese” (Malfatti), a woman the composer was in love with, into “Elise”.