Noctave
The piece
The manuscript of this bagatelle, dated 1810, is lost: Ludwig Nohl copied and published it in 1867, forty years after Beethoven's death. Who Elise was is still debated; Therese Malfatti, who may have owned the manuscript, and the singer Elisabeth Röckel have both been proposed. This easy version, arranged for Noctave after the 1888 Breitkopf & Härtel edition, keeps the whole refrain, with both of its endings, the episode in C major and the return of the refrain; the left hand plays only the bass of each arpeggio.
Everything starts from the rocking E–D-sharp, played as light sixteenths with the fifth and fourth fingers. Don't strike it: it should stay a murmur, pianissimo. The right hand's arpeggios, C–E–A and then E–G-sharp–B, climb from the thumb, placed each time on the first note. The left hand's held basses, A, E and C, fall on the downbeat, together with the right-hand note. In the middle, the E–D-sharp trill is written out in sixteenths: steady, never rushed.