Who Was Für Elise Written For? The Mystery Behind Beethoven's Famous Piano Piece

Q: What does the music actually do?

Für Elise is a short rondo in A minor in 3/8 time, with the shape A–B–A–C–A: the famous theme keeps coming back between two contrasting episodes. The theme is marked Poco moto , "a little motion", a marking that appears nowhere else in Beethoven's works. It opens with an unaccompanied rocking between E and D-sharp, one of the most recognizable openings in classical music. The first episode moves into a brighter F major, and the second stays over a repeated low A, sounding stormier, before the familiar theme returns one last time. Many learners only know the opening section, so the middle episodes can come as a surprise. They are where the piece becomes harder, with fast runs and repeated chords.

Nobody knows for sure who Beethoven's Elise was. The three main candidates, how the piece was found 40 years after his death, and why it is everywhere.

Nobody knows for certain who "Elise" was. Für Elise, Beethoven's Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, was not published in his lifetime; it was found and printed about 40 years after his death, and the original manuscript with the dedication is lost. Researchers have suggested three women: Therese Malfatti, Elisabeth Röckel and Elise Barensfeld. Each theory has some evidence and none has proof, which is part of why this little piano piece has such a big story.

How the piece was found

The music was published in 1867 by the scholar Ludwig Nohl, who included it in a book called Neue Briefe Beethovens ("New Letters by Beethoven"), printed in Stuttgart. Nohl said the autograph manuscript he copied carried the words "Für Elise am 27 April zur Erinnerung von L. v. Bthvn", meaning "For Elise on 27 April, as a remembrance, from L. v. Beethoven". The year 1810 is usually added in brackets. That manuscript has since disappeared, so we cannot check his reading.

The version everyone plays today is the one Nohl transcribed. Beethoven came back to the piece in 1822 and made a revised version with very different accompaniment, which the scholar Barry Cooper later transcribed from a manuscript; it seems Beethoven meant to add it to a set of bagatelles, short light pieces. The pianist and musicologist Luca Chiantore has even argued that the signed manuscript Nohl described might never have existed and that Beethoven may not have given the piece the exact form we know. Cooper, on the other hand, wrote that one of two surviving sketches closely resembles the published version.

Candidate 1: Therese Malfatti

The oldest theory comes from the musicologist Max Unger. He suggested that Nohl misread the title, and that it really said "Für Therese", for Therese Malfatti, a friend and pupil of Beethoven to whom he supposedly proposed marriage in 1810. She later married an Austrian nobleman, Wilhelm von Droßdik, in 1816. The theory is attractive because Beethoven's handwriting was famously messy; the music teacher Robert Greenberg has said that it could easily have led anyone to read "Therese" as "Elise".

There is also a trail of ownership. The musicologist Michael Lorenz showed that Rudolf Schachner, who inherited Therese's music scores in 1851, was the son of a woman named Babette Bredl, and in 1865 Bredl let Nohl copy the autograph she owned. So the manuscript may well have come from Therese's papers, whoever "Elise" was.

Candidate 2: Elisabeth Röckel

In 2010 the scholar Klaus Martin Kopitz argued that the piece was written for Elisabeth Röckel, a 17-year-old German soprano and the younger sister of a singer who had performed in Beethoven's opera Fidelio. A parish priest called her "Elise", she had been Beethoven's friend since 1808, and according to Kopitz he may have wanted to marry her. In April 1810, the very month of the dedication, she took a job at the theatre in Bamberg; in 1813 she married Beethoven's friend, the composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Kopitz later found a letter from 1830 in which her friend, the singer Anna Milder-Hauptmann, also called her "Elise".

Candidate 3: Elise Barensfeld

In 2014 the Canadian musicologist Rita Steblin proposed Elise Barensfeld, a girl from Regensburg who was treated as a child prodigy. She toured with Beethoven's friend Johann Nepomuk Mälzel and studied singing in Vienna with Antonio Salieri. Steblin's idea is that Beethoven wrote the piece for the 13-year-old as a favour to Therese Malfatti, who lived opposite and may have taught her piano. Steblin herself calls the hypothesis uncertain.

A hidden name in the notes?

One playful finding links the name to the music itself. The German organ scholar Johannes Quack noticed that the letters of "Elise" can be read as the first notes of the piece. In German the note E-flat is called "Es", pronounced like the letter S, so E–(L)–(I)–S–E becomes E–E-flat–E, which on the piano sounds the same as the written opening E–D-sharp–E. It is a clever idea, though of course it cannot tell us which Elise was meant.

What does the music actually do?

Für Elise is a short rondo in A minor in 3/8 time, with the shape A–B–A–C–A: the famous theme keeps coming back between two contrasting episodes. The theme is marked Poco moto, "a little motion", a marking that appears nowhere else in Beethoven's works. It opens with an unaccompanied rocking between E and D-sharp, one of the most recognizable openings in classical music. The first episode moves into a brighter F major, and the second stays over a repeated low A, sounding stormier, before the familiar theme returns one last time.

Many learners only know the opening section, so the middle episodes can come as a surprise. They are where the piece becomes harder, with fast runs and repeated chords.

Why is it everywhere?

The piece is of intermediate difficulty; the Royal Conservatory of Music grades it at level 7 out of 10. Its tune turns up in children's toys, and in the early 2000s it became one of the most common mobile phone ringtones. In Taiwan it is one of two melodies played by garbage trucks to tell residents they are coming, and in Sri Lanka it announces the tuk-tuks that sell bread.

The writer Mina Yang suggests a reason: the first eight bars work with a very small range of sounds, the first four bars are neatly answered by the next four, and the whole phrase can loop forever, which makes it perfect for music boxes and ringtones. A short private gift, perhaps for a woman whose name we may never know, became one of the most played pieces of music in the world.

Learn with Für Elise: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
an open question	something not yet decided	Elise's identity is still an open question.
to ring a bell	to sound familiar	The opening notes always ring a bell.
to read too much into something	to find meaning that isn't there	Don't read too much into one letter.
a labour of love	work done for pleasure, not money	Copying old scores was a labour of love.
catchy	easy to remember	The tune is short and catchy.

Try this: Write three sentences about a song that "rings a bell" for you, using "catchy" and "an open question".