Beethoven's motivations for the revision of the overture Leonore no. 2: a contextual, critical and analytical study

In this dissertation, I shall be tackling the complicated history of Beethoven’s overtures for his only opera Fidelio, specifically, the overtures Leonore no.2 and Leonore no. 3. To do this, I shall set myself a number of research questions relating to the contextual history of the overtures, the results of the analysis, and reasons and motives behind the decisions that were made in the compositional process. These research questions are established in Section 1.2., and are:

1. For what reasons might the original production of 1805, and Leonore no. 2, have been a failure?
2. What did Beethoven change when revising Leonore no. 2 into Leonore no. 3?
3. For what purpose did Beethoven make these changes?

I shall also be looking at the history of the overtures, what factors may have affected the decisions Beethoven made in writing the two works, and how the overtures relate to one another. One of the main features of this dissertation is a comparative analysis of the overtures in order to trace the compositional similarities and differences between the two overtures. I shall also be using Schenkerian analysis to view the broader harmonic structure of some sections of both overtures.