Hardbopjazz Posted October 13, 2005 Report Share Posted October 13, 2005 (edited) This is a real nice fine. The first thing someone want to do when they make a discovery like this, is to sell it. I'm not sure if I would want to sell it. It should be in a museum. NEW YORK (AFP) - A handwritten, working manuscript of one of Beethoven's most revolutionary works had been rediscovered after 115 years by a librarian in Pennsylvania, triggering fevered excitement among music historians. Sotheby's auction house, which will offer "Grosse Fuge" for sale in London in December, said Thursday that the 80-page score was "the longest and most important manuscript to have appeared on the market in living memory." Sotheby's experts have put an estimate on the lot of between 1.7 million and 2.6 million dollars. "This is an amazing find," said Stephen Roe, Head of Sotheby's Manuscript Department. "The manuscript was only known from a brief description in a catalogue in 1890 and it has never before been seen or described by Beethoven scholars," Roe said. "Its rediscovery will allow a complete reassessment of this extraordinary music," he added. The manuscript was uncovered in July by Heather Carbo, a librarian who was nearing the end of a huge inventory project in the archives of a theological seminary in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Carbo found the score in the very last cabinet she inspected in the basement of the library. "It was just sitting on that shelf. I was in a state of shock," Carbo told the New York Times. Written in brown and black ink, sometimes over pencil and with later annotations in red crayon, the manuscript shows the extent of Beethoven's working and reworking with some corrections so deep that the paper is rubbed right through. "The passion and struggle of Beethoven's working can be seen graphically," Sotheby's said, highlighting how the notes were written larger as the music intensified. "What this document gives us is rare insight into the imponderable process of decision making by which this most complex of quartet movements is made over into a work for piano four-hands," said Richard Kramer, a musicologist at the University of New York. Among Beethoven's last works from the period when he was deaf, "Grosse Fuge" was originally composed as the finale for a string quartet. The rediscovered manuscript is a transcribed version of the same piece for a piano duet. The manuscript was last seen at an 1890 auction in Berlin. The buyer was believed to have been William Howard Doane, a Cincinnati, Ohio, industrialist who loved composing hymns. In 1952, Doane's daughter made a gift to the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia to establish a chapel. The gift included music manuscripts including Mozart's Fantasia in C minor and Sonata in C minor, a major find 15 years later which together with other manuscripts fetched 1.7 million dollars. The manuscript was put on display at the seminary Thursday for just one afternoon. It was then scheduled to be exhibited at Sotheby's showrooms in New York and London before the auction on December 1. Edited October 13, 2005 by Hardbopjazz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Berger Posted October 13, 2005 Report Share Posted October 13, 2005 This will be a nice excuse to give El Fuge a spin. I once heard the four-hands-piano version of it and found it far less engaging than the real deal. (OTOH, I enjoyed a similar arrangement of The Rite of Spring tremendously.) Guy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7/4 Posted October 13, 2005 Report Share Posted October 13, 2005 This will be a nice excuse to give El Fuge a spin. I once heard the four-hands-piano version of it and found it far less engaging than the real deal. (OTOH, I enjoyed a similar arrangement of The Rite of Spring tremendously.) Guy ← The Rite of Spring for four hands rocks. I saw/heard a performance at Columbia U about 10 years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron S Posted October 13, 2005 Report Share Posted October 13, 2005 There was something in the Philadelphia Inquirer about this today--the seminary was going to have it on public display for just this afternoon. It would have been nice to go see it, but it didn't work out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron S Posted October 14, 2005 Report Share Posted October 14, 2005 More on this in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, here, with a couple more photos (see box on right of page). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BruceH Posted October 15, 2005 Report Share Posted October 15, 2005 This is amazing news. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alankin Posted October 15, 2005 Report Share Posted October 15, 2005 Maybe there's still hope that someone will discover those lost Buddy Bolden cylinders! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Nessa Posted October 16, 2005 Report Share Posted October 16, 2005 Maybe there's still hope that someone will discover those lost Buddy Bolden cylinders! ← I thought the 6 cylinders would ruin his rep, so I smashed 'em. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron S Posted October 16, 2005 Report Share Posted October 16, 2005 Maybe there's still hope that someone will discover those lost Buddy Bolden cylinders! ← I thought the 6 cylinders would ruin his rep, so I smashed 'em. Then you obviously are unaware of the long-lost 7th. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllenLowe Posted October 16, 2005 Report Share Posted October 16, 2005 if you look closely, you can see that there's a section he erased just before he died - that's called decomposing - Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.