The Hindu : Ninth Symphony on the block

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 08, 2003

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Ninth Symphony on the block

LONDON: Sotheby's London is prepared to sell a musical manuscript — the musical manuscript, one is tempted to say, given the importance of the work involved — Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In three bound volumes of 465 pages, the offering includes virtually the complete score of that symphony in manuscript. (Two fragments of the same manuscript reside in the Beethovenhaus in Bonn and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.) The hands are mainly those of two copyists, but Beethoven scribbled corrections and changes throughout. The manuscript may have been used at the work's premiere, in 1824, and it was the basis for the first printed edition, in 1826. Sotheby's estimates a sale price of $3 million to $4 million, rivalling if not exceeding the most paid for a musical manuscript, $4.34 million for nine Mozart symphonies in 1987. — AP

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