A manuscript of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony,
scheduled to be auctioned by Sotheby's in London
next month with an estimated sale price of $3 million to $4 million,
may have been used at the premiere of the work in May 1824.
Posted on 04/07/2003 6:58:40 PM PDT by Pharmboy
A manuscript of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony,
scheduled to be auctioned by Sotheby's in London
next month with an estimated sale price of $3 million to $4 million,
may have been used at the premiere of the work in May 1824.
Sotheby's London is prepared to sell a musical manuscript — the musical manuscript, one is tempted to say, given the few items that are likely to become available nowadays and 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 Bibliothèque 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.
"It's probably the most important complete Beethoven manuscript put on the block in a very long time," said Robert S. Winter, a Beethoven scholar well versed in his manuscripts and sketchbooks. "It's hard to overstate its importance."
Mr. Winter compared this sale to those of complete Beethoven sketchbooks before World War II.
For the auction, on May 22 in London, Sotheby's will include in the same lot 110 unbound sheets of individual parts — for vocal soloists, chorus and trombones. Sotheby's estimates a sale price of $3 million to $4 million, rivaling if not exceeding the most paid for a musical manuscript, $4.34 million for nine Mozart symphonies in 1987.
Sotheby's, through spokesmen, would not identify the seller, stating only that it is working on behalf of a foundation. Specialists in the field confirm that the manuscript is in the archive of the publisher Schott Musik International of Mainz, Germany, where Jonathan Del Mar said it was in the 1997 critical commentary to his authoritative edition of the work.
The Sotheby's spokesmen would not discuss why Schott might be selling the work. Nor could Schott be reached for comment yesterday.
Beethoven specialists can only hope that if the manuscript is bought by an individual or a private foundation, it will remain available to scholars.
"Collectors are usually not very nuanced people," Mr. Winter said. "Either they will make something they own available or they will lock it up in a closet."
Maynard Solomon, the author of an acclaimed Beethoven biography and a member of the editorial board for a collected edition of Beethoven's letters, described the impediments that can arise.
"It is tragic to find letters in the hands of owners who will not make them available," he said. "It will take generations more before the edition can finally be complete."
The manuscript's importance stems from the Ninth's central position in the literature and mythology of Western classical music. The work's premiere, on May 7, 1824, is one of the historic occasions documented in the book "First Nights: Five Musical Premieres" by Thomas Forrest Kelly (Yale University Press, 2000). It was essentially conducted by committee, with Beethoven setting the tempos and Michael Umlauf, a violinist and composer, doing most of the rest.
The acclaim gave rise to an anecdote no less poignant for being familiar. At one point — whether at the end of the boisterous Scherzo, as some accounts have it, or at the end of the work — Caroline Unger, the contralto soloist, had to direct the deaf Beethoven's attention to the uproar behind him so that he could acknowledge the ovation.
The symphony's fame has been as lasting as it was immediate. With the work's inchoate beginning, its monumental scale and its introduction of a chorus in the finale, it did much to reshape the symphony. Or rather, to unshape it, opening the door to the endless new possibilities explored by Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and even, in his symphonically charged operas, Wagner.
With its aggrandizement of Schiller's "Ode to Joy" it instilled aspiration and idealism as root elements of the nascent Romantic sensibility. It remains a centerpiece of the repertory and has become a commodity, symbolically useful in the West as a call to international brotherhood and, yes, exportable around the world: the ode is now the European anthem, and the symphony has become a totem in Asia, especially Japan.
Back near the origin of that big bang was the manuscript now up for sale. Mr. Del Mar, in his critical commentary, wrote that the manuscript dates from the first quarter of 1824.
It is chiefly the work of two copyists, who had replaced Beethoven's valued Wenzel Schlemmer after his death in 1823. They worked from Beethoven's manuscript, which is now in the Berlin State Library.
On several pages Beethoven expresses displeasure with their work. "Du verfluchter Kerl" ("You damned fool"), he writes once, forgetting brotherhood for the moment.
In addition to the many corrections and changes of expressive markings (crescendos, diminuendos, slurs and the like) in Beethoven's hand, there are passages reworked on separate sheets and entirely new pages sewn in or pasted in with sealing wax.
In all six copyists appear to have taken part in addition to Beethoven himself. With so many hands involved, let alone those of the engravers of the first printed edition, it is anyone's guess who may have been responsible for the odd coffee stain (but don't bet against the notoriously untidy Beethoven).
Mr. Winter, the expert in Beethoven manuscripts and sketchbooks, said that unlike the sketchbooks, the manuscript on sale, so much the work of other hands, "is not a manuscript that has the story of a life in it."
"Still, purely as a document of Beethoven's work," he added, "there is probably nothing more significant."
The manuscript is to be shown at Sotheby's in New York in early May.
The record price for a Beethoven manuscript was established last year, when Sotheby's London sold an autograph sketch leaf for the Ninth Symphony for $1.93 million. Perhaps the same well-heeled buyer will want the whole work. How badly remains to be seen.
"Joy, bright spark of Divinity, daughter of the Heavens."
The opening line of Schiller's "Ode to Joy," transformed by Ludwig von Beethoven into the most sublime piece of choral music ever written on Earth.
The sound of God thinking aloud.
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