Play It Again, and Again

The trade in music manuscripts is usually tranquil, but many specimens of inestimable value are going under the hammer.

From an article in the Financial Times...

Every so often the usually tranquil trade in music manuscripts is rocked by a remarkable event, and the sale of the André Meyer collection in Paris on October 16-17 will be one such. In Dr Roe’s view, this is the most important private collection of musical manuscripts and early printed scores in Europe. It was compiled as a labour of love by the Paris-based textile magnate André Meyer (1884-1974), who generously opened it to researchers; Rostropovich worked there on Debussy’s early albums, and it was there that Stravinsky joyfully rediscovered one of his manuscripts for The Rite of Spring. Since Meyer’s death it has been locked from view.

Among the treasures now going under the hammer is the libretto for Monteverdi’s lost opera Ariana, the first collected edition of Bach’s keyboard partitas, a first edition of Rameau’s Traité de l’Harmonie with the composer’s annotations, and a signed autograph manuscript of Schoenberg’s Opus 10 string quartet. And something to set the pulse racing: an unpublished page of piano exercises by Beethoven, with a sketch for a major composition – which neither Roe nor anyone else can identify – on the reverse. It was bought by a collector after Beethoven’s death, then presented as a gift to Chopin when he visited Vienna in 1830: it may comfortably exceed its estimate of €100,000- €150,000.

To scholars, an untampered-with manuscript is of inestimable value, being a unique indicator of a composer’s intentions. This is why the dismemberment (for commercial reasons) of Beethoven’s sketchbooks after his death was such a disaster, and why Roe and his colleagues are so opposed to the well-meaning but misguided “restorations” which some of the biggest libraries have carried out.