Beethoven Manuscript Auctioned for $2M
   By ROBERT BARR, Associated Press Writer
   http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031205/ap_en_mu/britain_beethoven

   LONDON - An original manuscript of a movement from one of Ludwig
   van Beethoven's last compositions sold Friday for more than $2
   million.

   The manuscript from the scherzo movement of his Opus 127 string
   quartet was purchased by a private buyer who bid by telephone
   and asked not to be identified, Sotheby's auction house said.

   Beethoven composed the quartet in the last three years of his
   life, after he had finished the epic Ninth Symphony.  Sotheby's
   said single pages written by Beethoven appear fairly often at
   auction, but that no manuscript of this size had been offered
   for more than a decade.

   The manuscript sold for $2.03 million, Sotheby's said.  Before
   the sale, the auction house suggested the price might go as high
   as $2.58 million.

   In May, Sotheby's auctioned Beethoven's final manuscript of the
   Ninth Symphony for $3.47 million.  The manuscript was done by a
   copyist, though it included revisions and a few insults addressed
   to the copyist in Beethoven's hand.

   The scherzo manuscript of the quartet is clearly a working
   document, with smudges, parts crossed out and late alterations
   added.

   Prince Galitzin of Russia, who played cello, commissioned Beethoven
   to write three quartets in 1822, but the composer was inspired
   to produce five.

   Opus 127, in E flat, was the first of the group, composed in
   1824-25.  It also was the only one that Galitzin paid for -
   Beethoven never got the payment for the others.

   After Beethoven died in 1827, movements from the original score
   of the quartet were given to various people.

   The scherzo was once owned by the mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot
   (1821-1910), who was also a composer, and her stamp is on the
   first and last leaves of the manuscript, Sotheby's said.

   The Swedish collector Rudolf Nydahl bought it from a dealer
   in Paris in 1925.  After he died in 1973, the Nydahl collection
   went to the Stiftelsen Musikkulterens Framjaende (the Foundation
   for the Advancement of Music Culture) in Stockholm.

   "The reason for the sale is to secure the future care and
   availability of the rest of the collection," the foundation said
   when it announced the sale in October.

On the Net:
Sotheby's catalogue, http://search.sothebys.com/jsps/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id4522W

-Neb Rodgers <[log in to unmask]>