Ever since the earliest methods of notating music were devised, composers and scribes have written out music by hand. First on vellum in the medieval period, and then on paper.
Even once printing was invented, printing music was expensive, time-consuming and complex. Copying out music by hand could be done relatively cheaply and quickly, especially when a few copies only of a particular composition were needed. So the handwritten manuscript exists and is highly collectable.
Three types of such manuscripts are still circulating now and again at auctions. Firstly ‘fair copy’ manuscripts/ ‘autograph music manuscripts’ -scores written out by the composers themselves. It’s the signature/autograph on them that make them quite so desirable. They are often quite messy, with crossing out and scribbles on the sides. An insight into the mind and personality of the composer!
There will be a final ‘file’or ‘tidy’ version too, suitable for use by the scribe.
Finally these scribes would have had to copy out the individual parts needed by each of the players. Music copyists usually worked closely with the composer, who would supervise their work, check it for errors and sometimes make corrections ; again its the handwriting and scribbles that make these desirable.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the greatest amount a single-page musical manuscript has been sold for is £;1,326,650 million. Paid by an anonymous telephone bidder at Sotheby’s, London, UK on 17 May 2002 for the earliest draft of Ludwig van Beethoven‘s (1770-1827) Ninth Symphony. If the composer is great enough and the work important enough — and we can absolutely say that about Beethoven, – the manuscript doesn’t even have to be written by him. In this case the manuscript was written out by a copyist and corrected by the composer. Apparently there was a long four telephone bidders battle for it on the day!
An original, handwritten score by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was sold for €372,500 (£318,400) at an auction in Paris in 2019. The score was from back in 1792 when Mozart was just 16.
A rare original score of Johann Sebastian Bach, likely written between 1740 and 1745, was sold in 2016 by Christie’s Auction House, in London – for £2687965.50 (US $3.3 Million).
The ‘Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat Major’ for Harpsichord and/or Lutenists had been previously owned since 1969 by a private collector.
Sotheby’s say their record is held by a complete musical work: Mahler‘s Second Symphony, which realised a price of £4.5m ($5.6m) on 29 November 2016.
The Auction house experts now reckon only about 10% of famous and valuable pieces of similar music are in private collections, with the majority now being held by museums and musical venues, enabling the general public to see such astounding pieces of history.
So, now go carefully check your attics and cellars for any sheet music- just incase!
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