Gazette Drouot - C apencheres

THE MAGAZINE AUCTION RESULTS
Handwritten sheet manuscript by Beethoven
Totalling €3,327,655 (79.3% in lots – 93.4% in
value), the sale of the André Meyer Collection
will be remembered as the biggest sale
of printed music in over a century. It is
worth noting that this sale consisted of the
collection inherited by one of Meyer’s two sons. This
amateur, who died in 1974, had amassed one of the
most complete musical collections of modern times. A
large part of this collection is housed at the Bibliothèque
nationale de France. In addition to the aforementioned
result for the sale of a handwritten manuscript by Beethoven
which had never before been presented at
auction (illustration), two world records were also
broken. The first, which sold for €240,750, concerns a
manuscript by Schoenberg, consisting of 27 pages of
his second string quartet, Opus 10, prepared by the
composer for his wife, Mathilde, to whom this work is
dedicated. The manuscript also includes the first atonal
pages by the composer, an innovation that would have
a profound effect on the development of music in the
USEFUL INFO
Where ? Paris - Galerie Charpentier
When ? 16, 17 October
Who ? Sotheby's France
How much ? €3,327,655
84 GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL I N° 19
€252,750 Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827),
Handwritten sheet manuscript of exercises and drafts
for piano compositions 2 pages, in-folio oblong, 22 x 31 cm,
formerly belonging to Frédéric Chopin.
HD
20th century.The quartet was composed in Vienna
between March 1907 and April 1908. The manuscript
bears a lengthy inscription to the Seybert family, dated
October 1923. This family had put up the composer and
his children in the weeks prior to his wife’s death. The
manuscript was sold to a European collector. The
second world record, €228,750, went to a printed score,
one of six known copies of the complete first edition
(Leipzig, 1731) of the Partitas, BWV825-830, a set of six
Harpischord suites by Johann Sebastien Bach. Each of
these partitas was published separately from 1725 on
but none of these original editions has survived. In 1731,
Bach combined them in a single volume, the “Clavier-
Ubung I”. Our copy was bought by the Musée des
lettres et manuscrits. Sylvain Alliod