Beethoven Ninth For Sale

Sotheby’s is selling a manuscript of 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.”