Most expensive manuscript pages of music sold at auction
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The most expensive musical manuscript sold at auction is the original draft of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, which was bought for £4,546,250 ($5,661,850) – including buyer’s premium – by an anonymous bidder on 29 November 2016. The manuscript was the star lot at Sotheby’s of London’s “Music and Continental Book and Manuscripts” auction.
The manuscript was kept by the composer until his death in 1911. In 1920 his widow, Alma Mahler, gave it to the conductor Willem Mengelberg. On Mengelberg’s death in 1951, it passed to the Mengelberg foundation and was later sold to the financier Gilbert Kaplan in 1982. This was the first time it had ever been sold on the open market. It was offered for sale alongside numerous other pieces of musical history, including a sheet from one of Beethoven’s manuscripts. That lot did not sell, however, due to widespread doubts about its authenticity.
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History of Auctioneering