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Beethoven's ninth fetches $3.43m
LONDON, England -- The final working manuscript for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony fetched a staggering £2.1 million ($3.43 million) at a UK auction house Thursday. The handwritten manuscript -- drafted by the German composer and containing his own scribbles in the margins -- went on sale at Sotheby's auction house in London. A private buyer bid £1.9 million over the phone for the manuscript -- thought to contain unpublished music not included in the first published manuscript -- after an opening bid of £1.5 million at the sale. The premium added to that figure made the sale price £2,133,600 -- the previous record for a manuscript is £2,585,000 in 1987 for nine complete symphonies written by Mozart. Auctioneer Sotheby's had expected the manuscript to fetch between £2 and £3 million. Described by Sotheby's as the most important musical work to have ever gone under the hammer, the manuscript of the Ninth Symphony -- often considered to be one of the greatest pieces ever composed -- is the only full score by Beethoven ever auctioned. "It is an incomparable manuscript of an incomparable work, one of the highest achievements of man, ranking alongside Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and "King Lear"," said Stephen Roe, head of Sotheby's Manuscripts Department. "The manuscript, which was used by the printer for the first edition, contains music apparently unpublished and is the only full score of the symphony ever likely to come up on the market." The 575- page manuscript, on which Beethoven made his final revisions for the printer in 1826, contains Beethoven's own remarks including "du verfluchter Kerl" (you damned fool) referring to the replacement copyists who appeared to have struggled with the composer's handwriting after his favorite copyist had died the year before. Some experts believe the working manuscript may have been used as the conducting score at the world premiere of the symphony attended by Beethoven in Vienna in 1824. Begun in 1817, the Ninth Symphony has become a classical favorite and in the last movement is teamed with the words from Schiller's "Ode to Joy." Last year, the earliest-known -- though incomplete -- transcript of the Ninth Symphony sold for a record-breaking £1.3 million at auction at Sotheby's. The Ninth Symphony is hailed by musical experts as the most influential of orchestral works. It has inspired Liszt, Wagner, Brahms and many others. The musical work -- finished in 1823 -- was known to be a favorite of Adolf Hitler who played it at numerous birthday concerts. It was also used in Stanley Kubrick's controversial film "A Clockwork Orange."
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