Christie’s auction house is putting up for sale a collection of rare music manuscripts from the 8th to 20th centuries

Christie’s auction house is offering for sale an unprecedented collection of rare music manuscripts from the 8th to 20th centuries – from liturgical books of the early and high Middle Ages to autographs of Haydn, Wagner, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Cage, Stockhausen and many other major composers. The online auction, simply titled “The History of Western Music,” will run from October 25 to November 8. Tells why this sale is unique Sergei Khodnev.

Auctions dedicated to the history of music and great composers are rare in the practice of large auction houses. Especially if we are talking about a selection of exclusively music manuscripts – not letters, diaries or personal items, which are easier to interest a wide range of collectors. But the auction organized by Christie’s is doubly a surprise. All 160 lots come from one collection: the collection of the Norwegian financier Martin Skeijen, which in the last ten years has been in the news mainly due to its completely different part – the cuneiform monuments of ancient Mesopotamia. Skeien also collected ancient European manuscripts for a long time, his collection once began with them, but few knew that such musical treasures were stored in his bins (judging by the catalog, they were acquired for the most part in 2000-2010- e years).

When we hear the words “ancient music manuscripts,” we most often imagine liturgical music manuscripts from the 15th–17th centuries—huge (so that the choristers could see them from afar), with “square” notes, generously decorated with miniatures, vignettes and initials, a delight to look at. But such books (in full and in loose sheets) are an extremely popular commodity; Among the 160 lots of the current auction there are very few of these. But there are a surprising number of monuments that are much older – the earliest date back to the so-called Carolingian Renaissance and came from monastic scriptoria from the time of Charlemagne (8th century). There is not even a square notation, but neumas – an archaic system that recorded church chants without the usual rulers using a set of special icons. The non-immutable manuscripts come in a rare variety of traditions (Beneventan, St. Gallen, Tuscan, Aquitaine, and there are also a couple of Byzantine manuscripts), but for the most part they are single leaves or even fragments of leaves. And only the Beneventan sacramentary, which is relatively late in this context (12th century), is exhibited in the form of a more substantial fragment (12 sheets), and therefore, judging by the preliminary cost of £70-100 thousand, is classified as a top lot.

There is little of the late Middle Ages, although the monuments are worthwhile (primarily in the sense of the evolution of notation systems); Renaissance polyphony is represented extremely sparingly, but there is a lot of 18th century polyphony. There are no autographs of Bach, Handel or Mozart, but there are lifetime manuscripts of their works, often important from a musicological point of view. That’s why a rare version of Bach’s Toccata in D major, for example, is sold with an estimate of as much as £40–60 thousand. The score of Handel’s coronation anthems (possibly used in Westminster Abbey during the coronation ceremonies) is valued more modestly at £20–30 thousand.

Starting with Beethoven, it is difficult to find a major composer name that would not be represented by an autograph among the lots. A piece of paper from a “conversation notebook”, with the help of which the deaf composer communicated with friends and family, is estimated at £50–80 thousand, and a strand of Beethoven’s hair, somehow tucked into these paper treasures, is estimated at £10–15 thousand.

Sometimes these are literally scribbles – for example, Brahms hastily scribbled the first bars of his violin concerto into a friendly album. But often these are sketches, sketches, claviers and scores corrected by the author’s hand – precious windows into the composer’s kitchen. Or, as in the case of modern composers, sophisticated tables and diagrams for performers armed not with the usual academic instruments, but with electronics or radios.

Contrary to the name of the auction, several examples of the musical cultures of the East are also up for auction – music manuscripts from India, China, Japan, Mongolia and even Tibet (all, of course, with their own exotic notation systems), as well as a Turkish treatise on traditional Ottoman music. But Russian music is also represented quite impressively. These are, firstly, three liturgical books with hook notation (preserved in Old Believer practice even after the reign of the familiar “Italian” musical notation), which auctioneers date back to the 17th century – “The Colored Triodion” and two magnificently decorated stichiraria; all are tentatively estimated in the range from £7 thousand to £10 thousand. And secondly, several composer rarities of the 19th and 20th centuries. Let’s say, a copy of the first edition of Mussorgsky’s opera “The Marriage” that belonged to Sergei Diaghilev with pencil notes by Glazunov and, possibly, Rimsky-Korsakov (£3-5 thousand). Or the amazing author’s manuscript of Schnittke’s work “Cantus perpetuus” for keyboards and percussion – not a score, but an ornamentally drawn diagram, according to which the performers were asked to improvise: apparently, this is what was used back in 1975 by Alexey Lyubimov and Mark Pekarsky, who performed for the first time “Cantus perpetuus” (current estimate is modest – £3-5 thousand).

But the main Russian lot is Tchaikovsky’s autograph, five sheet music pages with fragments of the opera “Mazepa” (the love scene of Mazepa and Maria at the end of the second act and the second half of the finale of the third act), which were not included in the final edition of the score. Here the estimate already rises to an impressive £70-100 thousand. What is clear: any full autographs of the composer appear on the market very rarely, but here is an important document from a musicological point of view (and, in addition, unpublished). The auction house, however, does not miss the opportunity to recall the very plot of Pushkin’s poem and Tchaikovsky’s opera, which, they say, retains “urgent modern relevance.”