Beethoven manuscript sells for $1.72M

LONDON (AP) -- A working manuscript of Ludwig von Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge" sold for $1.72 million to an anonymous buyer, Sotheby's auctioneers said.
Sotheby's described the manuscript, discovered in a Pennsylvania seminary library, as "an astounding and important discovery" and possibly the most substantial manuscript of a Beethoven work to come up for sale in more than a century.
The buyer, who bid by telephone, paid $1.95 million, including the buyers' premium, Sotheby's said. It declined to say where the buyer was based.
The 80-page manuscript is a piano duet version (opus 134) of Beethoven's string quartet in B flat (opus 130), which was first performed in 1826, a year before his death.
The piano manuscript was rediscovered earlier this year by librarian Heather Carbo at the Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., just outside Philadelphia's city limits.
The manuscript is full of clues to Beethoven's composition process. It is written in brown and black ink, sometimes over pencil and includes later annotations in pencil and red crayon.
There is evidence of deletions, corrections, deep erasures, smudged alterations and several pages pasted over the original.