Adventures with Manuscripts

Abstract

THERE are multiple reasons for our interest in musical autographs. Furthermore, the general attitude toward manuscripts has changed greatly in the past few years, and this change has been highly commendable. Not long since, musical manuscripts were esteemed for their rarity; they were souvenirs reminding us of the heroes of another age. They enkindled a sentimental feeling, but in a final analysis the sentiment differed in no wise from that aroused by a master's pen and ink-stand. The actual handwriting, the intimate personal connection, were the chief considerations and the main causes of our veneration. Even a man like Theodor Billroth, to whom Brahms dedicated the two string quartets, Op. 51, and presented his precious autographs, could not resist cutting out the first line of the A minor quartet in order to paste it on a photograph of the composer resting on the physician's piano. To be sure, he did this from no other motive than affection for his great friend, but the composer was understandably bewildered. He could not comprehend such an act of vandalism. Brahms was a person who treasured his own assemblage of manuscripts, not only to preserve them but also to learn from them. In the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna is a copy of Haydn's string quartets, Op. 20, and on them will be found many corrections made by Brahms after the manuscript in his possession. Manuscript treasures in important libraries were usually carefully tended and securely guarded, shown only occasionally in special exhibits or on certain anniversaries; or they were jealously hidden by private collectors who would buy them, like other art treasures, as investments, and seldom if ever let the public see them. They might hold them in complete secrecy, forbidding their coming to light until announced in the catalog of professional dealers. Only recently one could find the autograph of Mozart's Haffner Symphony advertised at the price of $20,000. The new K6chel-Einstein index tells us that up to 1934 the manuscript was in the possession of the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfond in Munich. Subsequently a mystery surrounded its whereabouts until it appeared in New York, acquired its highly publicized price, and became the property of the National Orchestral Association. In late years particularly, many manuscripts have changed hands and their present locations are unknown.1 Another legitimate reason for interest in musical manuscripts needs only passing mention here-their attraction for historians who often find on manuscripts valuable dates that place a given work in a definite year or period of a composer's career. Here, too, the handwriting per se, even the quality and kind of paper furnish important evidence in this aspect of musical