A Beethoven quartet turns up in his own hand
NewsThe autograph manuscript of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s string quartet in B flat major, Opus 130, has been acquired by the Beethovenhaus in Bonn. It has been privately owned and inaccessible for decades.
As is often the case with lost musical manuscripts, there were Nazis involed.
UPDATE: The manuscript belonged to the Petschek family in Aussig (Cz.). The Petscheks, who were Jewish coal industrialists, emigrated in 1938. Their art collection was grabbed by the Nazis. In 1942, the head of the music collection of the Moravian Museum in Brno secured the manuscript for the museum. After the war, the Petscheks searched for the manuscript. When they located it, the Czechs refused to relinquish it. In 2022, the manuscript was restituted to the Petschek family, who agreed at the end of 2024 to sell it to the Beethoven-Haus and make it accessible to the public and researchers.
https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-travel-music-europe-0e9635e4e460f45e7c3af267d8c896b4
“The family tried but failed to send the manuscript abroad by mail in March 1939 during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, drawing the attention of the Gestapo.
“According to Šindelářová, the Germans asked an expert from the Moravian Museum at the time to verify Beethoven had penned the document, and “he denied that in an effort to save it” from the occupiers.
“The lie could have cost him dearly, but it worked; the museum was allowed to keep the piece.”
How many more of these are out there? After seeing the movie (pretty good representation) about the stolen Klimpt paintings in Austria, and now several articles about stolen manuscripts, it’s entirely feasible to recognize that there are probably many more paintings and manuscripts in someone’s collection. These things belong to all of us. Knowing that some of J.S.Bach’s original manuscripts of the solo violin Sonatas and Partitas were being used to wrap butter, is it any great leap to suppose there might be undiscovered Chopin or Rachmaninov out there as well?? Or any of other composers and artists out there?