“An incomplete Kyrie by Mozart, well-known but missing for 75 years, has resurfaced and will be auctioned on Tuesday at Sotheby’s, where it is expected to fetch between $500,000 and $800,000,” writes Brian Wise in Sunday’s (5/18) WQXR blog. “The undated manuscript, which contains the first five pages of a Kyrie in C minor, has a remarkable history. It was smuggled out of Nazi Germany in 1938 by Rudolf Götz, a Jewish orchestral musician working in Munich. Götz fled for South America, all the while keeping the main score separate from its title page to mask the piece’s true identity. The title page was transported on a separate ship, which was torpedoed and lost in 1939 (along with all the Götz family’s furniture), but the Mozart manuscript survived the war.… Mozart was believed to be 16 years old at the time of the Kyrie’s composition…. Sotheby’s called it ‘the most substantial and important autograph music manuscript by Mozart to have been offered at auction for ten years.’ ” As reported in London’s Guardian newspaper in April, the only surviving autographed manuscript of Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony is also to be auctioned at Sotheby’s on Tuesday (5/20), with an expected selling price of more than $1.7 million.
Posted May 20, 2014
