MUSIC MANUSCRIPTS, such as a first edition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (above), often command high prices at auction, but sales can switch from allegro to pianissimo. The composer’s Grosse Fugue sold for $1.95 million, but another of his works failed to reach the minimum bid.

Music manuscript collections are built around a few basic types of items: manuscripts written and/or signed by the composer; annotated manuscripts, which may have been written out by a copyist but contain the composer’s annotations; and associations, which are printed copies of first editions. Collectors also seek related autographs and early editions of printed manuscripts, with or without autographs or annotations.

The chief criteria for evaluating a music manuscript are the composer and the provenance of the work. Budding collectors should start by asking themselves several questions. "Is it autographed, is it in the composer’s hand and is it complete?" Roe says. "The one constant is the strength of the market for the best-known names: Bach, Mozart and Beethoven." While the increase in the breadth of the market has made it attractive to new collectors, it also means that long-term aficionados are seeing meaningful returns on their investments. "I can’t predict what they may be worth in another 20 years," Roe says, "but the people I know who have amassed large collections and have sold them have done quite well."

Many veteran collectors specialize in a few types of music. James Fuld, a retired corporate attorney in Manhattan and author of The Book of World Famous Music, has been collecting sheet music and music-related autographs for nearly 80 years. Fuld has been lucky enough to obtain many of his autographs in person at no charge. He took his first step along this path in the 1920s when he approached composer George Gershwin during an intermission at one of his concerts. "I collect the music I know," Fuld says. "I am musical myself, and it is exciting for me to see the work in its infancy. I follow the scores and pretend I am at the first performance."

VALUE JUDGMENT  For decades, music manuscript collectors have been a small, intimate cadre of aficionados. But as longtime collectors and their heirs have begun to liquidate prize specimens, they have opened the field to newcomers and driven prices to record highs. While famed collectors such as hedge fund manager Bruce Kovner have successfully built important portfolios, novices are advised to look for undervalued composers and beware of unpredictable swings in price.

Over time, his collection has grown to include about 1,500 autographs and 12,000 first editions. Among them is a letter written by composer George Frideric Handel, a similar copy of which sold at auction at Sotheby’s for £100,000 in May 2005. Even lesser autographs can hold their value. The signed manuscript of Robert Schumann’s Second Symphony Op.61 in C major sold for £344,000 at a Sotheby’s auction in December 2005.

Fuld’s collection is divided into three parts: the first editions of famous classical music of all countries dating back to the 1500s; the popular music of late 19th- and 20th-century American and British composers such as Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Gilbert and Sullivan; and, lastly, important posters and programs of early performances by the likes of Brahms and Schumann. He prizes the only known first printing of The Star-Spangled Banner among the rarities in his menagerie. "My collection has a focus on well-known music," Fuld explains. "You would probably recognize 50 to 75 percent of it. Others may limit their collecting to Beethoven or any composer that they like."

Ear to the Ground
Former real estate developer Ira F. Brilliant of Phoenix collected 75 rare Beethoven first editions, which he donated to California’s San Jose State University in 1983 to establish the Center for Beethoven Studies. "I admire his music and life, and developed a strong desire to own something that he had touched, so I could make a tangible connection with him," Brilliant says.

His first acquisition was a letter signed by Beethoven; he then began acquiring first editions, in part because they cost less and were easier to obtain than original manuscripts. "First editions published in Beethoven’s time were works of art and held great appeal for me," he says. "They remain most important for scholars since it is possible to trace the first ideas to the final version." Collectors who value a composer’s autograph might be more successful seeking out first editions that were autographed, either in an attempt to control the sale of these early works or as a gift. Jacob Lateiner, who sits on the faculty at Juilliard, holds in his collection a copy of a Ravel piano concerto that contains a dedication by the composer.

First editions by the great composers have much of the appeal of autographed manuscripts, which may appear on the market only infrequently, because they are often easier to acquire. "It is nice to have the original manuscript," Fuld says, "but many of them have been lost, so the first editions are often the best source for the correct rendition of what the composer intended." Nonetheless, these types of pieces were produced in such limited quantities and on the most impermanent of media—paper—so collectors should not underestimate the rarity of even an early edition. Indeed, scarcity can trump other factors, such as the composer’s fame or the manuscript’s condition. Roe recalls a Sotheby’s auction of Jean Sibelius’ Night Ride and Sunrise. "The condition was absolutely appalling. It looked as if it had been buried somewhere," he says. "And yet, because it was so rare, it sold for £50,000. If a thing is rare enough, it will sell, but that is the exception in my view."

Despite this, Roe insists that outstanding collectibles are still appearing in the resale market. "It’s not like with English literature," he points out. "If any Dickens have survived, they are almost always in libraries." Collecting lesser-known composers may also provide an opening for the novice collector. Fuld, for example, gathers works by Max Reger, a German who wrote and performed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "He was well known in his day and freely printed, but nobody collects him today because his music is rarely played," he explains. Fuld also suggests that new collectors examine Russian music composed by Tchaikovsky and his contemporaries, whose early editions are still reasonably priced.

New collectors must tread carefully. Even when favorable characteristics align—composer, rarity, provenance—the long-term value of a particular music manuscript can be frustratingly impossible to predict. In November 2005, an autographed Beethoven piece with five arrangements for popular Scottish and Irish folk songs became the first complete manuscript in Beethoven’s own hand to come to market in 15 years. Estimated to sell for £350,000 to £450,000, the item hit only £300,000 before failing to sell. The work is significant to academics because Beethoven refused to simplify his complex arrangements for 19th-century drawing-room performers. But Roe says its failure to meet the estimate may simply have been because Beethoven is not known as a composer of folk songs.

Aural Report
New York hedge fund founder Bruce Kovner donated his quietly amassed trove of precious musical manuscripts to Juilliard in late February—including the Grosse Fugue. Kovner’s collection is comprised of autographs and working manuscripts, printed editions, sketches, engraver’s proofs and other music artifacts. Among the treasures is the manuscript of a transposed continuo, part of J.S. Bach’s Cantata BWV 176 once thought lost; an autographed sketchbook for Stravinsky’s Petrushka; the final working manuscript of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, prepared for the printer with extensive revisions and alterations by the composer; the autographed manuscript of the last 50 or so bars of the final movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony; and one of the earliest surviving manuscripts of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

"While one would call it messy if it were a student’s homework assignment, it’s Beethoven on one of his greatest works showing how careful he was."

Kovner built his remarkable collection over a decade, focusing on works that demonstrate a composer’s process, with corrections, notations and changes marked in the composer’s hand. Other pieces contain markings by conductors that indicate how these pieces should be performed. "While one would call it messy if it were a student’s homework assignment, it’s Beethoven on one of his greatest works showing how careful he was," says Jane Gottlieb, a Juilliard vice president, "and how concerned he was that everything was exactly how he heard it in his head."

"The value for scholars and artists is so extraordinary because you really see the compositional process before your eyes," adds Joseph W. Polisi, Juilliard’s president. "You see where the initial ideas have been put down and where new ideas have come about." According to scholars such as Polisi, the emergence of original manuscripts as aging collectors liquidate their collections may even result in new interpretations of long-held beliefs about a composer’s intentions. To academics, the works are priceless, and even the amounts fetched at the recent auction at Sotheby’s seem shockingly low.

Despite the materialization of collections such as those at Juilliard and San Jose State, a large number of music manuscripts remain in the hands of private collectors and dealers; pieces from these assemblages trade hands several times a year at large auction houses. Inherited collections often form the basis of these sales, as the families of collectors look to realize their assets. According to Roe, a typical collector of music manuscripts is male, mature enough to have amassed the funds required to build a collection, and is most often an amateur or professional musician himself. Kovner is typical. He founded and runs Caxton Associates, is chairman of the Juilliard Conservatory, chairman of the American Enterprise Institute and vice chairman of Lincoln Center. He is also an amateur pianist who once took evening music courses at Juilliard before entering the world of finance.

Indeed, Roe says it is important that collectors possess a passion for the material. "I would never counsel anyone to buy these things just for the investment. You have to love the piece; everything you gain in the end is almost a secondary thing," he says. "The great collectors of the past haven’t worried too much about the investment. Do you like it? Do you like the composer and the music? After that, all other questions fall into place."

Lee Sherman is a San Francisco-based freelance writer.

Illustration, copyright Sotheby’s.