Posted on Tuesday 14 November 2006
The recently discovered and unrecorded autograph manuscript volume of keyboard music by the German Baroque composer Johann Jacob Froberger (1616-1667) is to be offered for sale at Sotheby’s London on Thursday, November 30, 2006.
The manuscript, which until this point has remained unknown and unseen by anyone for more than 300 years, includes 18 completely new, undocumented and unpublished pieces by the composer, and is estimated to fetch £300,000-£500,000.
“We have no record of an autograph manuscript by an earlier major composer appearing at auction and the discovery of this extraordinary volume will open up all sorts of new questions about Froberger, as well as resolving points about the music already known,” said Dr Simon Maguire, Sotheby’s Music Manuscript specialist.
“The 18 new pieces, which amount to over 180 pages of new music and increase the composer’s canon of known works by about a fifth, are examples of his hitherto unknown ‘final period’ and will occupy musical scholarship for years to come. Its discovery will change the history of seventeenth-century music.”
Froberger, who was played a central role to the development of Baroque keyboard music, composed pieces that later influenced J.S Bach and were also known to Mozart. He is still celebrated today for his expressive Laments (tombeaux), as well as devising the form of the keyboard suite.
While scholars were made aware of two missing books that formed part of the series of presentation volumes of Froberger’s keyboard music, this 255-page autograph manuscript came as a complete surprise. In fact until the book’s discovery no one even suspected its existence.
Autograph music by seventeenth-century composers is of great rarity and few works have survived for the majority of composers. Apart from Froberger’s autograph manuscripts, contemporary sources for his music are exceptionally scarce, and no printed collections of his music were published until 1693, more than 20 years after his death.
“Aside from the 22-page autograph of keyboard music by Henry Purcell (sold at Sotheby’s on May 26, 1994 for £276,500) no comparable seventeenth-century autograph music manuscript has appeared for sale at auction in living memory.”
The volume will be on view in New York from Tuesday, November 14 until Friday, November 17 and in London from Monday, November 27 to Wednesday, November 29.
www.sothebys.com