Music, Continental Books & Medieval Manuscripts

The upcoming Sotheby’s Music, Continental Books, & Medieval Manuscripts auction opens with 45 lots of music-related works on paper, including several letters between Johannes Brahms and Ernst Ruderoff. The lot includes an autographed music manuscript that proposes a solution to a problematic passage in Mozart’s “Flute Concerto.” Also in the sale are unpublished letters and notes by Beethoven, Chopin, and Mendelssohn, as well as music manuscripts by Gounod, Wagner, and Massenet.

Beyond music, the auction house will feature a first edition copy of Sir Isaac Newton’s “most important treatise,” Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. This is Newton’s first major publication, in which he describes his solution to the problems of planetary motion as well as the law of universal gravitation. Additional scientific works up for bid include a letter handwritten by Albert Einstein to Gabor Straus in which he discusses the representation of curved spacetime. Other lots in the sale include a book of 19th-century prints by Achille Devéria, the first edition score of the St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach, an autographed letter by Frederick the Great to his sister Anna Amalie of Prussia, and more. View any of these items and register to bid at Sotheby’s.