Portrait Ludwig van Beethoven when composing the Missa Solemnis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A publicity-shy billionaire and hedge fund manager who secretly amassed a trove of precious music manuscripts has donated them to the Juilliard School, Juilliard said yesterday. The gift is one of the largest of its kind by a private collector to an institution.
Enlarge This Image
Sotheby’s
Among the manuscripts donated to Juilliard is a piano arrangement of Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge,” which sold at Sotheby’s for $1.95 million.
Multimedia
Audio Slideshow Virgin Score
Virgin Score
Related
In Juilliard’s New Collection (March 1, 2006)
The gift consists of 139 items: autograph scores, sketches, composer-emended proofs and first editions of major works by Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, Stravinsky, Bach, Liszt, Ravel, Copland, Mozart and other masters of the classical music canon. Many of the manuscripts have been unavailable for generations and could be a significant source of new insight for scholars and performers.
Among the items are the printer’s manuscript of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Mozart’s autograph of the wind parts of the final scene of “The Marriage of Figaro,” Schumann’s working draft of his Symphony No. 2 and manuscripts of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 and Piano Concerto No. 2.
“It’s breathtaking,” said Neal Zaslaw, a professor of music at Cornell University, when shown a partial list. “Any one of these would be a big deal.” Mr. Zaslaw said it was unusual for the manuscripts to go to a performance school not known for musicology rather than to a research university. “But the main thing,” he added, “is that these are in a safe place and available for scholars to consult.”
The gift is so large that Juilliard is building a special room for the manuscripts, which were collected in the astonishingly short period of 11 years by the financier Bruce Kovner. Mr. Kovner, who founded and runs Caxton Associates in New York, is chairman of the conservatory as well as of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group. He is also vice chairman of Lincoln Center.
An amateur pianist (he is currently working on the Chopin nocturnes) and Ph.D. dropout in political science at Harvard, Mr. Kovner briefly took evening music courses at Juilliard in the early 1970’s before founding his hedge fund family, which had $10.8 billion under management last year, making it the seventh largest, according to Institutional Investor. The magazine said his personal take was $550 million last year.
Mr. Kovner said he began collecting after noticing a raft of manuscripts on the auction market at relatively low prices — low being relative, in that winning bids often exceeded $1 million.
“Clearly in some sense it was almost a primitive reverence for the thing that was created by a composer,” he said, in explaining the urge to collect. “It’s kind of like an icon.”
But, he said, “I realized it was better to make them available to the world rather than to keep them under the mattress.” He said he hoped the donation would not only inspire students and aid scholars but also help push more works hidden in dusty archives toward the light of day.
Explaining that he had not added up the purchase prices, he said he could not provide the total worth of the gift or say what the tax deduction would amount to.
Mr. Kovner bought most of the works anonymously at auction. They include Beethoven’s arrangement of his monumental “Grosse Fuge” for piano four hands, which sold at Sotheby’s on Dec. 1 for $1.95 million, and a score of the Symphony No. 9, which sold for $3.5 million two years ago.
In fact, Mr. Kovner has turned out to be one of the auction house’s main music manuscript clients, buying at least one item at each of the house’s twice-yearly sales, said Stephen Roe, a musicologist and Sotheby’s director of books and manuscripts in Europe.
Mr. Roe called the collection “absolutely world class.” Other private music manuscript collections are larger, he said, but few are so focused on major works by major composers. He said he knew of no other equivalent gift. “To have so many highlights, and to have them collected over a relatively short period of time,” Mr. Roe said, “that’s the incredible thing.”
Mr. Kovner said he was most interested in collecting pieces by the great masters, and in manuscripts that showed their creative process. Hence, the focus on proofs with the corrections and emendations by composers, and with comments by conductors.
One example on display at Juilliard during a news media briefing was the score of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the version that went to the printer with Beethoven’s emendations and that was used for the first performance in Vienna in 1824. The finale, originally marked “Presto,” showed the word “Prestissimo” written above, apparently in the composer’s hand.
“It’s not a collection of trophies,” said Christoph Wolff, a noted Bach and Mozart scholar from Harvard who was invited to the briefing by Juilliard. “It’s a working collection. It invites close study. It puts you in touch with the composer and performer.”
Multimedia
Audio Slideshow Virgin Score
Virgin Score
Related
In Juilliard’s New Collection (March 1, 2006)
Some of the items include parts used in performance, which often have last-minute changes that do not show up in the printed edition, he said, a vital tool for performers. “This is something musicology needs to realize,” he added, “that the autograph score is not the final word.”
Joseph W. Polisi, Juilliard’s president, said the collection’s presence at the school would help break down the “artificial wall” between scholarship and performance.
Now spread out in storage spaces around the world, the works — some in fragile condition — will be consolidated in a climate-controlled storage area and made available by special request to scholars. By September 2009, when a $160 million expansion of the school is finished, they will have their own room, available by appointment to researchers and Juilliard students, with some items occasionally going on exhibit inside the conservatory and possibly outside. Juilliard also hopes to create digital images of the manuscripts for a Web site.
Despite his wealth — Forbes has listed it as $2.5 billion — Mr. Kovner has remained out of the public eye. In a brief interview, he said he was not shy but declined to discuss his wealth or his political views.
Mr. Kovner, a large man with prominent eyebrows and a finely honed sense of self-deprecation, attended Harvard College but interrupted his graduate studies. “I had very stunningly interesting ideas on dissertations,” he said, “none of which I was able to complete.”
Outside business and cultural circles, Mr. Kovner is known for his financial support of conservative publications and groups. Along with heading the American Enterprise Institute — an influential organization marked by its support of hawkish foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East — Mr. Kovner is also a trustee of the Manhattan Institute, another major public policy group. He has also backed The New York Sun.
In 1999, he bought a red-brick Federal-style building at Fifth Avenue and 94th Street, which used to house the International Center of Photography, for $17.5 million. He has renovated it at a cost estimated at $20 million to $40 million. He has invited Juilliard students and faculty to play chamber music there, and he said he recently bought a harpsichord to continue his keyboard indulgence.
He is also a moving force behind the plan to reconfigure and renovate Lincoln Center, having promised a reported $25 million in support, a figure he declined to confirm.
In a marked departure from most philanthropy in New York, Mr. Kovner said he would not attach his name to the trove of documents, which will be called simply the Juilliard Manuscript Collection.
“I’m happy to participate in ways that promote public discourse and public institutions,” he said. “I don’t particularly like the cult of names. It’s a personal preference.”
Related articles
- The Juilliard School Bets on China, Builds Outside Beijing (world.time.com)
G Roald Smeets 