Born Brian Donnelly in 1974 in New Jersey, artist and designer Kaws studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York. After graduating, he worked briefly as a freelance illustrator on Disney’s 101 Dalmatians and the animated series Daria and Doug. He began using the name Kaws as a young graffiti artist in Jersey City. It was not until after he relocated to New York City in the 1990s that he began employing “subvertising,” a practice of parodying and spoofing corporate and political advertisements on billboards, phone booths, and bus shelters; his subvertising has appeared in cities around the world, including London, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo. As the popularity of these works increased Kaws would begin producing public installations in addition to street art. For example, KAWS: Holiday, an enormous version of his Companion figure, floated in Victoria Harbor for Art Basel Hong Kong. Bearing many of the stylistic hallmarks of Pop art, such as the inclusion of characters from Disney and SpongeBob SquarePants as well as iconic advertisement personas like the Michelin Man, Kaws’s paintings, prints, and sculptures have been compared to those of Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons. One such pop painting is THE KAWS ALBUM (2005) featuring his parody of The Simpsons renamed as The Kimpsons, all posed to recreate The Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. This referential piece went on to fetch $14.8 million at auction. His method of repeating iconic imagery is an attempt to make works universally understood, to transcend both language and culture. Further obscuring the boundary between subvertisement and advertisement in the art world, Kaws has undertaken several commercial collaborations, beginning with the production of a vinyl toy for the Japanese clothing brand Bounty Hunter alongside Medicom Toys. Other notable collaborations have included the redesign of the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards statuette, a unisex perfume with Pharrell Williams and Comme des Garcons, and an affordable t-shirt and accessories collection for the clothing brand Uniqlo in 2016. In addition to his avid popularity with streetwear art collectors, Kaws’s works can be found in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Kaws’s work has become increasingly popular, and according to Sotheby’s Mei Moses, the average compound annual return for Kaws is 16.2%, with 100% of works increasing in value.

KAWS

COMPANION figurines by artist KAWS.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 10.</li><li>Part of an open edition of unknown size.</li><li>Stamped on each underside.</li><li>Unopened and in original packaging.</li><li>Figures appear in shades of brown, grey and beige.</li><li>Made in China.</li></ul>

COMPANION Set

Companion toys in black by KAWS.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 10.</li><li>Each stamped on the underside.</li><li>Included the following figures: Clean Slate, Along The Way, Holiday Space 2020, What Party, Holiday Taipei, Share, Separated, BFF, KAWS 2020 and Small Lie.</li><li>Made in China.</li></ul>

Companions Black

Complete set of three KAWS SHARE figurative sculptures.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 3.</li><li>Stamped on the underside of each foot.</li><li>From a sold-out edition of unknown size.</li><li>Made in China.</li></ul> KAWS SHARE first appeared in&nbsp;BLACKOUT&nbsp;— the first London solo exhibition by KAWS (Skarstedt London 2019). In SHARE, KAWS uses two of his characters to convey opposing human attitudes, whereby the Companion is secure and looks outward, holding but not attached to the toy in its hand. Of recent note, KAWS SHARE was open to public display in New York's famed Rockefeller Center (in August 2021).

SHARE Companion Set

Collection of Companions in black by KAWS.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 10.</li><li>Includes the following figures: Gone, Along The Way, Small Lie, Share, Separated, Holiday Singapore, Holiday United Kingdom, Holiday Taipei, Together and Holiday Changbai.</li><li>Each is stamped on the underside.</li><li>Made in China.</li></ul>

Complete set of Companion figures by artist KAWS.<ul><li>Sold as a set of 6.</li><li>From a sold-out edition of an unknown size.</li><li>Stamped on each underside.</li><li>Each new and sealed in original packaging.</li><li>Made in China.</li></ul> Published by Medicom Japan in conjunction with the exhibition,&nbsp;KAWS: Where The End Starts&nbsp;at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Set includes 3 colors: Black, Brown and Grey, each in two variations (KAWS Full Body and KAWS Dissected). A leading artist of his generation, Brooklyn-based KAWS engages audiences beyond the museums and galleries in which he regularly exhibits. KAWS is perhaps best known for his iconic character, Companion, which is featured in key paintings, sculptures, products and toy figures. KAWS’ art possesses a sophisticated humor and thoughtful critique of consumer products. His bold, high-minded graphic language revitalizes figuration with big, bold gestures and keen, playful intricacy.

Companion Complete Set

Fine Books and Manuscripts, Including Americana. Part 2

(Juan II, King of Castile) Comiença la Cronica del Serenissimo Rey Don Juan el Segundo deste nombre, impressa en la muy noble y leal ciudad de Logroño: por mandado del catholico rey don Carlos su visnieto… Logroño: Arnaldo Guillen de Brocar, 1517 Folio (360 x 245 mm). Large woodcut to title, 2 full-page woodcuts, printer's device below colophon, text printed in red and and black; 4 small wormholes touching a few letters to leaves of quire q, generally crisp. Contemporary blind-tooled calf; professionally rebacked, refurbished, with new clasps, endpapers renewed, some wear to corners, spine rubbed. First edition—only two other copies have been offered at auction in the last 50 years. Published by Arnão Guillen de Brocar at the command of Charles V, this chronicle is described as “one of the most sumptuously printed of early Spanish books” (Lyell, Early Book Illustrations in Spain). The printer moved and opened offices frequently due in part to his increasing reputation and significant activity. Brocar would begin printing in Pamplona in 1490, then moved to his workshop in Logroño, where the present work was completed with new Gothic letter and commentary types, devices, and some of the woodcut initials of Brocar's press. Crónica was one of the final works printed in Logroño shortly after his appointment to royal printer to Charles V. It would be during the printer's appointment to the University of University of Alcalá de Henare that Brocar would produce other fine works like the Complutensian Polyglot Bible (see lot 305). Succeeding his father at age two, Juan II of Castile's rise and maintenance of his royal authority was a casualty due to the influence of the meddling nobleman, Álvaro de Luna. Using the King's favor to become one of the most powerful men in Spain, it's unsurprising that Crónica's attitude towards de Luna and his relationship with the King would be favorable. Beginning with the death of Juan II's father, Enrique III, the present work is organized by years of his reign subdivided into chapters. Crónica culminates with the death of King Juan II and his final years of unstable reign without the shadow of de Luna. Significant in his lackluster reputation as a statesman and remembered by his impressionable disposition, Juan II had the longest rule within the Trastámara dynasty. Suspected for involvement in a murder at court, Luna's reign of influence ended when Juan II, now under the influence of his second wife, had his former favorite beheaded—the final episode of the work. The authorship of the chronicle has been much debated with numerous bibliographic entries listed solely under "Chronica." The prologue is written by Álvar García de Santa María with the colophon noting corrections by doctor Lorenço Galíndez de Carvajal. REFERENCES Palau 64966; Lyell, Early Book Illustration in Spain, pp.285-8; Haebler, Early Printers 49, 119; Norton, Descriptive Catalogue, 427; Updike, Printing Press II, 47, 65; Ward, Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature, p. 305; Ticknor Catalogue, p. 266; Salvá 3117; Heredia 3131; not in Adams

View 1 of Lot 318: (Juan II, King of Castile) | A rare chronicle of King Juan II

(juan ii, king of castile) | a rare chronicle of king juan ii

The Jay T. Snider Collection of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin INTRODUCTION TO LOTS 82–87 The Snider Collection is especially rich in materials illuminating the long friendship between Benjamin Franklin and Mary (Polly) Stevenson Hewson (1739–1795), daughter of his London landlady, Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, as the following six lots demonstrate. The editors of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin describe Stevenson (later Mrs. Hewson) as “one of the charming, intelligent girls to whom [Franklin] gave the long and affectionate friendship for which he had such a talent. … Polly’s almost filial devotion to him was a major influence in her life. She had acquired an unusually good education and by the time [Franklin] arrived at Craven Street in 1757, she was spending most of her time as companion to an elderly aunt, a Mrs. Tickell, in Wanstead, a village about ten miles from London, apparently with the understanding that the aunt would leave her a comfortable estate. Nothing came of [Franklin’s] hope of having her as a daughter-in-law; in 1770 she married William Hewson, a brilliant young physician and anatomist, who four years later died from an infection incurred while dissecting. Polly devoted the rest of her life to the care and education of her two sons and daughter” (Papers 8: 122–123). In 1784, Polly and her family visited Franklin in Passy, and in 1786, about a decade after Franklin had first suggested it, she and her children moved to Philadelphia; she was with Franklin at his death. Among their voluminous and eclectic correspondence, are eight letters by Franklin (including the present) that were published in later editions of his Experiments and Observations on Electricity. Franklin reflected on their friendship in a 27 January 1783 letter to Polly: “In looking forward,—Twenty-five Years seems a long Period; but in looking back, how short!— Could you imagine that ’tis now full a Quarter of a Century since we were first acquainted!— It was in 1757. During the greatest Part of the Time I lived in the same House with my dear deceased Friend your Mother; of course you and I saw and convers’d with each other much and often. It is to all our Honours, that in all that time we never had among us the smallest Misunderstanding. Our Friendship has been all clear Sunshine, without any the least Cloud in its Hemisphere. Let me conclude by saying to you what I have had too frequent Occasions to say to my other remaining old Friends, the fewer we become, the more let us love one another” (Papers 39:67–68). Autograph letter signed ("BFranklin") to Mary “Polly” Stevenson (“My Dear Friend”), 2 pages (318 x 201 mm) on a bifolium of laid paper (watermarked Pro Patria with Maid of Dort, countermarked crowned GR), London, 22 March 1762, regarding her study of electricity and other subjects, eight-line autograph postscript, integral leaf with autograph address panel (“To | Miss Stevenson | at Mrs. Tickell’s | Wanstead Essex”) on verso; some light staining at top of first page, long separations at head and foot of central vertical fold, a short marginal separation at horizontal fold, seal tear and repair, but red wax seal preserved largely intact. Half maroon morocco folding-case gilt, chemise. Franklin congratulates Stevenson on her reading his Experiments and Observations on Electricity in the French translation of Thomas-François Dalibard, and responds to a question she had posed in a letter to him, 10 March 1762, concerning Leyden jars: “I was about to ask a Question I find you cannot answer—How it happens that the Surface of the Bottle which contains less than it’s natural Quantity of Electric Fire does not immediately replenish itself from the Hand that holds it, unless the Fire which has a Communication with the other Surface is applied to something that will receive it’s superabundant Quantity” (Papers 10:65–66). He here replies, “I must retract the Charge of Idleness in your Studies, when I find you have gone thro’ the doubly difficult Task of reading so big a Book on an abstruse Subject and in a foreign Language. “The Question you were about to ask is a very sensible one.— The Hand that holds the Bottle receives & conducts away the electric Fluid that is driven out of the outside by the repulsive Power of that which is forc’d into the inside of the Bottle. As long as that Power remains in the same Situation, it must prevent the Return of what it had expell’d; tho’ the Hand would readily supply the Quantity if it could be receiv’d.—” These two opening paragraphs appear, virtually verbatim, as Letter LIII in the 1769 (pp. 460–61) and 1774 (pp. 470–71) editions of Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made at Philadelphia in America. The letter then turns to the topic of a new play that Stevenson was keen to see, a comedy in verse by William Whitehead that had premiered the previous month, and Franklin does not miss the opportunity to gently tease her about the title: “Your good Mama bids me tell you, that she has made Enquiry and finds that the School for Lovers will not be acted till the Benefits are over; but when she hears that it is to be acted she will send you timely Notice. I need not add, that your and your Friends Company at Dinner that Day will be a great Pleasure to us all. But methinks ’tis a Pity, that when you are so desirous of studying in that School, it should not be open, and must we be depriv’d of the Happiness of seeing you till it is? Rather than that should be, I would almost venture to undertake reading you a few Lectures on the Subject myself.” Franklin requests that she send Dalibard’s translation of his work (which he terms “the French Letters, on Electricity”) to him “as a Friend is desirous of perusing them.” He closes by sending his “sincere Respects to Mrs. Tickell, Mrs. Rooke, Miss Pitt, etc.,” but adds a postscript that has evidently not previously appeared in print: “P. S. We were greatly alarm’d in the Night between Friday & Saturday by a Fire at the Bottom of the Street that has almost destroy’d two Houses. Our House & Yard were cover’d with falling Coals of Fire but as it rain’d hard nothing catch’d. We mov’d a few of the most valuable Things; but suffer’d no Damage, tho’ we lost——some Rest.” This bit of news, since it concerned her mother’s house, might well have been quite distressing to Stevenson, which is undoubtedly why Franklin added a joke to the conclusion. REFERENCES Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Cohn, 37:144–145 (not locating the original, text [surprisingly accurate, but lacking the postscript entirely] taken from Stan V. Henkels, Catalogue No. 1262) PROVENANCE Stan V. Henkels, Catalogue No. 1262, The Great Autograph Sale, 1 July 1920, lot 31 (undesignated consignor) — Robert L. McNeil Jr., of Philadelphia (acquired by Snider from the McNeil estate through the offices of Joe Rubinfine American Historical Autographs)

View 1 of Lot 82: Benjamin Franklin | A lesson in electricity, later printed in Experiments and Observations

benjamin franklin | a lesson in electricity, later printed in experiments and observations

Shelf Life: Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper from the Library of Stanley J. Seeger and Christopher Cone

British Topography A group of four works, seven volumes in all, comprising: (i) William Grosart Johnstone and Alexander Croall. The Nature-Printed British Sea-Weeds. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1859. 4 volumes, 8vo (230 x 141 mm), 221 nature-printed colour plates, further in-text illustrations, near-contemporary green calf gilt, gilt arms/initials of George Savile Foljambe to upper covers (see provenance below), spines gilt in six compartments, red morocco labels to second and fourth compartments, marbled edges, marbled endpapers, spotting, extremities slightly rubbed, spines faded (ii) William Hutchinson. An Excursion to the Lakes in Westmoreland and Cumberland; with a tour through part of the Northern Counties in the Years 1773 and 1774. London and Newcastle: For J. Wilkie and W. Charnley, 1776. FIRST EDITION, 8vo (217 x 128 mm), portrait and 19 further plates (mostly folding), contemporary quarter calf, some staining, extremities slightly rubbed (iii) [John Aikin]. The Woodland Companion. London: for J. Johnson, 1802. FIRST EDITION, 8vo (193 x 113 mm), 28 double-page engraved plates (plates bound after the text), modern quarter calf over contemporary boards, a few platemarks cropped (iv) R.G. Stapledon and J.A. Hanley. Grass Land, its management and improvement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927. FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHORS, 8vo (189 x 124 mm), publisher's black cloth gilt, half-title browned, extremities slightly bumped PROVENANCE: (i) Presented by Lady Selina Charlotte Jenkinson, Viscountess Milton (1812–1883) and Cecil George Savile Foljambe (1846–1907, Liberal politician and noted ornithologist) to George Savile Foljambe (1800–1869) on 4 June 1862, gift inscription to front free endpaper, bookplate ("G.S. Foljambe, Osberton") and arms/initials stamped in gilt to covers; sale, Bloomsbury Auctions, 10 March 2005, lot 288

View 1 of Lot 31: British Topography | A group of four works, 7 volumes in all 

british topography | a group of four works, 7 volumes in all

Thomas Hardy Far from The Madding Crowd. London: Macmillan, 1908. VIRGINIA WOOLF'S COPY, WITH HER OWNERSHIP INSCRIPTION on front free endpaper ("V. Stephen"), 1908 reprint, 8vo, 32pp. publisher's catalogue at end original blue cloth, upper cover blocked in gold with TH monogram medallion, housed in collector's slipcase in blue morocco and cloth, front and rear free endpapers browned, hinges split, lower joint starting, binding worn and soiled, spine sunned “…For these reasons, Hardy’s genius was uncertain in development, uneven in accomplishment, but, when the moment came, magnificent in achievement. The moment came, completely and fully, in Far from the Madding Crowd. The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man of learning, all enlisted to produce a book which, however fashions may chop and change, must hold its place among the great English novels…” (Virginia Woolf, ‘The Novels of Thomas Hardy’) VIRGINIA WOOLF'S COPY OF A FAVOURITE NOVEL WITH A DEEP FAMILY RESONANCE. When, on 25 July 1926, Virginia Woolf travelled to Max Gate for her first and only meeting with Thomas Hardy, it was Far From The Madding Crowd – presumably this very copy – that she read on the train from London to Dorchester. Woolf admired the novel greatly but it was also a book that connected the two writers in a much more personal way. It had been Leslie Stephen, Woolf’s father, who had accepted the novel for publication when he was editor of The Cornhill Magazine. At that point Stephen was an established man of letters whilst Hardy was largely unknown, and not only did Woolf’s father play a vital role in the publication of Hardy’s breakthrough novel but he also introduced him to many figures in literary London. Hardy dedicated a poem in remembrance of Stephen in Satires of Circumstance (1914), which triggered his daughter to write to Hardy to tell him how “I have long wished to tell you how profoundly grateful I am to you for your poems and novels”. Virginia Woolf’s tea with Hardy was a memorable success and is recorded in typically exquisite detail in her diary. She records Hardy's comment about her father's publication of Far From the Madding Crowd: "We stood shoulder to shoulder against the British public about certain matters dealt with in that novel". She was impressed by his "freedom, ease & vitality": "He seemed very 'Great Victorian' doing the whole thing with a sweep of his hand (they are ordinary smallish, curled up hands) & setting no great stock by literature; but immensely interested in facts; incidents; & somehow, one could imagine, naturally swept off into imagining & creating without a thought of its being difficult or remarkable; becoming obsessed; & living in imagination". Virginia Woolf’s diaries and letters include many references to her love of Hardy’s work: when she visited Stonehenge in 1903 she was reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and when she was trying to encourage herself in her writing she looked to Hardy as an example (“...As for Thomas Hardy, he's a great man; his style is not made to fit, but what of that? If we had but his ribs, his thighs, his stomach and his entrails!...”, 21 May 1912). His novels are singled out for praise in The Common Reader, but her detailed critical appreciation of Hardy came with the essay ‘The Novels of Thomas Hardy’. She was commissioned in 1919 to prepare an obituary piece for the TLS, and the subject occupied her for a considerable period: in 1921 she was still “reading Hardy for my famous article – the one I'm always talking about", and she felt some discomfort that she was writing in preparation for his death. The essay, a sensitive and sympathetic survey of his work, appeared in the TLS just eight days after he died in January 1928, and was republished in The Common Reader Vol. 2 (1932). BOOKS FROM VIRGINIA WOOLF'S LIBRARY ARE RARE AT AUCTION. Virginia Woolf evidently acquired this volume while she was still "V[irginia] Stephen": i.e. before her marriage to Leonard Woolf in 1912. The lot includes a typed letter of provenance signed by Leonard’s final companion, Marjorie Tulip ("Trekkie") Parsons, recording in August 1994 that this volume "was in the library of Virginia Woolf and remained in her possession until her death'', that it passed at that time to Leonard Woolf, and then, she says, "at Leonard's death it passed to me and has remained in my possession until now". PROVENANCE: Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): inscription to front free endpaper ("V. Stephen"); Leonard Woolf (1880-1969); Marjorie Tulip ("Trekkie") Parsons (1902-1995): typed letter signed ("M.T. Parsons") and dated August 1994, confirming earlier provenance; Sotheby's, London, 8 July 2004, lot 258 LITERATURE: Marion Dell, ‘Moments of Vision: Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf’, The Thomas Hardy Journal, 31 (2015), 13-24

View 1 of Lot 154: Thomas Hardy | Far from The Madding Crowd, 1908, Virginia Woolf's copy

thomas hardy | far from the madding crowd, 1908, virginia woolf's copy

Ludwig van Beethoven Autograph sketches for the overture Die Weihe des Hauses ("The Consecration of the House"), op.124 a multi-layered four-page composing manuscript, a sketch-draft for the first section [maestoso and sostenuto], bb.19–50, including the whole of the main theme from the forte restatement, and the following fourteen bars [un poco più vivo], notated in dark brown ink and pencil on two eight-stave systems per page, without instrumental designations, the upper half of the system containing music for violin I and bass, the lower half music for winds, the chief parts entered first in ink, with additional entries and corrections made later in pencil and also in ink with a thicker nib 4 pages, oblong 4to (c. 248 x 310 mm), a bifolium of 16-stave paper, bookplates of Yale University Music Library and Edward Francis Searles to lower pastedown, with a letter signed from Sir George Grove to Arthur Hill, advising that the manuscript be shown to the Beethoven scholar J.S. Shedlock, 4 pages, 8vo, London, 7 June 1893, and an autograph letter by the violinist Joseph Ludwig to Hill, identifying the work, 2 pages, 8vo, Maida Hill, 17 July 1893, mounted on the front pastedown, together with (all loose) autograph letters to Hill by Shedlock, discussing the sketch, 2 pages, 8vo, St John’s Wood, 2 August 1893, and Otto Goldschmidt, discussing the prices of the sketches and other manuscripts to be sold by Messrs. Puttick & Simpson, 4 pages, 8vo, South Kensington, 24 April 1894, an incomplete letter signed by Hill to Searles, congratulating him on his acquisition of the sketch, 2 pages, 4to, [1894], and the catalogue entry for the sketches in the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ Loan Exhibition, June–July 1904 (no.483a), laid down on headed paper of the exhibition committee, binder’s label to front pastedown (“Bound by G.A. Brown & Co. 1 Avery Row New Bond Street…”), mounted at spine to lower cover, late nineteenth-century/early twentieth-century yellow morocco, with black morocco title-piece gilt (“M.S. / Beethoven. Part of a Sketch Book.”) and black and gilt decorative border, [Baden, September 1822], some discolouration to outer pages, light scattered spotting, vertical creases, a few tiny marginal tears THIS IS A SPECTACULAR WORKING MANUSCRIPT FROM BEETHOVEN’S LATE PERIOD. ONCE OWNED BY THE LEGENDARY NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOPRANO JENNY LIND ("THE SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE"), IT HAS NOT BEEN AVAILABLE TO MODERN BEETHOVEN SCHOLARSHIP AND REMAINS UNPUBLISHED. The overture Die Weihe des Hauses is one of only three large-scale works involving orchestra that Beethoven wrote during his final decade, sharing that honour with two of the composer’s greatest masterpieces, the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. It was written at breakneck speed at the end of September 1822, while Beethoven was taking the cure at Baden, near Vienna. On 13 September, Beethoven wrote to the publisher C.F. Peters in Leipzig: “And hardly had I arrived here when I met a theatrical manager who is building a theatre in Vienna which he is opening with one of my compositions. So to please him I have had to compose a few new movements”. The theatrical manager was Karl Friedrich Hensler, who planned to celebrate the opening of the rebuilt Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna on 3 October 1822 (the name day of Emperor Franz I of Austria) with Carl Meisl’s play Die Weihe des Hauses ("The Consecration of the House"), to which were to be adapted the music of Beethoven’s 1811 musical entertainment Die Ruinen von Athen, op.113. In the end, only one new movement was composed, a chorus with solo soprano and violin (WoO 98), together with a new overture (op.124), delivered with only a day to spare before the opening. Beethoven himself conducted the first performance, despite his by then severe hearing loss, gallantly assisted at his right hand by the theatre Kapellmeister Franz Gläser, who also conducted subsequent performances. Beethoven’s self-appointed factotum Anton Schindler led the orchestra as violinist. A moving account of the premiere was left by Gläser in his fragmentarily surviving autobiography: On the day of the premiere of this work, which the celebrated Master [Beethoven] conducted himself, I was assigned at his request to assist him; as he was sadly robbed of his hearing, he could not well do without assistance...I was deeply touched when he suddenly asked me in a painfully agitated voice during the production of the opera to conduct a very difficult recitative in his place. At the next fixed tempo I let him continue, and as he called out, with tears in his eyes, "I cannot hear the words", I took this hint and guided the orchestra during difficult passages, in the ritardandos and accelerandos, and so forth. As was attested later, I had even at one point, unbeknown to myself, held the great Master's hand, until the ship was sailing smoothly on its course again. One might jokingly suppose that I had at this moment conducted the great Master himself. Following its initial performance, which marked Beethoven’s last appearance in public as a conductor, the overture was performed frequently to great acclaim—and most notably at Beethoven’s legendary concert in the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, on 7 May 1824, which saw in addition the first performance of his Ninth Symphony. This was the famous occasion at which the deaf composer, his back to the audience and unaware of the tumultuous applause, had to be turned round by the contralto Caroline Unger so that he could acknowledge it. No less distinguished than the work’s performance history is the provenance of the manuscript, once belonging to the great nineteenth-century opera singer Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale”. One of Beethoven’s most exhilarating orchestral works, the overture is at the same time the composer’s thrilling homage to Handel, the musician he revered above all others and whose works he was then actively studying (a forty-volume set of Handel’s works was a treasured possession). Adopting the outline of the Baroque French overture, it consists of a slow introduction—a magnificent 88-bar affair, complete with signature dotted rhythms—followed by an irresistible fugal allegro whose theme, with its fifth-step outline, may have been influenced by a similar fugal theme in the overture to Handel’s Solomon (many years earlier Beethoven had made a string quartet transcription—Hess 36—of the fugue from that overture). The present manuscript documents Beethoven’s attempts at bb.19–50 of the slow introduction. It bears witness to a more advanced stage of Beethoven’s work on the overture than is the case with the other surviving—also unpublished—sketch material, contained in two sketchbooks in Berlin (see below). Here Beethoven sketches in short score on systems of eight staves, with violin I and bass (the latter often heavily corrected in pencil and ink with a thick nib) in the upper half of the system, with melody-carrying parts for winds sketched in the lower half; in the sketchbook Artaria 201, much of the sketching is on two-stave systems. And it is typical of the composer’s working practices that the main theme should achieve its characteristic falling contour and double-dotted rhythm at a later stage still, i.e. in the autograph full score. Especially striking features of the manuscript are the heavy deletions and corrections to the bass part in the first half (this clearly gave Beethoven particular trouble), and the contrasting notation of the wind parts on the final page (the trumpet fanfares in ink, the heroic semiquaver scales for the bassoons in pencil). All other known autograph sources for Die Weihe des Hauses are preserved today in European institutions: the autograph score (Stadtbibliothek, Musiksammlung, Vienna [MH 1896/c]); other sketches contained in the sketchbooks Artaria 201, pp.86-111, and 205/I, pp.5ff., 20-30 (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin); and a bassoon II part (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn [HCB Mh 29]). In addition to these sources there exist also five scribal scores reviewed by Beethoven (including those in the British Library, London [RPS MS 15], the Schott Verlagsarchiv, Mainz [8a: the first edition Stichvorlage], and the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn [BH 89: made in connection with the first performance]), as well as a set of incomplete scribal parts (Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna [XII 7905]), likewise reviewed by Beethoven. The overture was published by Schott in Mainz in 1825, with a dedication to Prince Nikolai Borisovich Galitzin. LITERATURE: Emily Anderson, trans., and ed., The letters of Beethoven, ii (1961), pp.970 and 973–974; F. Lorenz, 'Franz Gläser: Autobiographie—Erinnerungen an Beethoven', Die Musikforschung, xxxi (1978), pp.43–46; Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, Robert Winter, The Beethoven Sketchbooks (1985), pp.275, 394–396; Beethoven: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke, ii/1 (1974), passim; Barry Cooper, ed., The Beethoven Companion (1991), pp.252–255; Ludwig van Beethoven. Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, i (2014), pp.803ff., especially 808 (source I/1/3) PROVENANCE: In the possession of the singer Jenny Lind (1820–1887), "for more than thirty years" (see above letter of her widower, Otto Goldschmidt); Otto Goldschmidt (1829–1907), until 1894; Edward Francis Searles (1841–1920), Methuen, Massachusetts, from 1894; Yale University Music Library; Christie’s, London, 24 June 1992 (lot 3)

View 1 of Lot 16: Ludwig van Beethoven | Autograph sketches for the overture "Die Weihe des Hauses", op.124, [1822], UNPUBLISHED

Results for "Companion"