The Juilliard School announced this morning that the hedge-fund billionaire Bruce Kovner, who is chairman of the Juilliard Board, is donating a remarkable collection of one hundred thirty-nine musical manuscripts and materials to the school. I attended a press conference this morning at which details of the gift were announced. It includes the working draft of the four-hand piano arrangement of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge; Kovner, it turns out, was the unnamed person who bought the manuscript at Sotheby's in December. But that's hardly the most significant item in the collection. It also includes:
— The long-lost transposed continuo part of Bach's Cantata BWV 176, with markings by the composer
— First sketches for the ethereal opening of Beethoven's Ninth, together with the corrected copy of the symphony that was sent to the printer
— Corrected proofs of Brahms's Klavierstücke Op. 118 and 119
— Copland's Clarinet Concerto, inscribed to Benny Goodman
— Mozart's score for the wind, brass, and timpani in the final scene of The Marriage of Figaro (written out separately because there wasn't room in the main score)
— A draft of the ending of the first movement of Mahler's Ninth
— A draft of the opening scene of Puccini's Fanciulla del West
— A major trove of Schubert manuscripts and marked editions
— Sketches for an unknown Symphony in C minor by Schumann
— A large batch of manuscripts of Alfred Schnittke, including sketches for the opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten
— Stravinsky's earliest sketches for Petrushka
— The typescript of Joseph Gregor's libretto for Richard Strauss's Daphne, with notes by the composer in the margins
Many of these have never been examined by scholars; it will take a long time to absorb the information contained in them. Juilliard President Joseph Polisi, the school's chief librarian Jane Gottlieb, and scholars Christoph Wolff, Maynard Solomon, and Michael Griffel were on hand to make some preliminary observations, Wolff rightly acclaiming "the richness and the balance and the focus of this collection." Kovner himself stated that he no longer wished to hide the material under a "metaphorical mattress" and wanted it become part of life at Juilliard. A music enthusiast who once took night classes at the school and served briefly as music critic of Commentary, Kovner has apparently been buying the better part of everything musical that has been up for auction in recent years. Last year I noted that some fascinating items were up for grabs at Sotheby's; the Barber, Sibelius and, most happily, Strauss items all go to Juilliard. The collection will be available to scholars starting in 2009, in a climate-controlled reading room. There are also plans to make all the manuscripts available in digital images online. Kovner, a somewhat mysterious behind-the-scenes figure in high finance and right-wing politics, has declined to attach his name to the gift; it will be known as the Juilliard Manuscript Collection. The image at the top is the beginning of the Grosse Fuge arrangement, complete with the fortissimo G's that I described in my recent article. Here's a pdf of the complete listing of items. Some more images follow below.
Bach, Cantata BWV 176:
Beethoven, Symphony no. 9:
Brahms, Op. 118 No. 1:
Mahler, Symphony No. 9:
All images courtesy of the Juilliard School.
