A mid-16th century German manuscript containing 35 compositions for lute that sold for £85,000 at Sotheby’s.
A work from the last years of his life, and a manuscript that in 1989 sold in the same rooms for £38,000, it was this time bid to £280,000. The Mozart manuscript was part of a separately catalogued collection of autograph music being sold for the Helmut Nanz family.
The lot shown here, however, was part of the mixed-owner sale of the same day. Bid to £85,000 was an oblong octavo, mid-16th century German manuscript containing 35 compositions for lute.
None of the composers are identified and nearly half of them represent a previously unrecorded source for German lute music of the Renaissance period.
