Can you imagine earning close to half a million dollars for a sketch you made of a song you wrote? Well, not that Mozart will be enjoying the profit of the sale, here is the article of that sale from the Associate Press:

A leaf from Mozart’s sketch for the Sinfonia Concertante in E flat sold Tuesday for a record price of $228,484 for a single page in the master’s hand. Maggs Bros. Ltd. of London bought the manuscript for an unidentified private client, auctioneer Sotheby’s said. The previous record was $184,000 for a sheet bearing the notes for the opening Rondo K.386 in A major, sold at Sotheby’s in 1998.

One page of the leaf contains a 27-bar sketch for the cadenza for the first movement, notated in brown ink on four two-stave systems. The other contains two autograph horn parts for unidentified instrument works. Sotheby’s said that only two other leaves of the manuscript of the Concertante survive. It was composed in 1779.

“The Sinfonia Concertante was Mozart’s first truly great masterpiece,” said Simon Maguire, senior specialist in Sotheby’s Music department. “Together with Bach and Beethoven, he is one of the three pre-eminent composers of all time, and this was the work where the young 23-year-old first attained such a level. “It is one of Mozart’s greatest works, and we are thrilled to have handled a manuscript that takes us so close to its original inception.”

Taken from The Associated Press
Article Launched: 12/04/2007 09:59:28 AM PST

If only I had bought it…