Beethoven Manuscript Fails To Sell At Sotheby’s After On-Air Argument Over Its Authenticity

The handwritten score, of an Allegretto in B minor for String Quartet that has no opus number, was expected to fetch £200,000 at auction on Tuesday morning. But an argument the previous evening on BBC Radio 4 between Sotheby’s director of books and manuscripts and a Beethoven scholar at Manchester University threw a big old monkey wrench into the works.