Simon Maguire, the senior specialist for books and manuscripts at Sotheby's, said that while he had known that Christie's had passed on the score, he had not known which experts Christie's had relied on or what their doubts were. He noted that auction houses keep their distance from one another to avoid charges of collusion. (Christie's declined to comment.)
Dr. Maguire said Sotheby's had relied on the opinions of experts it trusted - including Nicholas Marston, a professor of music at King's College, Cambridge, and Otto Biba, director of the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, two highly respected scholars.
“They gave the all-clear, they said this was genuine, and they have maintained that opinion since, as well,” he said.
He faulted Dr. Cooper for passing judgment on the manuscript without inspecting it personally. “Barry Cooper seems to think that he has a sort of hotline to Beethoven in heaven, and that he can judge a thing without seeing the original,” he said.
Dr. Cooper said that he did not need to inspect it in person, since his doubts centered on the handwriting, including the way the natural signs and double bars were formed, and a handful of notes that differed from a widely embraced manuscript of the work that Sotheby's experts discovered in 1999.
Before the sale, Sotheby's issued a notice about the lot, noting that some scholars had suggested it was a 19th-century copy, but adding that “this opinion is not accepted by Sotheby's, or the majority of world-renowned Beethoven scholars who have inspected the manuscript personally.”
Since then an unusual musicology drama has played out in the British news media. The Telegraph reported that one of the experts who had advised Christie's that the work was not in Beethoven's hand, Michael Ladenburg, head of the Beethoven-Haus museum, in Bonn, Germany, had later sought to buy the score for a lower price. It quoted Dr. Biba as saying that such an offer would represent a conflict of interest. Dr. Ladenburge told The Telegraph that the accusation was “simply unfair,” but declined to comment further, saying in an email, “I don't want to extend a story which is unprofitable - not for me but for others.”
Dr. Biba, for his part. said in an email that, while he believed that the work was genuine, he took issue with Sotheby's assertion that he verified the piece for them. While he had shared his opinion with the auction house, he said, “I didn't verify the manuscript for Sotheby's because I don't work for any auction house, dealer, seller or buyer.”
Dr. Marston, whom Sotheby's had relied on, said in an interview that he concluded the work was written by Beethoven despite what he called “anomalies,” including the way the double bars were written, and the fact that the viola part is missing a sharp sign in its key signature. “While I don't dispute that there are peculiarities in it,” he said, “I'm inclined to say that on the balance of probabilities we should assume that it is in Beethoven's hand.”
Ronald D. Spencer, a lawyer who has worked on authentication cases in the art world, said that such disputes were hardly unusual - and highlighted the need for buyers to do their own due diligence.
“The buyer should understand that there are very few pieces of art or music that do not have any negative views about their genesis,” Mr. Spencer said. “He is, in essence, buying a consensus of expert opinion. And by definition, a consensus is not 100 percent.”
