Czech museum to return original Beethoven score

An 1820 portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, pained by Joseph Karl Stieler. The heirs of a family from whom the Nazis stole an original Beethoven musical manuscript will receive the document from the Czech museum that has held it for roughly eight decades. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, which considers it to be in the public domain in the United States as it is a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional work of art that is itself in the public domain.

 

An 1820 portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, pained by Joseph Karl Stieler. The heirs of a family from whom the Nazis stole an original Beethoven musical manuscript will receive the document from the Czech museum that has held it for roughly eight decades. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, which considers it to be in the public domain in the United States as it is a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional work of art that is itself in the public domain.
An 1820 portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, pained by Joseph Karl Stieler. The heirs of a family from whom the Nazis stole an original Beethoven musical manuscript will receive the document from the Czech museum that has held it for roughly eight decades. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, which considers it to be in the public domain in the United States as it is a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional work of art that is itself in the public domain.

 

PRAGUE (AP) – A musical manuscript handwritten by Ludwig van Beethoven is being returned to the heirs of the richest family in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia, whose members had to flee the country to escape the Holocaust. The Moravian Museum in the Czech city of Brno has had the original manuscript for the fourth movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 in its collection for more than 80 years. The museum put the score on display for the first time in early December in anticipation of handing it over to its rightful owners.

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