Autograph.

A manuscript written in the hand of a particular person; in normal musical parlance, the manuscript of a work in the hand of its composer. It is thus generally distinguished from ‘copy’, a manuscript in the hand of another person. There may exist more than one autograph manuscript for a given work: for example, the replacement finale of Beethoven’s String Quartet in B op.130 survives in two autographs, the writing of the second having been necessitated by the extreme amount of revision and recomposition carried out in the first. In such cases it is usual for the two autographs to be described respectively as Urschrift and Reinschrift. ‘Autograph’ may be used adjectivally, for example in referring to ‘a copy of the “Eroica” Symphony with Beethoven’s autograph corrections’. The term ‘holograph’ is sometimes used to distinguish a manuscript wholly in the hand of its author or composer (see Holograph).

For the period before 1600 relatively few manuscripts of works wholly or largely in the hand of the composer can be identified with any certainty (for a discussion of the problems and a list of suggested attributions in the period c1450–1600, see Owens, 1997; for earlier cases, see Bent, 1967–8, and Stone, 1994); and in the case of some medieval repertories the distinction between autograph and copy becomes difficult to sustain when a scribe’s editorial intervention is such that a significantly different text results from the process of ‘copying’. The survival of composers’ autographs increases greatly for the period after 1600. And while the advent of computer-based music processing has rendered them theoretically obsolete, preparation of an autograph score remains a normal stage in the process of composition.

See also Sketch and Sources, MS, §I.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Winternitz: Musical Autographs from Monteverdi to Hindemith (New York, 1965)

M. Bent: ‘Sources of the Old Hall Music’, PRMA, xciv (1967–8), 19–35

E. Roth, ed.: Composers’ Autographs (London, 1968) [trans. of W. Gerstenberg and M. Hürlimann, eds.: Musikerhandschriften]

C. Wolff, ed.: The String Quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven: Cambridge, MA, 1979

A. Tyson: Mozart: Studies of the Autograph Scores (Cambridge, MA, 1987)

A. Stone: ‘Writing Rhythm in Late Medieval Italy: Notation and Musical Style in the Manuscript Modena, Biblioteca Estense, α.M.5.24’ (diss., Harvard U., 1994)

J.A. Owens: Composers at Work: the Craft of Musical Composition, 1450–1600 (New York and Oxford, 1997)

NICHOLAS MARSTON