Gustav Mahler's original manuscript to his Second Symphony (The Resurrection) has sold for £4.5m ($5.6m) at Sotheby's today.
That's a new auction record for a musical manuscript.
 The Second Symphony is one of Mahler's most celebrated works |
It smashed the longstanding £2.5m ($3.1m) record paid for a collection of Mozart symphonies in 1987.
The Second Symphony was first performed in 1898 and is among Mahler's most celebrated works. It's a searing meditation on life and death with an enormous, heart-pounding finale.
The manuscript comes from the collection of the late American entrepreneur Gilbert Kaplan (1941-2016), who conducted the piece over 100 times in concert halls around the world.
Kaplan first heard the symphony in New York's Carnegie Hall in 1965 - an experience that completely changed his life.
He explained later: "Zeus threw the bolt of lightning. I walked out of that hall a different person".
The sale of the Second Symphony was of huge importance - as Simon Maguire, senior books and manuscripts specialist at Sotheby's, explained prior to the sale: "No complete symphony by Mahler, written in the composer's own hand, has ever been offered at auction, and probably none will be offered again."
We have our own musical manuscript for sale, click here to take a look.
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