On 23 and 24 July 1847 an auction was held in London that offered for sale “An Extensive and Valuable Collection of Music Including the Greater Portion of the Library of Ignace Moscheles.” It was indeed extensive. There are over five hundred items, including vocal, instrumental and keyboard works; organs, pianos and harps; violins, cellos and even trumpets.

As mentioned in Chapter 3, Moscheles was in London shortly before the dates of this auction, and one of the purposes for the trip was probably to take care of some last-minute details and make a final decision about what he would put up for sale. We therefore know where and when the auction took place, but it is not clear why Moscheles would be auctioning off the “greater portion” of his library and instruments at this time. He certainly did not need the money. Moscheles had become financially secure by 1847, and we will also remember that Charlotte herself came from a wealthy family. Perhaps he felt that their new flat in the city, which was considerably smaller than their London apartment at 3 Chester Place, could not accommodate all of this material. It is also possible that he had finally made up his mind to do what he had been thinking about for years—simplify his life.

We will probably never know with certainty the answer to this question, but it is what the library contained that is most relevant for our purposes. Among the musical holdings are those works that a casual observer might expect to find on the bookshelves of one of the era’s leading virtuoso pianists and piano teachers—compositions and treatises by Beethoven, Hummel, Weber, Chopin, Rossini and others. The large number of instruments and “articles of musical furniture” would also not be all that unusual: there were seven pianos by Stodart, Broadwood, Stumpff, Erard, Pâpe, Kirkman and Pinnock; several chamber organs; harps by Erard and Grosjean; a lute and theorbo; a viola by Barak Norman; numerous violins, including those by “Andrew” [sic] Guarnerius, Stainer, Amati, Gagliano; as well as various desks, music cabinets and stands and music stools. However, our observer would probably be quite surprised to discover a large number of compositions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the library.