quarter notes, he writes two tied eighth notes. Musicologists have tried to explain what Beethoven meant by this: David Levy has written an entire article on the notation, and Stephen Husarik looked to the history of Baroque ornamentation for an explanation. Performers have interpreted it in various ways. The Alban Berg Quartett plays the notes almost as a single note, but with an emphasis on the first eighth note to create a subtle differentiation. Eugene Drucker of the Emerson String Quartet plays this as two distinct eighth notes. Mark Steinberg of the Brentano String Quartet sometimes joins the eighth notes, and sometimes separates them, marking the difference by playing the first eighth without vibrato, then adding vibrato for the second. Arrangement for piano four hands In early 1826, the publisher of the Op. 130 String Quartet, Mathias Artaria, told Beethoven there were "many requests" for a piano four-hand arrangement of the Grosse Fuge. This was well before any known discussion of publishing the fugue independently of the quartet; considering the generally negative reaction to the fugue, Solomon speculates this may have been Artaria's initial ploy to persuade Beethoven to separate the fugue from the Op. 130 quartet. When Artaria asked Beethoven to prepare the piano arrangement he was not interested, so Artaria instead engaged Anton Halm to arrange the piece. When Beethoven was shown Halm's work, he was not satisfied and immediately began writing his own note-for-note arrangement of the fugue. Beethoven's arrangement was completed subsequent to the C minor String Quartet, Op. 131, and was published by Artaria as Op. 134. Among Beethoven’s objections to Halm’s arrangement was that it tried to make it easier for the players. “Halm enclosed a note saying that for the sake of convenience he had to break up some of the lines among the hands. Beethoven wasn’t interested in convenience.” Rediscovery of manuscript In 2005, Beethoven's 1826 autograph of his piano four-hands transcription of the Grosse Fuge resurfaced at Palmer Theological Seminary (then Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary) in Pennsylvania. The manuscript was authenticated by Dr. Jeffrey Kallberg at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Stephen Roe, head of Sotheby's Manuscript Department. The manuscript had been missing for 115 years. It was auctioned by Sotheby's on 1 December 2005, and bought for GBP 1.12 million (US$1.95 million) by a then-unknown purchaser, who has since revealed himself to be Bruce Kovner, a publicity-shy multi-billionaire who