Rare Mozart manuscript up for auction

A piece of music history is up for auction.

AMY ROBACH: "This manuscript was written by Mozart in 1772, when he was just 16. A Jewish musician smuggled it out of Nazi Germany. Her daughter, who is now 98, is putting it up for sale ..."

The unfinished orchestral score is yours for the taking -- if you've got half a million dollars. It's expected to sell for at least that much, or more, at Sotheby's Music and Manuscripts auction.

The auction house says quote, "This is the most substantial and important autograph music manuscript by Mozart to have been offered at auction for ten years." It hadn't been seen in public since the 1930s.

Sotheby's specialist tells The Telegraph the seller, who now lives in South Africa, would like to see the piece – called one of the most notable of Mozart's unfinished works – returned to Europe.

"She has no ill feelings about it going back to Germany or Austria. And she felt this should be done while she was alive, when she was still able to explain what had happened. She wanted to tie up the loose ends."

The family reportedly offered to sell the manuscript to the Mozart Museum in Salzburg ...

And the Benedictine Abbey in Austria, where it was held before being sold and smuggled to South Africa, but neither location could afford it.

The auction is set for May 20.