A piece of music handwritten by Austrian composer Gustav Mahler has broken the record for the highest price for a musical manuscript ever sold at auction.

The composer’s Second Symphony, which spans 232 pages, sold for almost $6 million U-S at a Southey’s auction in London.

However, a controversial score which the auction house said was handwritten by Beethoven failed to sell when the authenticity of the manuscript for the composer’s Allegretto in B minor, written in 1817, was questioned.