WORKS BY HANDEL FOUND IN CUPBOARD

Four major choral works by George Frideric Handel have been found in a toy cupboard in Manchester, Sotheby’s auction house said.

The manuscripts, written in 1707, were discovered by Vivienne Plummer about 30 years after her husband put them in the cupboard as a child, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman said.

Now recognized as original parts of the composer’s “Carmelite Music,” the pieces were commissioned by an eminent Rome family, changed hands several times and ended up with the Plummers.

“It’s rather extraordinary that they should turn up in the tricentenary year of Handel’s birth after lying there for so many years with nobody realizing their value,” the spokeswoman said. Handel lived from 1685 to 1759.