IMSLP Forums

As it says in the title, which lost work would you most like to find the score of?

For me, it would be the overture played at that first performance of Rossinis version of The Barber of Seville. I've seen many and contradictory things about it, both that it was recycled for the Opera 'La Gazzetta' and "La Cenerentola" or that it was based on Spanish folk tunes given to Rossini by the first Almaviva.

Any of the lost Monteverdi operas....

     Sibelius's 8th Symphony.
     Apparently his wife saw him feeding it to the fire, so I guess there's no chance of a copy ever turning up in some dusty, forgotten corner of an old library. This must be one of the most tragic losses to music I can think of; I'd be willing to bet the world would think far more highly of it than apparently Sibelius himself did.
     Just last night I saw a link to a brief YouTube video (a few minutes long) apparently claiming to be based on the 8th symphony. I haven't listened to it yet, so I don't know how that performance has obtained authentic material from the symphony, or whether it might be a hoax of some sort.

Regards, Michael.

That fragment is not, in fact from the 8th Symphony.

Check out the liner notes
http://www.eclassical.com/composers/sib ... 24bit.html

Melodia wrote:That fragment is not, in fact from the 8th Symphony.

Check out the liner notes
http://www.eclassical.com/composers/sib ... 24bit.html

     Oh - what is it from, then? The notes there don't say much, but simply say that it was hailed as being from the 8th Symphony.

My nomination for the most important lost score yet to be found is the Symphonie en Si mineur by Charles-Valentin Alkan. There is no doubt Alkan completed this work. The score was analyzed in a published article, with examples. The premiere was scheduled for performance in Paris, when Alkan suddenly withdrew it for performance. Unlike most of Alkan's other works, the symphony was never published. The manuscript has never turned up.

In fact, almost all of Alkan's manuscripts disappeared after his death. There are indications that Alkan may of had all of his manuscripts bound, and that they were entrusted to one of his brothers (probably Henri) after his death. No trace of these volumes has ever been found.

From the published description, we know the symphony was a major work of grand dimensions. Hans von Bulow called Alkan "the Berlioz of the piano." This missing symphony shows that Alkan was interested in the symphony orchestra, as well as the piano. Could the manuscript still be found some day? It might well prove to be the missing link in French symphonies between Berlioz and Saint-Saens.

The French were the last to discover they had a great composer in Charles-Valentin Alkan -- thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of the late British pianist and author Ronald Smith and the American pianist and editor Raymond Lewenthal. Perhaps now that Alkan's significance is firmly established among the international musical public, French musicologists and even the French government might unite in a nationwide hunt for the lost Symphonie en Si mineur.

MS

Maybe the following paper is interesting in this context:
http://imslp.org/wiki/Alkan%27s_Grande_ ... Hartwig%29

M.J.E. wrote:Sibelius's 8th Symphony.Regards, Michael.

It isn't entirely lost to the world since the organ piece "Surusoitto" is said to be based on material from the symphony.

How about Beethoven's last composition, the String Quintet in C major? Only a transcription for piano quatre-mains exists, the original manuscript is lost.
Or any of Mahler's compositions from his youth? Or half of Bach's church cantatas and the bulk of his chamber music?

Mahler's lost works include four for the stage. The first two, Herzog Ernest von Schwaben and Die Argonauten are juvenilia and probably not significant (although with Mahler, one never knows.) But the third, Ruebezahl, was an opera (with libretto by GM) that obsessed Mahler for nearly five years (1879-1883,) as Henri de la Grange has recounted. It is conjectured that some of Ruebezahl may have been incorporated into Mahler's extraordinary cantata Das klangende lied (the closest Mahler ever came to composing an original opera.) Der Trompeter von Sackingen was incidental music for a play. The first number became the "Blumine" movement in the "Titan," Symphony No. 1. If the inconsequential "Blumine" movement is any indication of the quality of the rest of Der Trompeter, that is not where search efforts should now be concentrated. [Interestingly, the third movement of Mahler's First Symphony contains an extended passage either quoted or plagiarized from the recently emerged Symphony by Mahler's roommate Hans Rott.]

The lost work that is most tantalizing is the Symphony in A minor that Mahler composed in 1882-1883. Otto Klemperer reportedly saw the music and read thru it at the piano--so the score evidently survived for some years. It is conjectured that this work was a more developed version of the symphony Mahler composed while a student at the Vienna Conservatory. The student work was rehearsed by the Conservatory Orchestra under the baton of Director and arch-conservative Joseph Hellmesberger, who rejected the composition. That fact alone should tell us there is probably some great music here.

MS

Erm, no, it doesn't. Hellmesberger (Sr. and Jr.- you don't say which one, by the way) both promoted and premiered some great music (and had some great music dedicated to them) - and it's not quite clear that all the music they rejected was of great quality (I'm fairly positive, despite my interest in the unsung, that the 19th century, too, had its equivalent of the dissertation symphony. (not referring to academic works, but to the garbage that most such works, like 95% of anything, are (Myaskovsky's 1st symphony and suchlike the occasional exception...))

Brams Fantasy for Piano Trio in D minor and whatever he completed of the E-flat major trio he rejected over advice from Clara Schumann

I wouldn't mind having the following mentioned but lost or mostly lost symphonies- Raff's E minor of 1854 (two movements survive, though I'm guessing changed, in his C major orchestral suite Op.101); and two early symphonies (at least one mentioned in journals around the time of its premiere; earlier than the surviving three...) by Mahler's teacher Robert Fuchs.

(A work that isn't lost but also isn't performed? Sterling recorded "all" of Hans Huber's 8 symphonies but left out one that survives in manuscript in Swiss libraries in parts and reduced scores, which was performed (conducted by composer-conductor Friedrich Hegar soon after its composition, soon I think after the first (Tell)-symphony and rather before the 2nd (Böcklin) symphony...- maybe this'll be picked up someday too, along with his 2 violin concertos and his cello concerto(s?).)

The Prologue to Dido and Aeneas: it seems nobody has seen or heard it in about 300 years.

"But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know." Former U.S. Sec. of Defense Ronald Rumsfeld.

It's the things that are lost that we know little or nothing about that intrigue me. Pre-15th century secular music we know very little amount, apart from a few wonderful sources like the Turin MS from Cyprus. In 16th century Florence, there were staged performances frequently put on my the Medici and other families, wonderful music extravaganzas where we have sometimes have descriptions of the sets or payrolls of all the musicians hired, but little music has survived, except for a few years like 1540, 1589, 1600. We have none of Striggio's music that he made for those, even though he was very highly praised for them. I also wonder about what late 16c & 17c consort repertoire was lost forever in the English civil war, or the London Fire of 1666. English consort repertoire was mainly circulated in manuscript, and there are many wonderful works that survive in a single copy (or a single partbook).

And then there are modern catastrophes like WWII. There are a relatively small number of things that were copied by 19c & early 20c German musicologists that we have, where the original is lost. I've set a couple from the Bassano book of improvisations on the canto part of madrigals, copied in the 1890s and then lost in WWII. In other cases, we have catalogs made by libraries in the 19th century, that tell us what we lost. But in Dresden, there were thousands of pages of manuscripts of court music from the 17th and early 18th century, where no one ever got around to actually cataloguing the individual pieces, all lost in the conflagration in the pointless firebombing. For the repertoire played there, we have only a sliver of a massive repertoire that survived until a couple generations ago.

I second Perlnerd’s suggestion of any of Monteverdi’s Venetian operas and stage works, and would have a few special individual lost items that would be nice to have:
• Lassus’ lost 40-part motet, written and performed during one of Striggio’s visits to München
• Berlioz’s Francs-juges opera, before he dismantled it
• Havergal Brian’s Prometheus unbound full score

Despite having completed a few unfinished works, and therefore grateful in a small way for the opportunity to restore these works, I’d prefer to be spared the need by having the original pieces complete, frankly.