Which lost work would you most like discovered?

[Lilas Pastia]

How about two very different French symphonies: Boulez's for piano and orchestra (destroyed by accident by a cleaning lady) and Alkan's symphony for orchestra (as opposed to for the one for solo piano)?

I read in an old Paris Match that the cleaning lady was awarded the Légion d'Honneur.
There's a picture of an obviously moved President Giscard d'Estaing pinning the rosette on her ample bosom.

[karlhenning]

I read in an old Paris Match that the cleaning lady was awarded the Légion d'Honneur.
There's a picture of an obviously moved President Giscard d'Estaing pinning the rosette on her ample bosom.

:-)

[Nunc Dimittis]

Symphonies 1 & 2 by Peter Mennin.  He withdrew them.  I do not know if the scores still exist or were destroyed.  

Also, Symphony no. 5 by Villa-Lobos.  Only known score was lost.  V-L was not at his most inspired in the symphonies but I would like to hear it just once.  

[Haffner]

I'd be thrilled to hear Wagner's arrangement/conducting of Don Giovanni.

[techniquest]

Another lost work: "Prometheus Unbound" for chorus and orchestra by Havergal Brian.

[canninator]

Probably been mentioned already but the two obvious that come to mind are the Finale of Bruckner's 9th and anything of Sibelius' 8th.

[schweitzeralan]

Well maybe my choice is an odd one but as you all know i am a fan of Fanny Mendelssohn, so i would like her Easter Sonata to be found. We know she played it to a private audience and a search on Google confirms the occasion when Felix played the first movement in public but the wherabouts of the manuscript is currently unknown. I do have real hopes as there are rumours that it is in a private collection somewhere. Incidentally, I see a link here with Biber. He seems to be the only other composer to have used that title. 
Now over to you:

Sibelius' 8th Symphony.  Did many of his contemporaries, minus his admirers, believe Sibelius was too conservative? Why did he burn his score?

[ChamberNut]

Everything that Brahms got rid of since he thought they were not up to his standards.  Mr. Brahms, let us be the judge of that dammit! 

[Sorin Eushayson]

Seriously, no one here has mentioned Mozart's lost cello concerto?  His lost trumpet concerto?  The 'Paris' sinfonia concertante he wrote so proudly to his father about???  Discoveries of those would really get the music community excited, not to mention yours truly! 

[Brian]

Seriously, no one here has mentioned Mozart's lost cello concerto?  His lost trumpet concerto?

Only on, I don't know, the first page.

[ChamberNut]

In all seriousness, I cannot rest until they find that one lost Cantata for Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann.

[greg]

This is very easy to answer: the four "Dresden" symphonies of Gustav Mahler. The manuscripts belonged to Mahler's friend the Baroness von Weber and were kept in her library in her house in Dresden. There is anecdotal evidence that Mengelberg saw them and even spent an afternoon playing through them on the piano. They may have included works Mahler composed while at the conservatory: Symphony (No.1), Symphony (No.2) in A minor, and the Nordische Symphonie.

Well, we know what happened to Dresden near the end of the war. What remained of the library was sent to Berlin but so far there is no trace of the Mahler manuscripts.

Sarge

That'd be nice.

[prémont]

Certainly the last page of the unfinished Fugue a 3 soggetti (Contrapunctus 14) from the Art of Fugue - if it ever existed.

[DFO]

Karl Goldmark's second v.c. Never published as far as I know

[Air]

Not lost but destroyed...

Varese Bourgnone

[Wanderer]

Alkan's symphony for orchestra (as opposed to for the one for solo piano)

Sibelius's 8th

These two for starters.

[mahler10th]

Hans Rott - Symphony No 2

[greg]

Hans Rott - Symphony No 2

That avatar... 

[Cez]

This one's SUPER easy (for me, anyway):
(1) the symphonies of Muzio Clementi, most of which were destroyed by his housekeeper (either burned for kindling or used as butcher paper; I can't recall exactly; anyway her great granddaughter worked for Boulez ).  The Clementi tatters that escaped destruction are FANTASTIC.  Haydn on steroids.
(2) Clementi's lost piano concerti, the 8th of Moscheles, Litolff's 1st
(3) Mendelssohn's lost cello concerto
(4) The bunches of "lost" works from Mozart's Paris years:  the 4-wind sinfonia concertante, one or two oboe concerti, the second Paris symphony (jury's out on whether he really wrote the oboe concerti and the symphony, or if he was just lying to Pops in his letters to get him off his back -- some say this does it/doesn't it exist question even applies to the concertante itself)
(5) Any lost symphonic fragments of Schubert (especially the final movements of the Unfinished), Schumann, Rott.
(6) Sullivan's cello concerto (burned, but sort of reconstructed by Mackerras)

But if I could only have *one*:  The Clementi symphonies.

(and not lost, but left unfinished: Mozart's double concerto for piano/violin (K315f), and his sinfonia concertante for violin/viola/cello (K320e).  Magnificent torsos, both.)

[monafam]

I'd like to know if Hovhaness really destroyed hundreds of his earlier works and what those were.  If the claims are true, I believe they were more avant-garde than his later production....

If a composer decides to destroy his own work -- is it really "lost?"