Which lost work would you most like discovered?

[jochanaan]

My ageing memory is certainly not the most reliable instrument, but Grove says:

"Varèse returned to Paris in 1913, leaving most of his manuscripts in Berlin, where they were destroyed in a warehouse fire."

That's what it says in the Chailly/Concertgebouw album notes.  One early song survives and is included in that 2-CD set; it's lovely and completely tonal, kind of Faure-ish or Debussy-ish, nothing like his amazing later music.  It would be fascinating to hear some of the other stuff that burned in that Berlin warehouse...

[Christo]

Sibelius 8
VW Norfolk Rhapsody no. 3
All of Tveitt's lost works
Villa-Lobos Symphony no. 5

Seconded. The Tveitt tragedy - his traditional farmhouse burnt down with most of his lifetime's work - is the ultimate horror story.

[Karl Henning]

Ugh. So, no actual chance of rediscovery, is there?

Horrible loss.

[Rinaldo]

Der Fluch Des Engelhart - the lost Wagner opera about werewolves. 

This!

♪ Der Jäger, der Jäger, er beschleicht sein Opfer... ♪

On a more serious note, any of Zelenka's missing masses.

[amw]

Shostakovich string quartets No. 16-24    I'm kidding in a way because I know they do not exist, but I think he had planned on writing a string quartet in every key, if I'm not mistaken?

Similarly, there's some (circumstantial) evidence that Beethoven planned his Op. 135 as the first of a new cycle of quartets. I would be quite curious to hear those if he had lived to write them.

[Chaszz]

Louis Armstrong established soloing in jazz as the most important component of the art form. His jazz solos were unequaled by anyone's except Charlie Parker's. Armstrong's trumpet solo genius was mostly expressed in the 1920's; by 1930 his trumpet work had largely become commercialized, repetitive and uninspired compared with that of the 1920s. Those earlier years were captured for posterity on records which altogether last barely three hours, and of course his playing is only part of that. Hundreds of hours of work of genius was lost. My wish would be to have that music, prodigally played in public without being captured by a recording microphone, back.

[ibanezmonster]

I just found it on the Wiki list of Mahler works. Click "Dresden archive". Willem Mengelberg played through the piano scores of all four symphonies with friends, or so he claimed, but so far as we know the symphonies were destroyed in the firebombing. They were all early, youthful works.

To expand on Brian's comment: according to La Grange, when Mahler was a student at the conservatory he composed a symphony for a competition. There was a second symphony in A minor. Another symphony he worked on prior to his official First was called the Nordische Symphonie. In the library of Mahler's close friend and former mistress, the Baroness von Weber, Marion Mathilde, there were manuscripts of four early symphonies. There is anecdotal evidence that Mengelberg saw them and even played them on the piano some twenty years after Mahler's death. They were probably destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in 1945. Fire consumed most of the library.

Sarge

I see. Would be nice if they somehow miraculously survived. I wonder how they would sound; the Piano Quartet, for example, doesn't even sound like him, even though it is great.

[marvinbrown]

  It is speculated that J.S. Bach has composed music for all 5 Passions of Christ. I would love to hear any od those missing. Say the St. Mark Passion.

  marvin

[some guy]

I'm a simple man, and I have a modest request.

That chord. You know the one. I want to hear it, is that so wrong?

On a serious note (!), I'd just like all the composers who are alive this second to keep writing new things.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Karl Henning]

On a serious note (!), I'd just like all the composers who are alive this second to keep writing new things.

I rejoice to comply!

[Bogey]

The composer's daughter has been quoted as saying that her father burned everything, after years of struggling with it.

One biographer theorized that alcoholism and old age had ruined the composer's abilities to concentrate properly on such a work.

I did not know that Sibelius was the father of contemporary classical music.   Easy folks....just kidding.

[Cato]

I'm a simple man, and I have a modest request.

That chord. You know the one. I want to hear it, is that so wrong?

Yes, I do know that chord, and I composed it in 1983!  But then I destroyed it in the late 1990's.

I can send it to you, but what are your qualifications?  I must be sure that you are worthy to hear it!   

[some guy]

Wait a minute!

That chord was lost already in 1877, when its loss was first documented.

But hmmmm. 1877.

1983.

1877.

1983.

OK. I want to hear your chord more.

[jochanaan]

Wait a minute!

That chord was lost already in 1877, when its loss was first documented...

Was it lost--or merely diminished?

[Cato]

Wait a minute!

That chord was lost already in 1877, when its loss was first documented.

But hmmmm. 1877.

1983.

1877.

1983.

OK. I want to hear your chord more.

Well, in one sense, all chords exist - and yet do not exist - in the great apeironic potential of existence.

So it can never really be lost: only temporarily misplaced!   0:)

[amw]

OK. I want to hear your chord more.

Don't be taken in by his sweet talk, Guy. I heard that chord back in '86 and was distinctly unimpressed. It just sounded like a half-augmented 4π/3rd with added 6i. Every microtonal math-rock acousmatic turntablist's doing stuff like that nowadays.

[some guy]

Every microtonal math-rock acousmatic turntablist's doing stuff like that nowadays.

I love those guys.

[Karl Henning]

Don't be taken in by his sweet talk, Guy. I heard that chord back in '86 and was distinctly unimpressed.

Well, then you know why he destroyed it in the late 90s.

Even your memory of it has been "massaged," so that the chord you think you remember is not the chord you heard.

[Cato]

Don't be taken in by his sweet talk, Guy. .

Diabolo non credendum est, etsi veritatem loquitur!   

(The Devil cannot be believed, even if he speaks the truth!)  0:)

Well, then you know why he destroyed it in the late 90s.

Even your memory of it has been "massaged," so that the chord you think you remember is not the chord you heard.

i.e. You might think there are no aliens stealing stuff from your brain down at the local wet-your whistle-stop, but you would be wrong!   

[Brahmsian]

Santa Brahms asks ChamberNut:   What would you like for Christmas, my young fanatic?

Your Santa bag, filled with all the kindling material you tossed out that you thought inadequate.     Come on' Santa JB, it probably wasn't that bad, ya know!