Unpublished compositions

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Recently I was looking through a list of the complete works of Claude Debussy so I could find new things to listen to, but what struck me as quite odd was that a large number of his works are unpublished, especially the many works featuring orchestra from the 1880s and 1890s. Did he withdraw these works from his catalogue of compositions? What about his final ballet score? I suppose it would be very very interesting to at least be able to hear a recording of 'Le palais du silence ou NO-JA-LI.' For a catalogue featuring 141 Lesure numbers it would be pretty cool to see some more of them published, analysed, discussed, studied and performed.

Also, this got me thinking about unpublished music by other composers. We know that Stravinsky's Funeral Song is yet to be published but a score will be made available early next year.

Unfortunately the Wikipedia List of unpublished musical compositions is way too short to be meaningful at all..........it would be really interesting to know what other works exist that are unpublished. Do you guys know of any?

[Ten thumbs]

I am rather hoping that Fanny Mendelssohn's Easter Sonata will be published soon.

[violinconcerto]

I can only speak for violin concertos of the 20th century, but there are hundreds of unpublished violin concertos (of course). For this reason I am typesetting unpublished violin concertos and publish them on my website (free of charge). So if you are interested, here is the website:

http://www.tobias-broeker.de/rare-manuscripts/violin-concertos/

Best,
Tobias

[ritter]

AFAIK, there's some works by Pierre Boulez that have never been published. I'm not referring to the withdrawn works (Poliphonie X, Poésie pour pouvoir, the apparently fragementary choral work Oubli signal lapidé . the early Trois Psalmodies--many of which were recorded in their time), but rather to the incidental music he wrote for Jean-Louis Barrault: L'Orestie and Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. There's also the 5-movement version of the Third piano sonata (also recorded), or the original of Le soleil des eaux (as a radio play). I presume the manuscripts of all this are in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, so perhaps some day these pieces will see the light of day...

[Mahlerian]

AFAIK, there's some works by Pierre Boulez that have never been published. I'm not referring to the withdrawn works (Poliphonie X, Poésie pour pouvoir, the apparently fragementary choral work Oubli signal lapidé . the early Trois Psalmodies--many of which were recorded in their time), but rather to the incidental music he wrote for Jean-Louis Barrault: L'Orestie and Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. There's also the 5-movement version of the Third piano sonata (also recorded), or the original of Le soleil des eaux (as a radio play). I presume the manuscripts of all this are in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, so perhaps some day these pieces will see the light of day...

He also claimed to have done work on other Notations and an expansion of Eclat/Multiples, I believe.  Who knows how much of that got down onto paper.

[ritter]

He also claimed to have done work on other Notations and an expansion of Eclat/Multiples, I believe.  Who knows how much of that got down onto paper.

Indeed...and Claude Samuel in his liner notes to the Boulez Complete works set on DG (issued in 2013) mentions that 13 minutes (IIRC) of Dérive 3 were already composed at the time...

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

AFAIK, there's some works by Pierre Boulez that have never been published. I'm not referring to the withdrawn works (Poliphonie X, Poésie pour pouvoir, the apparently fragementary choral work Oubli signal lapidé . the early Trois Psalmodies--many of which were recorded in their time), but rather to the incidental music he wrote for Jean-Louis Barrault: L'Orestie and Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. There's also the 5-movement version of the Third piano sonata (also recorded), or the original of Le soleil des eaux (as a radio play). I presume the manuscripts of all this are in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, so perhaps some day these pieces will see the light of day...

It would certainly be interesting to hear these. I am aware of their existence, but Boulez's choice not to publish them may be because he doesn't consider them definitive, or perhaps he intended either to rework them or withdraw them at some point............

[Uhor]

If I recall, that Debussy ballet was never actually composed. One of those contracts he made to sustain his expensive lifestyle but couldn't get to fulfill.

[James]

AFAIK, there's some works by Pierre Boulez that have never been published. I'm not referring to the withdrawn works (Poliphonie X, Poésie pour pouvoir, the apparently fragementary choral work Oubli signal lapidé . the early Trois Psalmodies--many of which were recorded in their time), but rather to the incidental music he wrote for Jean-Louis Barrault: L'Orestie and Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. There's also the 5-movement version of the Third piano sonata (also recorded), or the original of Le soleil des eaux (as a radio play). I presume the manuscripts of all this are in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, so perhaps some day these pieces will see the light of day...

Nothing really substantial here though .. shame he laid that serious Mutter commission to waste, that may have produced something special. Instead of all the talk & endless (& unnecessary, quite frankly) retooling of older music we already heard basically.

[ritter]

Wasn't there an opera too?? I remember reading something about (the extraordinary absurdist play) Waiting for Godot, if that's correct. That would've been one of my favorite operas! (like Varese's lost L'Astronome )

Yep, there was a rumour about that (never confirmed, but never fully denied by the composer either AFAIK).

Boulez envisaged three operatic projects throughout his career, all of them aborted. I actually had the chance to ask him directly about this in an online conversation with the composer hosted by the now defunct "Yellow Lounge" on the DG website (this was in the early 2000s, i.e. before the Godot rumours started circulating).

His first project was to have Jean Genet as librettist (Boulez always expressed his admiration for Genet's art, particularly for the way Les paravents is constructed form a dramatic point of view). Genet died of throat cancer before any real progress could be made on the text, so that was that. Next up was Heiner Müller (who was going to work on Oresteia--a subject matter the composer had already dealt with in his incidental music for J.-L. Barrault's staging of Aeschylus's trilogy in the mid-50s). Müller too died of throat cancer, so Boulez was naturally a bit apprehensive about approachng someone else.

The En attendant Godot project seems to have been just that, a rumour, but there had even been talk of a premiere at la Scala in Milan (when that opera house was run by Stéphane Lissner).  But perhaps something surfaces in the papers the composer left behind....

I think making the incidental music to L'Orestie available would be interesting, as perhaps this is as close as we could get to what a Boulez opera would have been like. Parts of the Barrault staging were available on video on the Radio France website during the celebrations of the composer's 90th birthday (I don't know if they are still accessible). I did read somewhere (it might have been in J.-L. Barrault's memoirs), though, that the scores were lost when the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris (home at the time of the Renaud-Barrault company)  was stormed by students during the May 1968 "thing". 

[pjme]

I am rather hoping that Fanny Mendelssohn's Easter Sonata will be published soon.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-39191514


A sonata by Fanny Mendelssohn, which was mistakenly attributed to her more famous brother Felix, will be performed under her name for the first time on International Women's Day.
The Easter Sonata was "lost" for 140 years before being discovered in a French book shop in 1970.
Many assumed it was composed by her younger brother but a US scholar proved otherwise by studying the manuscript.
It will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 this Wednesday, 8 March.


So, I presume that this score is available...? .

Ostersonate / Easter Sonata
Fanny Mendelssohn
Berlin, 1828
Performing edition, Angela R. Mace
Duke University
2012
From the manuscript copy in possession of Eric Heidsieck, Paris, France


P.

[Ten thumbs]

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-39191514


A sonata by Fanny Mendelssohn, which was mistakenly attributed to her more famous brother Felix, will be performed under her name for the first time on International Women's Day.
The Easter Sonata was "lost" for 140 years before being discovered in a French book shop in 1970.
Many assumed it was composed by her younger brother but a US scholar proved otherwise by studying the manuscript.
It will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 this Wednesday, 8 March.


So, I presume that this score is available...? .

Ostersonate / Easter Sonata
Fanny Mendelssohn
Berlin, 1828
Performing edition, Angela R. Mace
Duke University
2012
From the manuscript copy in possession of Eric Heidsieck, Paris, France


P.

True, but I don't think they/ll sell me it! At least we're able to hear the sonata now.