# "Lost" Music



## RandallPeterListens (Feb 9, 2012)

As a one-time academic medievalist wannabe, I recall reading a book titled "The Lost Literature of Medieval England" compiling the literature/histories which we know were written and existed in manuscript during the Middle Ages but never survived until the present. Quite interesting.

I wonder about works of classical music which were documented by others to actually have been written, but were subsequently destroyed for whatever reason, by their own composers, by accident or as a result of wars or natural disasters.

Jan Sibelius was said to have progressed well into writing an Eighth Symphony as well as other works which he himself apparently burned in the 1930s. Some composer (whose name escapes me) left finished manuscripts on a train or in a taxi and had to re-write them all from scratch and memory. A good deal of baroque (and earlier) music was lost in the bombings of German cities in WWII. This was a two-way street since I believe much music in manuscript was destroyed when the Germans destroyed the University Library of Louvain in Belgium during WWI.

I would be interested to see posts from those of you who know of instances of compositions (specific works and composers) written but subsequently lost or destroyed.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

*Gilbert & Sullivan's Thespis*, or The Gods Grown Old, an operatic burlesque extravaganza that was their first collaboration premiered in 1871. 

No musical score of *Thespis* was ever published, and most of the music has been lost. The libretto is available, and one of the songs was reworked for a later operetta, *The Pirates of Penzance*. A song WAS published, and a five movement ballet from Thespis were discovered stashed in with some of *Sullivan*'s other ballet scores.


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## Machiavel (Apr 12, 2010)

Brahms destroyed every works he deemed not perfect . they all end up in flames. Pity, we would have maybe an entire different point view of Brahms… or maybe not.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Paul Dukas was a highly self-critical composer and destroyed many works that didn't rise to his own standards, including a couple of operas and a symphony.

Alberic Magnard was defending his house from German soldiers; the place burned to the ground killing him and destroying a large number of unpublished scores.

Stenhammer's First Piano Concerto is an interesting case. Somehow, the composer's orchestral score and materials were lost leaving only the solo piano part and a piano reduction of the orchestral materials. Kurt Atterberg stepped in and orchestrated it and it was known in that version for a long time. And then, lo and behold, the original score was found. And it turns out that Atterberg did a very good job.

Louis Moreau Gottschalks Night in the Tropics is a story near and dear to my heart. The work was being performed in Guadeloupe. A local pianist and composer was so entranced by the work that he asked the composer if he might borrow the score and make a piano version of it. The composer let him do it. But over time, through carelessness and neglect the last few pages of the full score were lost. The first movement was intact and performed, but the second movement couldn't be done because no one knew how to end it or what to do. Then word got around that the piano version done long ago was out there, the manuscript was located and yippee, now it was clear that some 36 bars were all that was missing. There were several arrangements made and it became pretty popular at least for a while in the '50s. Andre Kostelanetz played and even recorded it. 

The Zemlinsky B flat major symphony is another work that was somehow damaged but in that case only one bar was missing. Biographer and musicologist Anthony Beaumont had to conjecture what that one bar was - what he came up with sounds perfect and completely correct.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

The composer, the OP was referring to, who lost his work on the train was none other than Herbert Howells and the piece was his string quartet 'In Gloucestershire'. I've just reviewed the available recordings for my blog. 
Howells began writing his String Quartet No.3 ('In Gloucestershire') in 1916. First he lost the sketches for the quartet on a train and forgot all about it. A second version from 1919 also disappeared. Later, Howells would start to recall themes from the quartet and note them down and gradually, over the years, he started reconstructing and revising the different sections and then revamping the movements. In the 1960s a version was put together from a set of parts by the composer and his pupil, Richard Drake Ford but this was very different than the original. Two more versions also came about: the first from a set of incomplete parts in the RCM Library; the second from a mostly complete score in the the same library. This has now become the definitive version.


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## PeterKC (Dec 30, 2016)

While not lost, there are a number of compositions that are for lack of a better word, "idle". Manuscripts that are sitting on conservatory shelves, carefully guarded by reference librarians.

I know of at least two, or possibly three symphonies by Frederick Converse that lay dormant at the NEC. I guess the question is, is the music any good? Based on other Converse pieces I have heard recorded; my answer is yes.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Mauro Guiliani is a guitar composer who was personal friends with Beethoven and Rossini in Vienna in the 1820s. As any piano player will quickly point out, there is no Beethoven in the guitar catalogue. Guiliani wrote a set of rondos for piano and guitar, and there is a *legend* that Beethoven actually wrote a piece for his friend Mauro to perform. Remember, Mauro Guiliani played cello as well and at the premier of Beethoven's 7th symphony he set up an extra chair in the cello section for his friend Mauro to play. So the idea that he might write something for his friend isn't far fetched at all.

Sadly, this piece is just a legend. It has never been found.

I do, however, play a piece by Giuliani for violin and guitar that has no opus number, is an arrangement of another piece that has been lost to history, AND it seems the publisher was missing a plate in one of the parts when they published the original edition. I say that because in the first movement, once you get to the 3rd page the parts dont line up and the phrases dont end together. We had to "knit" the first movement together ourselves to get a playable piece. To my knowledge, when we perform this piece it will be a World Premier in modern times.

Rarely played music can be an interesting pursuit. The thing to keep in mind, though, is that sometimes when there is a piece of music you never heard of, there might be a good reason why.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

PeterKC said:


> While not lost, there are a number of compositions that are for lack of a better word, "idle". Manuscripts that are sitting on conservatory shelves, carefully guarded by reference librarians.
> 
> I know of at least two, or possibly three symphonies by Frederick Converse that lay dormant at the NEC. I guess the question is, is the music any good? Based on other Converse pieces I have heard recorded; my answer is yes.


I didn't know that those symphonies are extant. They certainly would pique my interest.. The Mystic Trumpeter is one of favorite tone poems by anyone. I'm going to contact NEC and get more info. Another composer who supposedly wrote a symphony is Dudley Buck, but I haven't been able to find out anything else.


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## PeterKC (Dec 30, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> I didn't know that those symphonies are extant. They certainly would pique my interest.. The Mystic Trumpeter is one of favorite tone poems by anyone. I'm going to contact NEC and get more info. Another composer who supposedly wrote a symphony is Dudley Buck, but I haven't been able to find out anything else.
> 
> Looks like this piece may have been destroyed in the Chicago fire. Can only find references to it.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> Louis Moreau Gottschalks Night in the Tropics is a story near and dear to my heart. The work was being performed in Guadeloupe. A local pianist and composer was so entranced by the work that he asked the composer if he might borrow the score and make a piano version of it. The composer let him do it. But over time, through carelessness and neglect the last few pages of the full score were lost. The first movement was intact and performed, but the second movement couldn't be done because no one knew how to end it or what to do. Then word got around that the piano version done long ago was out there, the manuscript was located and yippee, now it was clear that some 36 bars were all that was missing. There were several arrangements made and it became pretty popular at least for a while in the '50s. Andre Kostelanetz played and even recorded it.


"Night in the Tropics" is one of my favorite works, both in its original 1859 orchestration and in the two-piano reduction (1862) by Nicholás Ruiz y Espadero. Max Bruch's "Concerto for Two Pianos & Orchestra" (1912) bears a striking resemblance to it.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

There were so many composers of varying capability in the 20th century that many of the forgotten ones were able enough to compose ingenious short pieces or movements that nobody cares about. We likely have glimpses of mastery equal to the greatest movements we know, that's likely since (a) the general CM hasn't discovered or sorted through the bits from majorities of unregarded names yet, and (b) there has by far not been enough time to judge their eventual cultural quality. Edit: I'm sure some have come to realize. However, most of us aren't one of those, hence emphasizing _general_ CM. I admit however to having heard a few phenomenal tracks in old film music that had 3 or less 'views', mostly stunned by their availability still, or hearing societal ghosts mimick the Big 3.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

1. There's an ongoing debate over whether J.S. Bach's Cantata BWV 50 is part of a larger, now lost Cantata by Bach. If so, then it is one of his "Michaelmas" Cantatas. But most unusually the fragment was composed for a double choir, which would make it the only Bach Cantata out of literally hundreds that he wrote for a double choir. All the rest were composed for a single choir. 

Scholar Joshua Rifkin doesn't consider the BWV 50 fragment to be authentic. Nor, apparently, does Eric Milnes, either, since he didn't include it on his brilliant Atma label recording of Bach's "Michaelmas" Cantatas. However, John Eliot Gardiner does include BWV 50 on his recording of the same Cantatas. 

Anyone agree with Gardiner?











It would be great if someday the rest of the Cantata were discovered, so that scholars might better decide.

2. In my view, the most unfortunate 'lost' music in the history of music is a large portion of the musical opus by the English composer John Dunstaple or Dunstable, who was a very important composer in the transition from the Medieval era to the early Renaissance. Dunstaple's style--especially his use of isorhythms--was hugely influential on the continental Burgundian composers, such Dufay, Binchois, Busnois, & Ockeghem.

From Wikipedia,

"The musical output of medieval England was prodigious, yet almost all music manuscripts were destroyed during the English Reformation, particularly as a result of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536–1540. As a result, most of Dunstaple's work has had to be recovered from continental sources (predominantly those from northern Italy and the southern Alps).

Because numerous copies of his works have been found in Italian and German manuscripts, his fame must have been widespread. Two problems face musicologists of the 15th century: first, determining which of the many surviving anonymous works were written by which composers and, second, unraveling conflicting attributions. This is made even more difficult for English composers such as Dunstaple: scribes in England frequently copied music without any ascription, rendering it immediately anonymous; and, while continental scribes were more assiduous in this regard, many works published in Dunstaple's name have other, potentially equally valid, attributions in different sources to other composers, including Gilles Binchois, John Forest and, Leonel Power.

Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three sets of connected mass sections, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve complete isorhythmic motets (including the famous one which combines the hymn _Veni creator spiritus_ and the sequence _Veni sancte spiritus_, and the less well-known _Albanus roseo rutilat_ mentioned above), as well as twenty-seven separate settings of various liturgical texts, including three _Magnificats_ and seven settings of Marian antiphons, such as _Alma redemptoris Mater_ and _Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae_. Dunstaple was one of the first to compose masses using a single melody as _cantus firmus._ A good example of this technique is his _Missa Rex seculorum_.

He is believed to have written secular music, but no songs in the vernacular can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty: although the French-texted _rondeau_ _Puisque m’amour_ is attributed to Dunstaple in two sources and there is no reason to doubt his authorship, the _ballade_ remained the more favoured form for English secular song at this time and there is limited opportunity for comparison with the rest of his output. The popular melody "O rosa bella", once thought to be by Dunstaple, is now attributed to John Bedingham (or Bedyngham). Yet, because so much of the surviving 15th-century repertory of English carols is anonymous, and Dunstaple is known to have written many, most scholars consider it highly likely—for stylistic as well as statistical reasons—that some of the anonymous carols from this time are actually by Dunstaple."

Dunstaple's motet, "Veni sancte spiritus" is a good example of his extraordinary musical gift,






3. Probably the saddest 'lost' music story I've heard is when most of the music by the Norweigian composer Geirr Tveitt was burned up in the composer's house fire in 1970. (Though personally I've never been over crazy about the music that did survive, except for the occasional places where I find Tveitt & his orchestration to be imaginative. Even so, it's not fair to judge him...)

Again from Wikipedia,

"In spite of Tveitt's glorious successes internationally, the contemporary Norwegian establishment remained aloof. Following the upheaval of the Second World War, anything that resembled nationalism or purism was quickly disdained by the Establishment. Tveitt's aesthetic and music were fundamentally unfashionable. Tveitt struggled financially and became increasingly isolated. He spent more and more time at the family farm in Kvam, keeping his music to himself – all manuscripts neatly filed in wooden chests. The catastrophe could therefore hardly have been any worse when his house burned to the ground in 1970. Tveitt despaired – the original manuscripts to almost 300 opuses (including six piano concertos and two concertos for Hardanger fiddle and orchestra) were reduced to singed bricks of paper – deformed and inseparable. The Norwegian Music Information Centre agreed to archive the remains, but the reality was that 4/5 of Tveitt's production was gone – seemingly forever. Tveitt now found it very difficult to compose and gradually succumbed to alcoholism. Several commentators imagine that his many hardships contributed to these conditions. Tveitt died in Norheimsund, Hardanger, reduced and largely embittered, with little hope for the legacy of his professional work."


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## PeterKC (Dec 30, 2016)

It is stunning music. One has to wonder why he did not look elsewhere to work his art.


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## RandallPeterListens (Feb 9, 2012)

Just following up after a little online searching: the following Washington Post link is from 1999, but I somehow missed hearing about this until now.
Long-Lost Bach Manuscripts Discovered in Ukraine
Does anyone know if any of this newly discovered music has been recorded? The last references I see to this online are from the year 2000, so maybe the whole thing was a hoax?


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

I read Hector Berlioz's autobiography a long time ago. One thing I remember is the number of times he wrote that he "burned" one of his compositions, but an editorial annotation said a copy of the work later had been "found" -- hidden away somewhere. Back then I thought it showed him to be a liar, but now I wonder if he was playing a "game." Nevertheless, I'm not a psychologist (or musicologist!) and I don't know.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I don't know about this particular case but Berlioz was notorious for "spicing up" (or maybe sometimes just making up) all kinds of stuff.


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## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

Goldmark's Violin Concerto No. 2

Ippolitov-Ivanov's Symphony No. 2 "Karelia"


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Villa-Lobos' 5th Symphony.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Damn it, Sibelius. How bad could the 8th have been? I would give up half of Mozart's symphonies (my selection) to hear Sibelius' 8th.


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