Pennsylvania, and only at her death in 2002 did his huge
archive of music become accessible. The world premiere of
the concerto, two years later by Leon Fleisher, introduced
a significant addition to both Hindemith’s output and to
the still small catalogue of works for piano left-hand.
Music of the Baroque era figures large in library
archive finds, with Vivaldi and Bach benefiting most
from recent rediscoveries. Both were immensely prolific
composers, so it is unsurprising that many of their works
went astray over the centuries. In the case of Vivaldi,
themodern-dayinterestinhismusicwaskickstartedby
the discovery of a huge collection of scores, preserving
over 300 otherwise unknown works, in 1926. The scores
werethoughtlostintheNapoleonicWars,butwere
rediscovered among private collections and donated
to the National Library of Turin. Poet Ezra Pound and
composer Alfredo Casella were among those involved in
cataloguing the collection in the 1930s, and although the
projectwasinterruptedbythewar,thenewlydiscovered
works quickly spread Vivaldi’s reputation around
the world, including at the 1951 Festival of Britain in
London, which included a major Vivaldi focus.
More recently, aDixit Dominuschoral setting came
to light in Dresden in the 1990s. The work had been
deliberately misattributed to Baldassare Galuppi in the
mid-18th century, to capitalise on Galuppi’s greater fame
at the time. But Vivaldi’s authorship was established by
the Australian scholar Jan Stockigt, based on stylistic
connections with other Vivaldi works and the fact that
one of the movements also appears in a Vivaldi opera.
In 2010, a previously unknown Vivaldi flute concerto,
Il Gran Moghul, was discovered in Edinburgh, in the
NationalArchivesofScotland.Thescorewasamongthe
papers of Lord Robert Kerr, a contemporary of Vivaldi.
KerrdiedattheBattleofCullodenin1746,buthis
movements in the 1730s are less clear, and it is probable
that he purchased the score while on grand tour in Italy.
Back in Dresden, a number of other instrumental works
by Vivaldi have since been identified, in the collection of
Georg Pisendel, a Dresden-based pupil of the composer.
These include a Trio Sonata, now catalogued as RV
820, which is Vivaldi’s earliest surviving work, offering
valuable clues about the development of his style.
Discoveries of new works by Bach are just as common,
mainlybecausesomuchofhismusicisknowntobe
lost. After Bach’s death, his library was divided among
his sons, some of whom were more conscientious than
others. So, almost everything inherited by Carl Philipp
Emanuel Bach survives, but far less of the music that
was passed to his brother Wilhelm Friedemann Bach.
The sheer number of lost Bach works is astonishing, and
tragic, including around 120 church cantatas.
Fortunately, then, rediscoveries are a fairly common
occurrence,withmanuscriptsturningupallover
the world. In the mid-1980s, a volume known as the
Neumeister Collection was discovered at Yale University
Library. It contains 82 chorale preludes, written in the
hand of organist Johann Gottfried Neumeister (1757–
1840),but31oftheseturnedouttobepreviouslyunknown
settings by Bach. In 2004 a wedding cantata,Verg nügte
Pleißenstadt, surfaced in Japan, among the affects of the
pianist Chieko Hara. She had inherited the score from her
husband, Spanish cellist Gaspar Cassado, who probably
acquireditfromadescendentofMendelssohn.
Then,in2005,researchersfromtheBachArchivein
Leipzig found an aria from a lost cantata, a work written
in 1713 as a birthday tribute to the composer’s patron,
Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. This score had a
lucky escape: it had been housed in a library in Weimar
thathadrecentlyburneddown,buttheboxinwhich
it was stored had been removed shortly before by a
bookbinder who had taken an interest in the rare
paper on which the music was written.
The rediscovery of Stravinsky’sFuneral Songis
anothercaseofaneagle-eyedresearcheridentifying
uncatalogued documents in an old library collection, but
in this case the music had never left the building in which
it was first performed. The piece was written in memory
of Rimsky-Korsakov, who had been Stravinsky’s teacher
and also a professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory,
which is now named in his honour.
It was performed there at a memorial concert in 1909.
Stravinsky soon left Russia, fleeing the Revolution and
leaving most of his property behind. In the late 1950s,
he recalledFuneral Songas the finest of his early works
and speculated: “The orchestral parts must have been
preserved in one of the St Petersburg orchestral libraries; I
wish someone in Leningrad [as the city was then named]
would look for the parts, for I would be curious myself to
see what I was composing just beforeThe Firebird.”
In 2014, Stravinsky was proved right. The St Petersburg
Conservatory underwent a major renovation, requiring
its library holdings to be rehoused. During this process,
conservatory professor Dr Natalia Braginskaya came
across the long-lost orchestral parts, from which she set
about reconstructing the score. The first performance
of the 21st century took place last December, in St
Petersburg, and conducted by Valery Gergiev.
Now,Funeral Songis being played around the world,
with national premieres in many countries throughout
the year. Three performances in Sydney will give
Australian audiences their first opportunity to hear
this important early Stravinsky score, a testament
bothtohisprecocioustalentandtothediligent
research of his modern-day compatriots.Charles Dutoit conducts Stravinsky’sFuneral Songwith
theSydneySymphonyOrchestra,June29–July1THE REDISCOVERY OF STRAVINSKY’S
FUNERALSONGISANOTHERCASEOFAN
EAGLE-EYED RESEARCHER IDENTIFYING
UNCATALOGUED DOCUMENTS IN
AN OLD LIBRARY COLLECTION
38 LIMELIGHT MAY 2017 http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au
O LOST & FOUND