The Gallery

Reconstruction Confidence25%

The Sapphire Necklace (Arthur Sullivan)

Arthur Sullivan

Arthur Sullivan's first opera, composed in 1863–1864 when he was 21 years old. The overture survives and is occasionally performed, but the vocal score, orchestral parts, and libretto of the opera itself are lost. Sullivan later achieved fame with W.S. Gilbert in the Savoy operas.

Lost 1864-01-01

Reconstruction Confidence20%

Marin Marais — Lost Operas

Marin Marais

Of the four operas composed by the great French viol player and composer Marin Marais, only Alcyone (1706) and Ariane et Bachus (1696) survive in any form. His first opera Alcide (1693) and his last Sémélé (1709) are lost, leaving major gaps in our understanding of French Baroque operatic development.

Lost c. 18th century

Moondog — Lost Street Performances and Recordings

Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin)

Decades of musical compositions and improvisations performed by the blind composer and musician Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin) on the streets of New York City, primarily at his station on Sixth Avenue near 54th Street. While Moondog made studio recordings, the vast majority of his daily performances — hours of original music played on self-invented instruments — were never captured.

Lost Ongoing (1947–1974 street period)

Reconstruction Confidence35%

Clara Schumann — Piano Concerto in F minor

Clara Schumann (née Wieck)

An unfinished piano concerto begun by Clara Schumann in the 1840s, of which only sketches for the first movement survive. Clara, one of the foremost pianists of the 19th century and a composer in her own right, abandoned the work amid the pressures of concertising, child-rearing, and the expectation that women should not compose large-scale orchestral works.

Lost c. 1847–1850s

Reconstruction Confidence20%

Robert Johnson — Unrecorded Repertoire

Robert Johnson

The vast majority of Robert Johnson's musical output — the songs he performed live in juke joints, street corners, and plantation gatherings across the Mississippi Delta but never recorded. Only 29 songs (from two recording sessions in 1936–1937) survive. Musicians who heard him play described dozens of additional original compositions.

Lost 1938-08-16

Reconstruction Confidence55%

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk — Original 1934 Version (Shostakovich)

Dmitri Shostakovich

The original version of Dmitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District as premiered in 1934, before the composer extensively revised it under political pressure into the milder Katerina Izmailova (1963). The original scoring, orchestration, and several scenes differ substantially from the revision.

Lost 1936-01-28

A Guest of Honor (Scott Joplin)

Scott Joplin

A ragtime opera composed by Scott Joplin, the "King of Ragtime," based on the 1901 dinner at the White House where President Theodore Roosevelt hosted Booker T. Washington — an event that caused a national scandal. No score, libretto, or recording survives.

Lost 1903–1910

The Meroitic Language

Kingdom of Kush (Meroitic civilisation)

The language of the Kingdom of Kush, centred at Meroë in modern Sudan, which rivalled Egypt as a major African civilisation for over a millennium. The Meroitic script was deciphered in 1911 — we can read every word aloud — but the language itself remains almost entirely unknown. It is the oldest written language in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Lost c. 400 AD

Tartessian Script and Language

Tartessian civilisation (southwestern Iberia)

A semi-syllabic script used in southwestern Iberia (modern Portugal and Spain) by the Tartessian civilisation, one of the first literate cultures in Western Europe. Approximately 95 inscriptions survive on stone stelae, most funerary. While individual signs can be read using values from related Iberian scripts, the underlying language remains largely unknown.

Lost c. 5th century BC

Reconstruction Confidence5%

Olmec Writing System

Olmec civilisation (Gulf Coast of Mexico)

Evidence of what may be the earliest writing system in the Americas, found on artefacts from the Olmec civilisation of Mesoamerica. The Cascajal Block, discovered in 1999, bears 62 signs that some scholars interpret as a structured text — potentially predating all other known Mesoamerican scripts by several centuries.

Lost c. 400 BC (with the decline of the Olmec civilisation)

Reconstruction Confidence10%

Cypro-Minoan Script

Late Bronze Age Cypriot civilisation

An undeciphered script used in Cyprus during the Late Bronze Age, related to Linear A and ancestral to the later Cypriot syllabary. Approximately 250 inscriptions survive on clay tablets, clay balls, bronze objects, and ivory. The script bridges Minoan Crete and classical Cyprus, but the language it records remains unknown.

Lost c. 1050 BC