When Morton Feldman’s electric guitar piece for Christian Wolff was stolen from Wolff’s car in 1967 [the score was actually in the guitar case that was stolen], it was considered to be lost forever. All there was left was a raw sketch, found in the late 1990’s by Jogrim Erland, but still no-one knew how the original score looked like.

However in 2008 a radio recording was discovered of Wolff playing the Feldman composition ‘The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar’.

Recorded in the mid 60’s, with a very poor sound quality, it was the start of Seth Josel’s reconstruction of the score. The reconstruction of the Feldman sketch is on the left page, and the transcription of the Wolff audio-recording is on the right page.

So what to make of this? Is this the real thing? Or will it always be what it is, a reconstruction? We wanted it so badly! A piece by Feldman for our beloved instrument.

Listen for yourself! Here are three guitar players working with Seth Josel’s reconstruction of the score.