Reconstructing Franz Liszt’s Italian Opera, Sardanapalo
While investigating the agency of sonic objects, and specifically the gap between tactile sonic objects and auditory sensation in the mid-19th century, David Trippett began examining an incomplete manuscript by Franz Liszt, whose contents had been dismissed as fragmentary and often illegible (La Mara 1911; Searle 1954; James 2009). After forensic examination, this turned out to contain not some inconsequential fragments of music, but the full, continuous draft for the first act of an Italian opera.
Sound and Materialism in the 19th Century 