IMSLP Forums

In 2011, a user named Ajw1865 uploaded Page 1 of the musical score to Scott Joplin's lost opera "A Guest of Honor" (https://imslp.org/imglnks/restimg/6/6f/ ... guest1.pdf).

User:Carolus deleted the score, explaining that "we do not accept one-page files for multi-page works." Apparently Carolus is ignorant to the fact that there was only one surviving page of "A Guest of Honor" so in practice it is no longer a multi-page work. That page was the only surviving trace of the opera, and unfortunately, now that Carolus has deleted it, no copy exists anywhere else.

Is there any way to recover that page? The IMSLP link to the score is still listed on the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guest_of_Honor_(opera) but it is a dead link. By the time someone tried to archive it in the Web Archive in 2013, it had already been deleted (https://web.archive.org/web/20130710103 ... guest1.pdf).

Is there any way to recover this page? It was the only surviving copy and Carolus' decision to delete it has obliterated the last surviving trace of this lost opera.

I wonder where the original user got it from. I mean, it's supposed to be completely lost so where did that page come from? Why is this not anywhere else that it can't be reuploaded?

Unfortunately all online references lead back to the dead IMSLP link, so it seems that the record starts and ends with the page Carolus deleted. The user never contributed anything else and has been inactive for 10 years.

We'll see what we can do to recover the file, I emailed our site leader about it.

After some investigation it appears that, due to what was probably a server crash back in 2013, all files deleted before Nov. 20, 2013 are no longer recoverable. There is a very slim chance there are old backups (between 2011 and 2013) in places I currently have no access to but I wouldn't bet on it for anything.

I've left a message on Ajw1865's new talk page. It is highly unlikely he/she would see it as the last login recorded was back in 2011, but that's the most we can do as there's no e-mail on the account.

Thanks very much for looking into this and too bad that it seems to be unrecoverable. Maybe someday it will again resurface.