Thematic Catalogues: What's in an Opus Number? Quiz

Answer: It means "without opus"

"Woo" actually comes from the German phrase "Werke ohne Opuszahl," and translates handily to the English "without opus." The Latin plural of opus is opera, so to prevent confusion with the musical genre, music buffs use the contrived plural "opuses." Opuses is abbreviated Opp.

Barry Brook is a leading authority on thematic catalogues, and I wish to credit him here, as I learned many of the details for this quiz from his book (co-authored with Richard Viano) "Thematic Catalogues in Music: An Annotated Bibliography (2nd edition)" (Stuyvestant (NY): Pendragon Press, 1997). Grove Music Online was also a valuable resource.

The opus number and the thematic catalogue have a long history. Operas and other stage works seldom receive opus numbers, since their titles tend to distinguish them, but pieces whose titles are more generic ("Symphony" or "Sonata," for instance) need something else to set them apart (besides their key, as composers may write two or more pieces in the same genre with the same key).

Before Beethoven first broke the ground for composers to systematically group their own pieces into chronological opus numbers, opus numbers were assigned by publishers. As tools for musicologists to establish the chronology and authenticity of composers' output, publishers' opus numbers are often insufficient, as many composers can have multiple publishers, publish their works in a different order than they were written, and choose not to publish some works at all. To solve this problem, scholars began to research and formally organize the works of composers, and the thematic catalog was born. In fact, Brook says, the emergence of thematic catalogues coincided with the development of musicology as a discipline.

A thematic catalogue may include for each piece listed: title, key, genre, instrumentation, publishing data, date and location of composition (if known), information about revisions, incipit(s), and other data. An incipit is a musical notation of a work's (or movement's) theme or first several bars, and serves to identify a piece as being unique. Catalogues may be arranged chronologically, by genre, key, or otherwise.

Köchel's 1851 catalogue of Mozart's music is a significant early attempt at an annotated scholarly inventory of a composer's output. The tradition has continued ever since, with a practical explosion of cataloguing projects that began in the 1950's. Now, composers often refer to their own works by title and the year they were completed.

Answer: Richard Strauss

I believe AV means Asow-Verzeichnis, since "verzeichnis" is the German word for "index," and Erich Hermann Müller von Asow compiled his index of Strauss's works between 1955 and his death in 1964. A later edition completed by other scholars was published in 1974.

Strauss's "Andante for Horn and Piano" is a touching, Romantic miniature - it is worlds away from Strauss's tone poems, but still very worthwhile listening. I reccommend hornist Dale Clevenger and pianist Daniel Barenboim's recording - listening to it always makes me sigh contentedly at its beauty.

Answer: By BWV numbers

If you see the letters WV in a catalogue number, you can assume they stand for "Werke-Verzeichnis." So, BWV means Bachs Werke-Verzeichnis, an index of Bach's works. HWV is the "code" for the index of Handel's works, and BuxWv indicates the index of Buxtehude's works. (Dietrich Buxtehude, by the way, was an organist and composer who strongly influenced Bach's own organ music.) The Bach catalogue is an example of one that is arranged by genres. For example, the solo cello suites fall into the same range of BWV numbers, the chorale preludes have their own range of numbers, etc.

Vivaldi's works are often referred to by RV number. As we saw with Strauss and von Asow, this is an example of the catalogue numbers coming from the name of the scholar compiling the index, not the composer. The RV in Vivaldi's music stands for Ryom-Verzeichnis, the "R" being Peter Ryom, the musicologist who started the decades-long process of sorting through Vivaldi's vast output. Before Ryom's catalogue came into use, Vivaldi's instrumental works were often seen with P numbers, coming from Marc Pincherle's 1948 catalogue.

Answer: Franz Schubert

Otto Erich Deutsch (1883-1967) was a respected musicologist of the first order, an authority on Handel, Mozart, and Schubert, and a librarian for Anthony van Hoboken (another musicologist who compiled an important catalogue). Deutsch first published his catalogue of Schubert's music in 1951, and continued to correct, update, and revise it until his death. Others continued his work, and the resulting 1978 edition is now the standard index of Schubert's music.

I am always staggered by the fact that Schubert was able to create nearly 1000 masterly works in his short 31 years of life.

Answer: Nielsen

Here is an example of two indivduals giving their initials to catalogue numbers. The FS is for Dan Fog (1919-2000) and Torben Schousboe (b.1937), the two Danish scholars who organized Carl Nielsen's music. Fog also prepared a thematic catalogue of the music of Friedrich Kuhlau, a composer whose name many flute players will recognize.

Nielsen (1865-1931) is one of Denmark's more famous composers. His symphonies make for intersting listening, and I heartily recommend listening to his 1922 woodwind quintet.

All choices listed for the question are Carls. Nielsen, Orff, and von Weber are composers, while Carlsen is a TV character.

Answer: Anthony van Hoboken

Hoboken's three volume catalogue of Haydn's music has been the standard reference for years, but corrections and updates have been continuing, and it may be replaced by Georg Feder's work. Such is the nature of research in musicology: as new discoveries are made, once-standard references become outdated and are replaced. We saw this with Vivaldi's P numbers being replaced by RV numbers, and we may soon see it happen with the catalogues of Haydn's, C.P.E. Bach's, and Liszt's music.

Hoboken catalogue numbers can be a bit complicated. A typical format may look like this: Hob.(roman numeral)(optional lowercase letter):(optional capital letter representing key)(arabic numeral). For example, the Hoboken number for the E-flat trumpet concerto is Hob.VIIe:1.

Answer: False

The story of Mozart's catalogue is a long and convoluted one, beginning with the composer himself. Upon Mozart's death, the efforts of sorting and indexing his output were taken up by his widow Costanze, his publisher J.A. André, Aloys Fuchs (a scholar whose name crops up often in the realm of thematic catalogues), and Ludwig Köchel. The first edition of Köchel's catalogue was published in 1862, a second edition appeared in 1905, and scholar Alfred Einstein's version (notable for adding letters to some of the K numbers) was published in 1937. Now in its eighth edition, Köchel's catalogue remains the standard.

Coincidentally, Domenico Scarlatti's works also have K catalogue numbers, but the K is not for Köchel, it is for the American Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-1984), whose 1958 biography of Scarlatti (1685-1757) includes a thematic catalogue of his 555 (!) scintillating keyboard sonatas. Another example of the old replacing the new, Kirkpatrick's catalogue supersedes an earlier one by Alessandro Longo. Longo's work is interesting in that it is an example of a catalogue whose entries are arranged by key.

Answer: Both of these composers

The onerous task of cataloguing the works of P.D.Q. Bach (the notoriously inept mini-meister of Wein-am-Rhine (1870-1742?)) has fallen to the hapless and oft-maligned Professor Peter Schickele - apparently no one else was willing to address this important musicological issue. Schickele numbers can be unorthodox but are nonetheless descriptive. Two examples are S. 1.19/lb for "The Art of the Ground Round" and S. Onesy Twosy for "The March of the Cute Little Wood Sprites." I would love to cite more examples, but I'm sure you'll thank me to stop now and move onto Liszt.

Liszt's S numbers were given to us by British composer, teacher and writer, Humphrey Searle (1915-1982), who wrote the entry for Liszt in the fifth edition of "Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians." Searle's article included a basic numbered list of Liszt's works. The S number may be a thing of the past, however, as the Franz Liszt Memorial Museum and Research Center in Budapest is working on the monumental task of re-indexing Liszt's music with an emphasis on scholarly detail and throughness. Maria Eckhardt is leading the international team of scholars, so E numbers may be in our future.

Answer: Johann Stamitz

Here we have a case of a thematic catalogue being published within a book. The title of Eugene K. Wolf's 510 page, 1981 book is "The Symphonies of Johann Stamitz: A Study in the Formation of the Classic Style with a Thematic Catalogue of the Symphonies and Orchestral Trios." And yes, the letter in a Wolf number refers to the key of the piece referenced.

Johann Stamitz (1717-1757) worked in Mannheim, and is generally regarded as one of the central figures in the development of the symphony and classical formal procedures.

Answer: Wq.

Alfred Wotquenne's 109 page, 1905 "Thematisches Verzeichnis der Werke von C.P.E. Bach" was reprinted in 1964, but Eugene Helm's 1989 catalogue is now typically regarded as the standard. Many recent recordings and scores use both catalogue numbers for C.P.E.'s works, e.g., "Sonata for Flute and Harpsichord in D major, Wq.83/H.585." Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) was J.S. Bach's fifth child, and is notable for his sinfonias, keyboard sonatas, and his treatise on playing the keyboard.

Emanuel Bach is not the only composer associated with H numbers. Imogen Holst's catalogue of her father Gustav's music dates from 1974, and Swiss musicologist Willy Hess gave H numbers to some of Beethoven's previously uncatalogued pieces. Since the "Gesamtausgabe" - the "Complete Edition" - of Beethoven's works was published in 1862-1865 by Breitkopf and Härtel, several efforts have been made to compile more complete and accurate lists of Beethoven's works. In addition to Hess's H numbers, the erudite Beethoven scholar will know of the obscure and rarely seen G numbers, referring to those works listed in Sir George Grove's Beethoven article in earlier editions of his "Dictionary of Music and Musicians." In 1955, Kinsky and Halm published the catalogue from which we get our now-standard without-opus numbers. For example, the "Seven Variations on God Save the King" for piano was numbered 179 in the Gesamtausgabe, 189 in Grove's list, and is now usually referred to as woo78.