ABC# Opus Numbers

Day in day out, right here on this radio station we hear some of the most wonderful music introduced correctly and as it should be as say "Beethoven's Opus 27 No.2 his Moonlight sonata performed by" such and such but yet over on RTÉ 2Fm it's a case of "that was Snoop doggy dog with Step yo game up from his Rhythm N' Gangsta"  Ok we're talking about 2 very different types of music, possibly different audiences with different tastes and expectations.  But unlike pop, classical music suffers from a strange negative bias often being accused of elitism.  It's strange that in other areas of life elitism has a very positive connotation: sport, fashion, cars, or the human body.  I think that the root of this bias against classical music is a political agenda which runs, simplistically, as follows:  Anything that might foster individual thought, or engender enlightened thinking is elitist in the negative sense while anything which encourages us to conform, to purchase the best item, to pay to have the most beautiful body or to buy in to the creature comforts of modern consumerist society is positive elitism. 

It's arguably true that an academically based catalogue language such as the Opus number system does no favours for the image of classical music - imagine in 50 years talking about Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone as Song No. 3 from his Opus 30.  Composers like Bach, it would seem gave no thought to their music's effect on posterity.  It's thought that over half of his compositions are missing and there are still stories of how the scores to his cantatas were used to wrap fish at the local market.  It was only in subsequent years that historians took on the task of cataloguing his works.  While the traditional opus term is the latin for work - compositions by Bach are referred to using unique terms -we often hear of Bach's Keyboard Concerto BWV 1054 or Cantata BWV 75.  BWV is a German abbreviation for Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis the Bach Works Catalogue assigned by the German musicologist Wolfgang Schmieder in 1950.  Unlike other catalogues which tend to list works in chronological order the BWV catalogue lists Bach's compositions in thematic order.  Choral works come first, then works for organ, then other keyboard works, and so on. For this reason, a low BWV number does not necessarily indicate an early work.

Another commonly referred to system is the Köchel-Verziechnis or KV prefix to the works of Mozart.  This was the work of an Austrian-born musicologist, composer, botanist and publisher Ludwig von Köchel who in the late 19th century attempted to arrange the complete works of Mozart in chronological order.  So there's a discernable difference between Mozart's Köchel 1 the Menuet in G written in 1761 when he was just 5 years old [example] and his Köchel 595 the Piano Concerto # 27 written some 30 years later [example].

Beethoven is often regarded as the first composer to have himself assigned Opus numbers to his musical works, a sign that he was aware of preserving his work.  However the acutely critical Beethoven didn't assign opus numbers to all of his compositions and there are a considerable number of works by Beethoven that carry the initials WoO Werke Ohne Opuszahl, works without opus numbers, some of which are actually quite well known [example]

[Back anno Beethoven]

A composer like Schubert - produced works that were so unique and identifiable that we rarely hear of them referred to by Opus number - his songs, chambers music, piano sonatas or symphonies each have either a story or a melody about them that gives them that recognisability.  Hence we get The Trout Quintet, the Unfinished symphony or the String Quartet Death & the Maiden.  The official system of cataloguing Schubert was developed by an Austrian musicologist Otto Deutsch who spent nearly 30 years documenting the Schubert collection and whose name now bears the official cataloguing term:  Each Schubert work now carries with it a Deutsch or individual D number.

Nowadays composers tend to shy away from public usage of opus numbers preferring instead to evoke curiosity or pay their respects to the impulse that inspired a work.

Tomorrow here on ABC# - I'll give a brief history of the development of the piano.