Opus Number 1
Maria Mauri
In music, the opus number is the "work number" that is assigned to a musical composition, or to a set of compositions, to indicate the chronological order of the composer's publication of that work. Opus numbers are used to distinguish among compositions with similar titles; the word is abbreviated as "Op." for a single work, or "Opp." when referring to more than one work. Opus numbers do not necessarily indicate chronological order of composition. For example, posthumous publications of a composer's juvenilia are often numbered after other works, even though they may be some of the composer's first completed works.
By the 15th and 16th centuries, the word opus was used by Italian composers to denote a specific musical composition, and by German composers for collections of music.[2] In compositional practice, numbering musical works in chronological order dates from 17th-century Italy, especially Venice. In common usage, the word opus is used to describe the best work of an artist with the term magnum opus.[3]
Giving pieces of music opus numbers helps us to identify which piece of music (from a certain composer) that composition is. For example: Beethoven wrote lots of piano sonatas. His first Piano sonata in A flat major has the opus number of op.26. This shows that he wrote this sonata when he was young in his composing career. Many years later, he wrote another piano sonata which is also in A flat major, and this piece one has the opus number of 110 (op. 110).
Dear Richard, Regarding toweringly high opus numbers, I don;t think anyone can beat your
noted Czerny. HAve you checked into that baroque musical geiser of
composition, G.P. Teleman? Of modern composers, Alan Hovhaness comes to
mind as an overly prolific opus-number piler. One also might check (or
Czech, as the pun goes) one of the most prolific composers of our time,
Bohuslav Martinu, for a stratospheric opus stack. As Teleman, Czerny, Martinu and Hovhaness have amply demostrated, high
levels of prolificness often lead to correspondingly high levels of
self-borrowing, creative dilution and redundancy. Louis Blois, New York
> A lot of prolific composers didn't use opus numbers for most (Schubert)
> or all (Bach) of their compositions. I was wondering, of those composers
> who did use opus numbers, who made it to the highest number? The highest
> I can think of is Czerny, who got up to Op. 861. Of people I can
> think of immediately, Milhaud (Op. 441) comes in a distant second,
> although I think that there are other Czerny-esque composers (of
: HAve you checked into that baroque musical geiser of
: composition, G.P. Teleman? Did Telemann use opus numbers? I specifically excluded non-opus
numbering composers like Bach and Schubert from my question.: Of modern composers, Alan Hovhaness comes to
: mind as an overly prolific opus-number piler. One also might check (or
: Czech, as the pun goes) one of the most prolific composers of our time,
: Bohuslav Martinu, for a stratospheric opus stack.
I think Hovhaness is up to about Op. 400 and has written nearly 60 symphonies.Although Telemann's works are not catalogued by opus number, he is surely
among the most prolific composers. If memory serves, Telemann wrote over 1000
cantatas, set the Passion almost 50 times, and wrote many other religious
works. And that's just the beginning. His orchestral and chamber music
output is equally vast.Jeff-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
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I believe Telemann wrote even more than these guys. He was a composing
machine. On the other hand, I don't think that the publication of
Haydn's works is finished, so he may come out on top yet. For example,
the excellent Teldec CD set of Haydn's Wind Divertimenti says in the
notes that many of these works were played from manuscript - and some
had been found fairly recently.Regards,Mario Taboada
Schubert doesn't have very high opus numbers (the highest I've come across
is 142 for the second set of Impromptus), in spite of the phenomenal
number of individual works he composed (over 1000). This is because only a
small proportion of his works were published during his lifetime, and
generally, opus numbers refer to published works. (Works published after
death are op.posth. and often don't have numbers.) In the case of Schubert, Otto Erich Deutsch set about arranging all
Schubert's works in chronological order and assigned numbers to them
(D.935 in the case of the Impromptus), and that is most often how his
works are referred to now, even if they have opus numbers.
MikeTo respond via e-mail, remove * from address.
That sounds like it would be more appropriate for Schickele's "New
Horizons in Musical Appreciation" (Beethoven's Fifth on one stereo
channel, and a running baseball-style commentary on the other
channel).--
Jon Bell
Quotes of Beethoven's Fifth are legion, but two that are memorable to me are
Alberto Cortez's magnificent setting to music of one of Almafuerte's poems,
"Los Incurables". The other is towards the middle and again at the very end
of the popular tango "Taquito Militar". Tango and Beethoven, there you have
it.
Why not replace baseball by football? Then you can include
"POM POM POM POOOOM"-girls.--
Christian OhnIn my email address, first remove the existing at and dots, then replace Z
by at and every X by a dot.
Yes, Brandenburg concerti are numbered past BWV 1000.
However, I think that if Mozart lived some ten years longer, he'd be the
composer dicussed in this thread.About Schubert - I have a record of his beautiful piano sonata in B flat,
numbered D. 960. My question is - what does this D. stand for?Best wishes to all true lovers of classical music,
Alexander N. Andreyev (alex...@vvv.srcc.msu.su)
> >Surely Bach, Haydn and Schubert have very high opus numbers. What is the
> >highest BWV number in Bach's catalog? (Certainly past 1000)
>
>
> Yes, Brandenburg concerti are numbered past BWV 1000.
> However, I think that if Mozart lived some ten years longer, he'd be the
> composer dicussed in this thread.
>
> In the case of Schubert, Otto Erich Deutsch set about arranging all
> Schubert's works in chronological order and assigned numbers to them
> (D.935 in the case of the Impromptus), and that is most often how his
> works are referred to now, even if they have opus numbers.
Bach did not use opus numbers. Haydn and Schubert did not assign
Opus numbers to everything they wrote, so the highest opus number
does not reflect the totality of their output. (e.g. with Schubert,
the Deutsch catalog gets up to nearly 1000, but I don't think he made
it even as far as 200 with opus numbers.) My original question was not
"who is the most prolific composer," but *specifically* what is the
highest *opus number* given to a published piece?
PDQ didn't use opus numbers. What his pieces are known by are the
Schickele catalogue numbers, which are rather more descriptive than
tabulatory. The actual number of works discovered so far is only
about 100.
> To add in another thread, I think that PDQB is also the author of "the
> longest theme", which is the subject of a fugue in "The Seasonings",
> an oratorio. The theme is so long that the fugue is discontinued on
> account of darkness.
Actually, the fugue, which occurs in the middle of the oratorio is
called off right after the first violins state the 18-bar theme on
account of the union overtime charges that would be occurred if it were
to be played in full.
Last time I checked he was in his 20th Symphony. I have some of these
symphonies in bootleg tapes, including no. 16 from 1990. I know that
some of them reached the CD; can you inform me about the general
commercial availability of his symphonic output in Danish labels? Or of
his many concertos and string quartets?
>>The danish composer Niels Viggo Bentzon (still living, 89 years old)
>>has more than 600 opus numbers.
>
>Last time I checked he was in his 20th Symphony. I have some of these
>symphonies in bootleg tapes, including no. 16 from 1990. I know that
>some of them reached the CD; can you inform me about the general
>commercial availability of his symphonic output in Danish labels? Or of
>his many concertos and string quartets?
dhmac wrote:
Yes, but - unless I'm wrong - aren't about half of JS Bach's workslost?About half of the Cantatas are lost, but I'm not sure that the sameapplies to other genres.Kevin Sutton>
First of all: The BWV catalogue is organized systematically, and did not try
a one-by-one numbering as the K"ochel or Deutsch catalogues. In BWV the
works of a certain type start at some round number or so, e.g. the cantatas
run from 1 to 200-odd independent of the date of their composition.That means: The numbers are not all used. My estimate: less than half of them.
Of the lost works: At most 1/3, because only one of the sons (W. Fr.) squandered
his inherited manuskripts. Shall we try a crude estimate how many of Bach's
works survived? I take the numbers from memory. Scholarly corrections accepted.Cantatas including W.O. 220,
Large choral works plus small masses: 10
Motets: 8
Concertos for soloists/orch. incl. Brandenbg. 20
Suites for orchestra: 4
Chamber music for 1/2 melody instr. plus
continuo or obbligato harpsichord: 24
Pieces for a solo instrument except keyboard: 14
Suites, partitas, concti. for harpsichordsolo 22
The WTP, prelude and fugue counted as one: 24
The Art of Fugue: 20
Early harpsichord works, toccate, sonates, 20
Arrangements after Vivaldi and others: 20
How do they count the Goldberg Variations: 1
Something and fugue for organ: 20
Chorale-bound organ works: 100
Isolated chorales and religious songs: 80Let's add this up after corrections were made.kreh...@desy.de