Talk:List of string quartets by Luigi Boccherini

I have a question about the list which appears in the article, here, and about our Wikipedia approach to musicological lists generally. I know from JSBach research that reasonable lists will differ, sometimes greatly and sometimes even bitterly, over which "numbers" to assign to which pieces written by a composer... So in the current Boccherini instance I have a specific question: the article's list currently shows the following --

6 Quartetti, G201-206, Op.32, E flat, E minor, D, C, G minor, A, (1780)

6 Quartettini, G207-212, Op.33, E, C, G, B flat, E minor, E flat, (1781)

-- but when I went to look up a Boccherini piece my wife is playing, which is in A and is entitled, "Violin I, Quartet No. 8, Allegro, Op. 33 No. 6", that seemed not to fit... nothing in A in "Op.33", per the article, & besides that's a "quartettini"...

Some digging into Boccherini bibliography today revealed the following:

Boccherini bibliographers have used different numbering systems, and they have mixed them up, so this piece can be both "Opus 33" and "Opus 32" plus a bunch of other things, depending on which bibliography is used. Sort of a given for most composers, in fact, in musicology bibliography...

In Grove's Music Online, the full entry for this Boccherini quartet reads as follows:

"G"     Title and op. no. in "B", key          Date Publication/source
(see   (see below)                                  (see below)
below)

201.6 6 quartetti, op.32 (g), E, e, D, C, g, A 1780 op.33 (Vienna, c1782)

[1]

-- "G" is: "Y. Gérard: Thematic, Bibliographical and Critical Catalogue of the Works of Luigi Boccherini (London, 1969)"

-- "B" is: "Boccherini's autograph catalogue, ed. in Piquot (1851) and Boccherini y Calonje (1879)"

-- the "Publication/source" refers to the first printed edition, which in this case was one which numbered the piece "Opus 33".

The only way absolutely of confirming that the current score is this entry is to match it against the Gérard, the "G" above, or some other thematic reference: and the Gérard does confirm -- our score for the Violin I part corresponds to the score for entry "206" in the Gérard, so the Grove Music Online entry above is the correct one. The Gérard entry shows all of the various other "numbers" which have been used by various folks, for referencing this piece... the whole mess...

Speck & Sadie warn, in their Grove's article, that Boccherini himself was inconsistent, and that later usage has really been inconsistent, as in the case of the current score: they say,

"In his own catalogue, Boccherini adopted a conventional numbering system in which (with a few exceptions) six works of like kind were assigned to each opus. Each opus was 'grande' or 'piccola' according to whether the works were full-length (usually four movements) or short (usually two movements, sometimes called 'quartettinos' or 'quintettinos').

"Unfortunately, Boccherini's publishers used totally different numbering systems; and in some cases his publishers, notably Pleyel, confusingly regrouped his sets and later publishers used new numberings of their own, so that some works can be found under three or more numbers; and occasionally (as in the Berlin manuscripts) yet further opus numbers are appended to manuscript copies. In the discussion below Boccherini's opus numbers are preferred to Gérard numbers where their use clarifies the chronology..."

We might best say here, then, "Opus 32 per Boccherini, Opus 33 per later publishers, #206 per Gérard" -- as Gérard seems to have got it right, on this score anyway. But just calling it "Opus 32" will lead folks looking for the piece to research dead-ends.

So my general question here is, do we use "the composer's own number / Urtext" -- as appears to be the case in the current listing -- or do we use "the latest authoritative research resource number", or what?

Or, why not both, or all 3, or all 7 if it comes to that? In the case of this one Boccherini piece for which I was searching today, Gérard appears to have unearthed 11 different "reference numbers", for this one little string quartet: it seems to me that the miracles of online digital information ought to allow us to give a full citation, instead of the often-misleading incomplete entries and abbreviations we used to use 'way back, pre-Moore's Law even, when disk storage was expensive and paper scholarship even moreso -- dunno who is going to do the work, on each cite offered here, but I'll be happy to do it myself on the piece I was researching today, if others here think that is the way to go with this?

No point labeling things simply "opus 32" in theory, if in practice they've been labeled "opus 33" for 225 years... we're creating search & retrieval nightmares, doing that...

--Kessler 00:08, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

How about, for example, amending the entries here as follows: currently a line shows,

6 Quartetti, G201-206, Op.32, E flat, E minor, D, C, G minor, A, (1780)

-- instead that line in the article would read as follows -- most data checked with Gérard in this example, image by me, other Wikipedians would add other data from other sources too -- it all would have helped me greatly today, having had all these various "alternative" numbers plus a thematic reference, in pinning down which piece my particular score is, as who knows what publishers will scribble into their score headings... -- apologies for image quality, rough draft here for #6, it would be preceded by 1 each for #s 1-5 as well --

6 Quartets: #1 E flat, #2 E minor, #3 D, #4 C, #5 G minor, #6 A

• #6 :

Autographs

• Boccherini, per Piquot (1851) & Boccherini y Calonje (1879): "Opus 32"

• Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek autograph: "M.576 Quartetto VI"

Manuscript copies

• Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek: "M.577"

• Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek: "M.578"

• Marburg, Westdeutschbibliothek: "Mus. MSS. 2005/12"

• Prague, Národní Museum: "XXII. B.58 Quartetto no. 58"

• Leipzig, Musikbibliothek der Stadt: "III.12.13"

• Rome, Accademia Santa Cecilia: "G. MSS. 357-360" (1792)

First printed edition

• Vienna, Artaria: "Op. 33 no. 6" (c1782)

Later printed editions

• London, Kerpen: "Op. 33 no. 6" (c.1782/1785)

• Paris, Sieber: "Op. 33 no. 6" (1785)

• Paris, Pleyel: "Op. 39 no. 12" (1798), [also] "Book 4 no. 3"

Modern editions

• Leipzig, Peters: "Op. 33 no. 6" c.1930? [republished New York : International Music Co., c.1943]

• Milan, Ricordi: "Op. 33 no. 6" 1953 [pocket score, revised by Enrico Polo]

Reference works

• Gérard: "206"

• Grove's Music Online: "201.6 6 quartetti, op.32 (g), E, e, D, C, g, A 1780 op.33 (Vienna, c1782)"

-- yeah, I know it's "long"... maybe there is some better "chart" format we could use?... but Moore's Law says disk space is getting cheaper, and it's impossible to research music scores without this kind of data...

--Kessler 00:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)