Alfred Wotquenne
Alfred Camille Wotquenne (born January 25, 1867 in Lobbes , Belgium , † September 25, 1939 in Antibes , France ) was a Belgian music bibliographer, librarian , musicologist and composer .
Live and act
Alfred Wotquenne studied at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels with Louis Brassin (piano), Alphonse Mailly (organ), Joseph Dupont (harmony) and François-Auguste Gevaert (theory).
In 1894 he became assistant secretary and was from 1896 to 1918 librarian of the conservatory. He reorganized the extensive holdings of the library and published catalogs every year until 1912. In 1902 he acquired a large part of the important collection of the Marburg anatomy professor Guido Richard Wagener for the conservatory library.
Wotquenne's greatest merit is his bibliographies of the stage works by Baldassare Galuppi (1900), the works of Christoph Willibald Gluck (1905), Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1906) and a bibliographic study of the Neapolitan composer Luigi Rossi (1909).
Since the publication of the Wotquenne directory , C. P. E. Bach's works have been identified by the abbreviation Wq and the following opus number. This directory was largely based on the work of the organist Johann Jacob Heinrich Westphal (1756–1825), a friend and contemporary of C. P. E. Bach. The revised version by Ernest Eugene Helm (born January 23, 1928) has only prevailed since 1989; the works are marked with an H and a number.
Wotquenne was co-editor of a complete edition of the works of the Liège composer André Grétry begun in 1884 . Some of his bibliographic works remained unfinished, including a catalog of around 18,000 Italian cantatas from the 18th century.
In 1913 he had part of his private collection auctioned. Wotquenne was released from his post in December 1918 on charges of collaborating with the German occupation forces between 1914 and 1918 and of having sold valuable holdings from the Conservatory Library for his own profit.
Wotquenne retired to Antibes on the Côte d'Azur, where he initially worked as a choir director and organ teacher and in 1921 became music director of the cathedral. In 1929 he sold the last valuable pieces of his private collection to the Library of Congress in Washington. He died in 1939.
As a composer, Wotquenne created several religious works that were forgotten.
Fonts (selection)
- Catalog de la Bibliothèque du Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles. 1889-1912.
- Catalog thématique des œuvres de Chr. W. v. Luck. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1904.
- Thematic index of the works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788) , Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1905 ( digitized version )
- Baldassare Galuppi: Étude bibliographique sur ses Œuvres dramatiques Brussels, 1899
- Étude bibliographique sur le compositeur napolitain Luigi Rossi. Brussels, 1909.
Web links
- Sheet music and audio files by Alfred Wotquenne in the International Music Score Library Project
- Comparative table of the Helm and Wotquenne directory.
- Baldassare Galuppi: Bibliography sur les Œuvres dramatiques
Individual evidence
- ^ Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians , 5th Edition 1954, Volume IX, p. 368
- ↑ Thierry Levaux: Le Dictionnaire des Compositeurs de Belgique du Moyen Age à nos jours. Editions “Art in Belgium”, 2006, ISBN 2-930338-37-7 , pp. 714–715.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wotquenne, Alfred |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wotquenne, Alfred Camille (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian music bibliographer, librarian, musicologist and composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 25, 1867 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lobbes |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 25, 1939 |
| Place of death | Antibes |