Breitkopf catalog

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The Breitkopf catalog , named after its author, the Leipzig scholar and bookseller Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf (1719–1794), is a “thematic” or “incipit music catalog ” that the music trade in the 18th century used due to its size and its detail took a great boost. Instrumental and vocal compositions of all genres are listed with their opening theme and / or the first bars (incipit = Latin: beginning), by which they are recognizable as a whole work for the interested party.

The beginning

In 1755 Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf gave the previous copperplate sheet music printing a new impetus by refining and optimizing the movable sheet music printing types in his father Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf's Leipzig publishing business . With the help of this modern printing technique, he began to systematically catalog his extensive sheet music collection for sale by making each work recognizable for the buyer with a short, printed sheet music incipit. The first printed Breitkopf catalog for the Leipzig New Year's Fair, 1762 : Catalogo delle Sinfonie, che si trovano in Manuscritto nella Officina Musica di Giovanni Gottlieb Immanuel Breitkopf, in Lipsia. Party Ima. 1762. Another five volumes and 16 supplement volumes followed, continuing until 1787. In the subsequent volumes, for example, he replaced the title term symphony in the first volume with other current genre names, e.g. B. Concerti , quartetti or opera titles.

Breitkopf's sheet music collection

In contrast to an individual catalog for a single composer (e.g. the Köchel index for Mozart's works ), the Breitkopf catalog lists musical works by numerous composers from all over Europe, mainly from the 18th century. This includes both well-known names ( Haydn , Handel ) and unknown ones ( Jänichen ). It concerns the several thousand works of music sales collection - secular and sacred music of all genres - which Breitkopf kept in a warehouse; it became the foundation of what is now the oldest music publisher in the world. He himself called the storage place of his notes my officin after the nature of his work on it, the mechanized notation of incipits. The question of how he came to this collection and what the material was like, whether / how many prints belonged to the manuscripts, has not been examined as a whole. He must have started collecting when he was not yet working in his father's business, which he, his only son, initially never wanted to take over. In his reminiscences at the end of the first volume of the catalog, he writes how he "sought to identify the musical works of the composers by cataloging their themes and to distinguish them from one another, just as one differentiates the books according to their titles." so he describes, often "dubious cases" in the author question and "certain, inevitable errors" in the attribution a role:

“How many a quarrel is there not to be found, and how many a secret struggle to overcome, if one wants to give each author his own and to make the pieces that appear under different names [both words emphasized] their true masters theirs? And if in such dubious cases, something like this has often happened to me, you don't get much out by asking [...] "

- Breitkopf's remembrance in 1762

All that is known about Breitkopf's musical training and music cultivation - a basic requirement of his sheet music collection - is that he “dedicated a few years of his academic career to the muses”. He had copies made of the notes for sale to order, the so-called Breitkopf copies . The importance of some Breitkopf copies becomes particularly clear from his tradition of Bach motets. Breitkopf was in correspondence with his customers, whether they were individuals or courts, court musicians, composers (whose works he printed and distributed) or urban cultural workers.

Cataloging

The Breitkopf catalog lists by work genre, not by composer. In each of the main volumes there are compositions (including by Anonymi) of special groups of works, which musicians and enthusiasts can use to get an overview.

New edition 1966 and evaluation

The new edition from 1966 by Barry S. Brook (1918–1997), USA : The Breitkopf Thematic Catalog: The Six Parts and Sixteen Supplements 1762–1787 provides an additional alphabetical composer directory of all Incipit catalogs . Dover Publications, New York 1966. In this practical edition all volumes are combined as a facsimile as a treasure trove for researchers and scholars; "(...) the [Breitkopf] indexes of handwritten and printed music are rightly regarded as a central bibliographic source work".

As the article Robert Dearlings Annotations to The Breitkopf Thematic Catalog and Supplements from 1975 shows on the basis of a lot of research, in the Breitkopf catalog, as Breitkopf himself regrets, one has to have inaccurate author information and numerous double and multiple mentions of different authors for one and the same work take into account; the importance of the catalog, however, lies in providing a comprehensive overview of the genres and currents of European music in the 18th century.

See also

literature

  • Johann Georg Eck : Biography JGI Breitkopf, Leipzig 1794 ( digital version of the SLUB Dresden, PDF, 20 MB)
  • Ulrich Konrad, Jürgen Heidrich, Hans J. Marx (eds.): Musical sources - sources on music history: Festschrift for Martin Staehelin on his 65th birthday . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-27820-9 .
  • Herta Schetelich: Immanuel Breitkopfs publishing catalogs . In: Pasticcio on the 250th anniversary of the Breitkopf + Härtel publishing house (contributions to the history of the house) Leipzig 1968, p. 54 ff.
  • Peter Schmitz: "It is an honor for our nation that a Breitkopff was born in this Seculo" - Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf and the development of the German music trade in the 18th century. In: Carsten Lange and Brit Reipsch (eds.): Composers in the field of tension between courtly and urban music care. Report on the International Scientific Conference […] 2010, on the occasion of the 20th Magdeburg Telemann Festival (= Telemann Conference Reports XVIII). Olms. Hildesheim etc. 2014, ISBN 978-3-487-15197-7 , pp. 238-254.
  • Directory of the music publisher by Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig (1717–1902) . Digital

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Barry S. Brook: The Breitkopf thematic catalog: the six parts and sixteen supplements 1762-1787 . Dover Publications, New York 1966 (complete reprint of all volumes, with introduction and index).
  2. ↑ Johann Georg Eck : Biography of Mr. Joh.Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopfs , Leipzig 1794 ( digital copy of the SLUB Dresden, PDF, 20 MB)
  3. ↑ According to the estimated number of entries, there must be several thousand pieces of music.
  4. ↑ So the date of the signature of Breitkopf's Nacherinnerung at the end of the first volume ( digitized in the Google book search).
  5. ↑ See Breitkopfs Nacherinnerung 1762 at the end of the first volume of the catalog. ( Digitized in the Google book search).
  6. ↑ Johann Georg Eck: Biography / Mr. Joh. Gottlob Immanuel / Breitkopfs. 1794, pp. 2 to 4.
  7. ↑ Johann Georg Eck: Biography / Mr. Joh. Gottlob Immanuel / Breitkopfs. 1794, p. 11.
  8. ↑ Uwe Wolf : On theschichtschen type print edition of Johann Sebastian Bach's motets and their position in the work tradition. In: Jürgen Heidrich, Hans Joachim Marx, Ulrich Konrad (eds.): Musical sources, sources on music history: Festschrift for Martin Staehelin on his 65th birthday. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-27820-9 , pp. 269–286, here pp. 280 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  9. ↑ Ernst Suchalla (editor and commentator): Letters from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf and Johann Nikolaus Forkel. Hans Schneider, Tutzing 1985, ISBN 3 7952 0470 4 . This is mostly about prints for the composer and their prenumeration and sale. With register of other people involved.
  10. ↑ Peter Schmitz 2014: It's an honor for our nation (...) p. 244.
  11. ↑ In: Haydn Yearbook IX , Vienna 1975, pp. 256–302.
  12. ↑ Breitkopf's afterword to the first volume in 1762 ( digitized in the Google book search)