Rufinatscha's Symphonies: important update

[Mark Thomas]

It won't help the cause of Rufinatscha's music if two numbering systems for the symphonies are perpetuated. Although I do have a lot of sympathy with what Hovite is saying, I don't really mind one way or the other provided there is agreement on which one to use and then we stick to it.

Musicological discoveries are welcome but they do disrupt numbering systems dreadfully! About a dozen years ago I was asked to come up with WoO (Werke ohne Opuszahl) numbers for Raff's works which had no opus number. The result was a neat, logical, sequential system for the 56 pieces, which has been adopted widely since then. But within a year of its publication someone unhelpfully found a song cycle mouldering away in a library and since then a further sixteen pieces have come to light! Wonderful to have them, of course, but it was quite impracticable to go back and change the WoO allocations to the original 56 works. So, the discoveries have been slotted in chronologically using letter suffixes. Not as satisfying as my original system but at least it works and it won't cause confusion with all the recordings and publications which have adopted the original WoO numbers.

[Edward]

It won't help the cause of Rufinatscha's music if two numbering systems for the symphonies are perpetuated. Although I do have a lot of sympathy with what Hovite is saying, I don't really mind one way or the other provided there is agreement on which one to use and then we stick to it.

Musicological discoveries are welcome but they do disrupt numbering systems dreadfully! About a dozen years ago I was asked to come up with WoO (Werke ohne Opuszahl) numbers for Raff's works which had no opus number. The result was a neat, logical, sequential system for the 56 pieces, which has been adopted widely since then. But within a year of its publication someone unhelpfully found a song cycle mouldering away in a library and since then a further sixteen pieces have come to light! Wonderful to have them, of course, but it was quite impracticable to go back and change the WoO allocations to the original 56 works. So, the discoveries have been slotted in chronologically using letter suffixes. Not as satisfying as my original system but at least it works and it won't cause confusion with all the recordings and publications which have adopted the original WoO numbers.

The champion for that is of course, Dvorak's Symphonies...   And then we probably don't want to talk about the numbering of Mozart's symphonies...  Some of the numbered ones he didn't write (like #37 by FJ Haydn's brother Michael) , and some he did, didn't  get numbers....
So, Rufinatscha can join the numbering confusion as well...

[Alan Howe]

The difference with Rufinatscha is that he is hardly known: were it not for the Chandos recording, it would be a simple matter to make the switch to the new system. Even so, I think the change should be made along the lines I have described before.

[Edward]

Good idea - If the interest in him takes off, it would be nice to be consistent

[MusFerd]

I see no reason to do this. There are precisely the same number of symphonies as before, but No. 3 is now a different work. It does no harm to leave the designation of No. 4 to an incomplete work, but removing the number will cause unnecessary confusion. Should Schubert's 7th and 8th be deleted merely because there are incomplete? Would anyone like to try to renumber the symphonies of Mozart? It isn't possible to determine how many symphonies Mozart wrote. Some of his symphonies have been left out of the list, while the numbered symphonies include works written by his father, or by friends. To renumber Mozart's symphonies each time a new one turned up, or an old one was found to be by someone else, would be unhelpful. I hope that Chandos will stick with the old numbering.

Dear Hovite, the problem is that the "Symphony no. 4 in F" by Rufinatscha does not exist, a librarian of the Tiroler Landesmuseum has mistaken a concert aria with a symphony. And the symphonic fragment in C major from Rufinatscha's estate is not only incomplete, it exists only in a version for piano 4hands and bears no date - it can not really be included in the chronology of his symphonies.     

[Alan Howe]

Agreed, Dr Gratl.

[Mark Thomas]

It does seem a fair-enough point. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, cataloguing the oeuvre of a composer newly-emerging from obscurity is fraught with pitfalls like this.