Rufinatscha's Symphonies: important update

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for this information. We would be very grateful for further news of the availability of the DVD...

[Alan Howe]

The issue of using the revised numbering of Rufinatscha's symphonies has been raised elsewhere. I am suggesting here, therefore, that - for the moment at least - we stick to the old numbering system (as used on the commercially produced CDs) until such time as the revised numbering becomes common practice. If there is any doubt, such a formula as "Symphony No.6 (now 5)" could be used. Hopefully, in due course, this might be reversed to become "Symphony No.5 (formerly 6)" until such time as the revised system is widely accepted. However, it may already be too late to change things...

Whatever we do, we must above all maintain clarity. For this reason I do not advocate a wholesale and immediate change to the revised system.

[Mark Thomas]

Has the new numbering been "officially" adopted and, if so, what is the body that has the authority to do so?

[JimL]

I would think that Dr. Gratl's finding that the original 3rd Symphony isn't a symphony at all, and that the newly discovered C minor Symphony is the 3rd should be accepted immediately.  Unless one wants to count the two-piano score of the remaining symphony in the canon.  If you can call it that.

[Alan Howe]

I think we're going to have to wait and see what our Innsbruck friends come up with when they release the newly reconstructed Symphony in C minor on CD. It's no use us doing one thing and the commercial world doing something else.
I'm personally hoping that the forthcoming CD will (a) provide Dr Gratl with an opportunity to explain the revised numbering and (b) actually use the new system. The problem remains the existence of commercial releases using the old system.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, Alan. So the Tiroler Landesmuseum people are the arbiters, I assume? Are Chandos aware of this development, I wonder?

[britishcomposer]

The problem reminds me of Cipriani Potter's symphonies. Perhaps we could adopt a practice which I encountered in an article by Rohan H. Stewart-MacDonald.
He sets each number in quotation marks to make clear that this is the old practice, e.g. "No. 8".

'Clementi's Orchestral Works, their Style and British Symphonism at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century: S. Wesley, Crotch, Macfarren, Potter and Sterndale Bennett'.
Ad Parnassum: A Journal for Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music, V/2 (2007), pp. 7-72.

[Alan Howe]

De facto, Franz Gratl is going to determine what happens. As for Chandos, I have no idea whether they know or not. And so here we have the problem of evolving scholarship as it relates to a newly rediscovered composer: almost inevitably what has been thought to be the case no longer is. But sleevenotes, etc. have already been written. Bolting horses and all that...

[eschiss1]

hrm. RISM sometimes lists a cataloguing system they regard as reasonably authoritative; not in this case I think.  That said, they do list three works as symphonies by Rufinatscha (they never claim to be complete, that's not their purpose)- the first, the B minor, and the C minor that lacks winds and percussion parts (http://opac.rism.info/search?documentid=651006255, manuscript copy (Abschrift) after 1860. Is that the one now regarded as an overture to something else, not a symphony? I should double-check, will do so, yes...)

[MusFerd]

Dear friends, I would plea for the new system (of course, I have to). We will present the reconstructed version of the c minor symphony no. 3 on November 24 (Mals) and 25 (Innsbruck). Since there is no indication for the dating of the three movement fragment in C major, which is for piano 4hands and appears to be a sketch only, I would suggest to exclude this from the canon.  Meanwhile, I have published the announced complete worklist, which will be available online soon. And we have already decided to adopt the new system for our November concert and the forthcoming CD release. The RISM data is old and, in this case, outdated.

[Alan Howe]

This is good news and I am glad that you, as our most prominent Rufinatscha scholar, are giving a clear lead in this matter. Of course, it is unfortunate that the incorrect numbering has been perpetuated on the covers and in the sleevenotes of existing CDs, but nothing can now be done about that - except to hope, maybe, that corrections might be undertaken if they are re-released in the future, or erratum notices be made available, especially for the Chandos CD that has already been issued. 

[Mark Thomas]

It also needs to be widely disseminated in musicological circles but I assume that you have that in hand MusFerd?

[MusFerd]

<<It also needs to be widely disseminated in musicological circles but I assume that you have that in hand MusFerd?>>

I'm doing my best.

[Hovite]

The issue of using the revised numbering of Rufinatscha's symphonies has been raised

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.

[Alan Howe]

I disagree. It is now time to correct the numbering - before an incorrect chronological sequence becomes entrenched.