Robert Schumann – Thematisch-Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis

The long-awaited comprehensive bibliographical study of Schumann's musical oeuvre has now been realized in the Robert Schumann Thematisch-Bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis. Circumstances have afforded the unique opportunity to produce a new thematic catalogue of all the works of this major 19th-century composer parallel with the evolving Robert Schumann - Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke. Launched in 1991, the cataloguing project immediately benefited by access to the foundational collection of primary and secondary sources already assembled for the editorial project. Promotion of the cataloguing project led in turn to additional sources. The catalogue thus draws on music manuscripts and contemporary music editions located in some ninety archival and private collections throughout Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia. In addition to the source citations, the catalogue entries for the 148 works with opus number also contain detailed contextual information for each work: notes on origin and publication (with numerous citations from letters, many still unpublished), and on early performances, including important pre-publication trial performances. Documentation of the dissemination and reception history of the works is also presented through contemporary reviews of performances and music editions, listings of subsequent issues of first editions and of arrangements for alternative performing media prepared by the composer or under his supervision, and after his death, during the 30-year copyright term, by arrangers commissioned by his publishers.

The catalogue addresses systematically for the first time ever the composer's musical estate in its entirety, organizing and providing identifying numbers for 275 items. These include the eight surviving works Schumann had already published (without opus number) or planned for publication (WoO 1-8). In a multi-section general appendix A to R is a cogent presentation by genre of his workshop miscellany comprising extant occasional pieces not intended for publication, fragmentary works, sketches and sketchbooks, compositional plans, and the extensive collection of juvenilia, together with numerous arrangements, transcriptions, studies, and editions of works by other composers. Source citations, historical and bibliographical details are supplied for the estate items as relevant. The extraordinarily numerous and close connections among estate items and between estate items and the works with opus number have been documented by a network of cross-references to illuminate Schumann's development as composer and his compositional procedures.

Valuable aids for using the catalogue are provided by a bibliography and 18 indices. The foreword and introduction appear in both German and English, the body of the catalogue is in German only.

The cataloguing project has been principally funded by the Peter-Klöckner-Stiftung, Duisburg. Additional financial support has come from the Union der deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften represented by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur - Mainz; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Berlin; the Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and the Sächsisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst, Dresden; the Deutsche Bank AG, Düsseldorf, Degussa AG, Düsseldorf, and G. Henle Verlag, München.

With its detailed documentation of surviving manuscript sources, corrected proofs for first editions, and original prints, as well as its wide-ranging historical information on the origin, publication and reception of the individual works, this catalogue raisonné of Schumann's music will be indispensable to the student of the composer as a comprehensive sourcebook, and will likewise be welcomed by admirers of his art as a reference guide to his complete oeuvre.