For generations ofclassical music lovers, a “K”-numbered work has come to mean Wolfgang AmadeusMozart, but where did that “K” come from? It stands for educator and scientistLudwig K%uFFFDchel (1800-77), who took up residence in Salzburg, Austria(where Mozart had been born a century before). Here he made mineralogy indexes,categorized botanical specimens and discovered that Mozart’s works were in astate of chaos: The scores were undated and unnumbered, amounting to anundifferentiated mass of symphonies, operas, concertos, sonatas and so forth.How, K%uFFFDchel wondered, could Mozart’s works be properly studied by posterity inthis jumble?
They could not. Thus heundertook a heroic task: putting this repository of musical masterpieces inorder, doing so by retracing Mozart’s steps throughout Europeand becoming an expert on Mozart’s handwriting by following the paper trail ofcorrespondence he left behind. In 1862, K%uFFFDchel produced a list of 626 works,from a minuet Mozart composed when he was 5 years old (K. 1) to the greatRequiem mass he left unfinished when he died (K. 626). K%uFFFDchel continued hiswork for the remainder of his life, collaborating with Johannes Brahms andothers in eventually publishing a complete edition of Mozart’s works.Ironically, unlike Mozart’s infamously bleak passing, K%uFFFDchel’s funeral wasattended by royalty, accompanied by the music of K. 626.
In particular theearlier composers (17th-18th centuries) left many compositions to beauthenticated, numbered and dated. The task was surely cut out for scholars whostaked a claim to one or another composer whose works lay all over the Europeancontinent.
Austrian musicologistOtto Deutsch (1883-1967) worked on the sequence of Franz Schubert’scompositions (known by their “D” numbers), many of which were originallypublished out of order or never published at all. Anthony van Hoboken(1887-1983) was the Dutch musicologist who selected Joseph Haydn for hisprovince (thus the “Hob” numbers). Alessandro Longo (1864-1945) was the Italiancomposer who created a near-comprehensive catalog of Domenico Scarlatti’s vastarray of sonatas. But Massachusetts-born Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-84) has givenus the now-standard, authoritative Scarlatti numbering system (seen as “K” or,so as not to be confused with K%uFFFDchel, “Kk”).
Ludwig van Beethoven andhis successors normally published their works as they composed them (attachingan “opus number” to each), and in so doing posed few problems for thecatalogers. Thus when Beethoven labeled his “Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major (Eroica),Op. 55,” we not only have the work’s genre (a symphony), its place among suchworks (third), its name (“Eroica” means “Heroic”) and its home key (E-flatmajor), but also its position in his total official output (his 55th).
Classical music is fullof numbers and letters, which can be somewhat off-putting to the uninitiated.But the labors of K%uFFFDchel, Kirkpatrick, Deutsch, Hoboken and others have actually made comingto grips with the classics far easier for everyone. They were quite oftenobsessed by the onerous tasks they took upon them, and for this we areeternally indebted to them.
