# The 'No. #' part of a piece's title



## pastafarian (Mar 13, 2011)

Hi,

Very quick question from a classical music newbie. I'm still trying to figure out how classical pieces are described... as an example, take these three pieces:

Intermezzo in B flat minor, Op. 117, No. 2
Prelude No. 4 in E minor, Op. 28
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18: II. Adagio sostenuto

The bit I don't quite get is the 'No. ' bit in the first two. Am I right in thinking that:
- the first example is the second _piece_ within Op. 117
- similarly, the second is the fourth _piece_ within Op. 28, and happens to be the 4th prelude
- the third example is the second _movement_ within Op. 18?

It's especially the terminology of piece v. movement I wanted to check. Thanks for any help.


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## jhar26 (Jul 6, 2008)

pastafarian said:


> Hi,
> 
> Very quick question from a classical music newbie. I'm still trying to figure out how classical pieces are described... as an example, take these three pieces:
> 
> ...


Correct on all counts.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Correct, except for your interpretation of the second one. This is the fourth prelude by this composer, which may or may not be the 4th in the cited opus number.


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## pastafarian (Mar 13, 2011)

Thanks both!

Art Rock - see exactly what you mean, but take:
Prelude No. 1 in C major, BWV 870

From Book II of the Well Tempered Clavier. By the logic you put, shouldn't that be Prelude No. 25 in C major?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

It depends.

Counterexample: Beethoven Symphony no. 6, opus xx - is not the 6th symphony in that opus.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Although it's sometimes nicknamed the '48' I've never referred to The W-TC's Book II as preludes 25-48 as they form a separate opus and were written about 20 years after the first. What I can't understand is why the individual preludes and fugues had to be given their own BWV numbers in the first place.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

Basically: each _thing_ that the composer published has its own opus number. Sometimes that thing is a set of works; sometimes it's just one work.

Beethoven published his 13th and 14th piano sonatas _together_, as a set. They were the 27th thing he published: so they are known as "Piano Sonata No. 13, Op. 27 No. 1" and "Piano Sonata No. 14, Op. 27 No. 2." On the other hand, he published his 12th piano sonata _on its own_: so it's known simply as "Piano Sonata No. 12, Op. 26." Get it?

The _Well-Tempered Clavier_ was not published by Bach, so it doesn't have any opus number. In fact, Bach only published about ten things during his life! In the 19th-century, to make it easier to refer to the hundreds of works he didn't publish, everything he wrote was given a BWV number instead. In the case of the _Well-Tempered Clavier_, each prelude/fugue pair was given a BWV of its own. This was a choice made by the Bach scholars at the time. (So: the Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C major BWV 870 is the _only_ work with the BWV number 870. The Prelude and Fugue No. 2 is BWV 871, and so on. This link might make things a bit clearer.)

Edit: As elgars ghost has said, the two books of the _Well-Tempered Clavier_ were written at different times, and in different styles. That's why the preludes and fugues are treated as two groups of 24, rather than as one group of 48.


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## Webernite (Sep 4, 2010)

In the case of the Chopin _Preludes_, strictly speaking you should write "Prelude in E minor, Op. 28 No. 4," rather than "Prelude No. 4 in E minor, Op. 28." But because Chopin didn't write many preludes other than those in Op. 28, it doesn't really make much difference.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Opus numbers are a convenient way of cataloguing a composers works. They are generally but not always numbered from earliest to latest works, so an opus no 1 would be a very early work,and opus 245 might be a much later work. One of the jobs of a musicologist can be the systematic cataloguing of a composer's works.
But not always. Sometimes opus numbers indicate order of publication,sio an early work which was not published until late in a composer's life or possibly posthumously might get a high opus number.
Opus simply means "a work" in Latin. For example,Beethovern's first six string quartets have the opus number of 16.,and the six are numbered opus 16 1-6. There are 16 Beethoven string quartets in all. 
For Mozart, there are the so-called Kochel numbers which categorize his works.
Ludwig Kochel (umlaut over the o which I don't know how to put in on the computer) ,was a 19th century botanist ,Mozart admirer and amateur musicologist who catalogues all of his idol's works from earliest to last. So when you see a Mozart work described a K.440 or so, it stands for Kochel. 
For J.S. Bach,it's the so-called BWV ,short for catalogue of Bach's works in German. It took many years to arrive ata definitive cataloguer of Bach's works and publish them.
Don't confuse it with BMW,as has occaisionally been done ! (just kiddding).


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Taking into account his mature works were written at a leisurely pace I don't quite understand why Alban Berg felt the need to abandon the use of opus numbers after no. 7 ('Wozzeck').


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I for one am glad this affectation finally started going partly out of fashion. How can one hope to remember a name like Handstein's Concerto for Prepared Rubber Band, Kazoo, and continuo in Q minor, Op.117, No. 3, for example, compared to works like George Crumb's _Black Angels_, or Griffes' _The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan_?


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## pastafarian (Mar 13, 2011)

Many thanks. All becoming a bit clearer now - I was OK with opus numbers (and their equivalents for specific composers), but how individual pieces are numbered makes a bit more sense now. Especially taking the examples of the Prelude in B flat major being the 21st prelude within Book I of the W-TC, and the Prelude in E minor being the 4th piece within Op. 28.


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Here's an interesting article on Wikipedia regarding that:



> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_number


There are composers whose opus numbers were unchronological, haphazard, such as Mozart and Schubert.

In Schubert's case, he published very little on his lifetime that the Opus numbers were scattered when Diabelli published some of them posthumously. Now, his compostions are labeled with D. (i.e. D.956), from Deutsch Thematic Catalogue of Schubert's works. They were arranged chronologically.. (D.960 piano sonata was his last compostion, two months after his death at 31)


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Weston said:


> I for one am glad this affectation finally started going partly out of fashion. How can one hope to remember a name like Handstein's Concerto for Prepared Rubber Band, Kazoo, and continuo in Q minor, Op.117, No. 3, for example, compared to works like George Crumb's _Black Angels_, or Griffes' _The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan_?


Telemann would have spent more time thinking up good titles than composing after his first thousand or so works.

Then there's the other extreme of making titles so long they become hard to remember in themselves. e.g. La Monte Young's _The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as they were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gong, Illuminated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot and the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer_.

A number and a key is just easier.

P.S. Can you recommend me a good recording of the Handstein concerto. Cheers.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

peeyaj said:


> (D.960 piano sonata was his last compostion, two months after his death at 31)


I always knew Schubert somehow transcended mortality, but I didn't think he could do it so literally as this.
cheers,
GG


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Correction ; the first six Beethoven string quartets are I believe opus 18,not 16.
Sorry.


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