Johann Adolph Scheibe: A Catalogue of His Works by Peter Hauge

Abstract

Reviewed by: Johann Adolph Scheibe: A Catalogue of His Works by Peter Hauge Jennifer A. Ward Johann Adolph Scheibe: A Catalogue of His Works. By Peter Hauge. (Danish Humanist Texts and Studies, vol. 58.) Copenhagen: Danish Centre for Music Editing, Royal Danish Library, and Museum Tusculanum Press, 2018. [xviii, 555 p. ISBN 9788763545600 (hardcover), $92.] Music examples, bibliography, indexes. This catalog has a surprise ending, but I will spoil it up front: it is entirely available as a free, online database. Peter Hauge's Johann Adolph Scheibe: A Catalogue of His Works, produced by the Danish Centre for Music Editing (DCM) at the Royal Danish Library, is the DCM's third thematic catalog to make the leap from free digital database to print publication, following Catalogue of Carl Nielsen's Work (ed. Hauge along with Elly Bruunshuus Petersen, Bjarke Moe, Niels Krabbe, Axel Teich Geertinger, and Neils Bo Foltmann) in 2016 and J. P. E. Hartmann: Thematic-Bibliographic Catalogue of his Works (ed. Inger Sørensen [reviewed below]) in 2017. Implications of purchasing the book will be explored later in this review. It is most welcome that a fundamental research tool such as a thematic catalog has been created for Scheibe (1708–1776), the "most important composer and Kapellmeister in Denmark in the eighteenth century," as Erland Kolding Nielsen writes in the "Series Editor's Foreword" (p. [vi]). The catalog arrives thirty-eight years after George J. Buelow issued a plea for a [End Page 615] "fresh evaluation" of Scheibe's output in New Grove, calling his compositional oeuvre "unknown" and noting that a proper appraisal of his ideas has been overshadowed by a criticism that he once famously leveled against Johann Sebastian Bach (George J. Buelow, "Scheibe, Johann Adolph," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians [London: Macmillan, 1980], 16:600). With all known compositions and writings (excluding correspondence) by Scheibe now represented in this catalog, Hauge has laid the groundwork to fully explore the musician and author's life, compositions, and thought. The introduction to the catalog starts with a short biography that takes readers through Scheibe's early years in Leipzig and Hamburg, time as Kapell-meister at the Danish court in Copen-hagen, retreat from the capital, and eventual return. Hauge estimates that Scheibe may have composed up to 1,200 works, but a 1794 fire in Christiansborg Palace and the posthumous dispersal of his manuscripts have resulted in an unfavorable source situation for the modern musicologist. Only about 340 compositions and about 40 writings are documented in the present catalog, and of these, music for about 140 of the works is considered lost. Despite this, Hauge produced a volume of over five hundred pages on the basis of a seemingly small number of surviving documents, a considerable achievement (the list of "Source Locations" fits on a single page [p. 555]). Hauge also draws on secondary evidence that attests to musical works or performances, including a large number of preserved librettos and writings in which Scheibe used his own music as examples. Hauge divides the catalog into three categories, each of which receives the abbreviation "SchW" followed by a letter designation: "A" for instrumental music, "B" for vocal music, and "C" for texts; collections are listed separately. A number for the genre, then a number identifier for the work, follows. SchW B1:002 is thus vocal music (B), opera (1), the second work listed (002). The numbering system leaves open the possibility for new discoveries: category A3 has been established for overtures but is awaiting its first entry. Each entry contains an introduction that elucidates the circumstances that brought about the work in question. In the absence of a book-length biography in English about Scheibe, the introductions offer fascinating and detailed background information that connect the work with events in Scheibe's life, people who moved in his intellectual sphere, and other of his compositions and writings. Hauge succeeds in drawing a lot of information out of works for which no music survives. Mithridat (SchW A5:001), we learn, is one of two plays for which Scheibe wrote music (both lost). Discussions with theater director Caroline Neuber in Hamburg motivated him to introduce...