The Berlioz Catalogue: History, Structure, Problems, Lessons

Abstract

Anyone who ever tried to piece together the 9 Irtsh Melodtes from Malherbe and Weingartner's complete edition of Berlioz's works (the socalled Old Berlioz Edition, 190s07),1 or to reconcile what Berlioz says about his works in the Mernoires with the published scores that have come down to us, or to understand the chronology of Berlioz's works from the published oeurre numbers and the corresponding scheme used to order Cecil Hopkinson's Btbliography of the Mustcal and Literary Works of Hector BertoZ,2 or had tried to know anything at a11 about Les Troyens, or even to straighten out the true title of the Syrnphonie fantastique-anyone, that is, who had attempted any serious research on Berlioz's musical compositions at a11 would have lamented, twenty-five years ago, the absence of any sort of cataloque ratsonne for the greatest composer of the French nineteenth century. The year 1969 marked, of course, the centenary of Berlioz's death, and it was during the making of plans for that celebration that a number of Berlioz scholars, mostly English in nationality and led by Hugh Macdonald, then of Cambridge University, forged the plans for a new complete scholarly edition of Berlioz's works. They began, in order to test their editorial principles, with a smallish work, the Grande Syrnphonze funebre et trzornphale (vol. 19, 1967) and continued, just in time for 1969, with the single most significant gift of Berlioz studies to the modern world, Les Troyens (vols 2a-c). (I doubt that I need to review the details of how Les Troyens, in its