The Da Capo Catalog of Classical Music Compositions

Rating:
Summary: Includes these 132 composers
Review: Albeniz Albinoni Bacewicz Bach (CPE, JC, JS, WF) Balakirev Barber Bartok Beach Beethoven Berg Berlioz Bernstein Bizet Bloch Boccherini Borodin Boulez Brahms Britten Bruch Bruckner Busoni Buxtehude Cage Castelnuovo-Tedesco Cavalli Chabrier Charpentier Cherubini Chopin Copland Corelli Couperin Debussy Delius Dohnanyi Donizetti Dupre Elgar Falla Faure Franck Frescobaldi Gershwin Glazunov Glinka Gluck Gounod Granados Grieg Handel Haydn Hindemith Holst Honegger Hummel Ives Janacek Kabalevsky Kalinnikov Khachaturian Kodaly Lalo Lehar Leoncavallo Liszt Lully Lutoslawski Mahler Martinu Massenet Mendelssohn Messiaen Meyerbeer Milhaud Moniuszko Monteverdi Mozart Musorgsky Nielsen Offenbach Orff Paderewski Paganini Penderecki Poulenc Prokofiev Puccini Purcell Rachmaninov Rameau Ravel Respighi Rimsky-Korsakov Rodrigo Rossini Roussel Saint-Saens Sarasate Satie Scarlatti (P, G) Schoenberg Schubert Schumann Shostakovich Sibelius Skryabin Smetana Spohr Stockhausen Strauss (J, J, R) Stravinsky Sullivan Szymanowski Tchaikovsky Vaughan Williams Verdi Villa-Lobos Vivaldi Wagner Weber Webern Wieniawski Wolf

Rating:
Summary: A Great Checklist for Collectors
Review: The Da Capo Catalog is a massive list of classical music pieces, organized by composer and type (operas, symphonies, instrumental pieces, songs, etc.) Aside from being a useful checklist for CD collectors, it also helps sort through the ambiguity and confusion in the naming of some classical works. For example, Mozart's "String Quartet No. 17 in B-flat Major," his "4th Haydn Quartet," his "Hunt Quartet," and his "String Quartet K458" are all different names and designations for the same piece of music, as you can easily see from the clear and concise entry in the Catalog.

The Catalog also identifies works of questionable attribution, revisions, transcriptions, adaptations, and exerpts. Personally I could have done with a bit less of the latter (there are some 70+ pages, for example, listing just arias and other exerpts from Handel's operas and oratorios). Instead, I would rather see included a few more modern composers such as Elliott Carter and Toru Takemitsu. But others will no doubt find the listing of exerpts to be of great value.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Reference
Review: This volume provides an encyclopedic reference of musical compositions that is sure to be useful to the professional as well as to those amateurs like me who enjoy collecting and listening to concert music. A little overwhelming to the novice perhaps, but invaluable none the less. I have never before seen a reference that listed the individual arias in an opera. One quible. The earliest composer cataloged is Monteverdi. As a lover of Renaissance music, I missed Byrd, Palestrina, Josquin Desprez and others in that period. No doubt the material from those earlier eras poses research challenges beyond the scope of the project but the book feels a little incomplete without them.