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Thematisches Verzeichniss der im Druck erschienenen Composition von Friedrich Chopin

(Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hrtel, [1852])

Gilmore Music Library

Breitkopf & Härtel, Chopin’s principal German publisher, issued the first thematic catalogue of his compositions in 1852. Today we think of thematic catalogues as indispensable tools for scholarly research, but many early catalogues had more to do with marketing than musicology. Breitkopf’s Chopin catalogue lists not only the compositions and their principal themes, but also their prices, sometimes in French and English currency as well as German. Many of Chopin’s piano works are even offered in four-hand arrangements, presumably to make them more manageable for amateur pianists.

   In the past fifty years, several more scholarly Chopin catalogues have appeared; the most notable is Katalog dzieł Fryderyka Chopina by Józef Michał Chomiński, and Teresa Dalila Turło (Kraków : Polskie Wydawn. Muzyczne, 1990.)