Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum What's up with that?

Well, there's difference between a name given by a composer, which one would have to assume has everything to do with the music, and whatever prosperity chose to rename it. Don't know what 'Moonlight' used to be if anything. But the 'Minute Waltz', which is a title with no sense as it's longer, was originally called 'Dog Waltz', apparently inspired by a puppy chasing it's own tail, and that name makes a lot more sense when you listen to it.

I agree it's crazy hard to remember all those numbers, which is why I normally just don't. I quite often have to search through several mozart movements to find the one I want, even though the number is right there on the screen. If they had proper names, I would probably know all of them by now, so it's something to live with.

If anything, it makes classical music sound very intelligent and high class. :p
Saying "You know that song, Strawberry Fields Forever?" and "You know that piece, Etude in E major, Op. 10 No. 3?" is to say almost exactly the same thing, but the latter sounds extremely impressive. Add to it that piano is already viewed in a positive light as an "intellectual" pasttime, and suddenly our IQs are 100 points higher.

I think I am the exception to the rule

gotta get that in before peterws does

Names simply were not necessary in the old days. Times were very different. Names (other than stating the type of the composition or tempo indication) only started to appear after music started to be published for the masses to play and the names were often given by publishers, not composers. Some composers even frowned at the names given to their compositions by publishers.

Music was often published as sets anyway, not individual pieces. Because music wasn't recorded, there was less need to identify individual pieces.

I personally cannot remember ANY numbers because of my dyscalculia. Not that I remember arbitrary names that much better
It is slightly annoying that I have studied a piece for 2 months and fully memorized it but still need to dig out the score for the K number.

But I still prefer the systematic cataloging and use of op. numbers or similar, it makes it easier to study the composers whole output and also store the music and scores on the computer.

Agree, cataloging is one the best things. However sometimes I want to play KV 279/2.....and looking in KV333 .......and in the Hoboken of Haydn I sometimes lose my way........

Regards,
Johan B

A very good reason for giving numbers rather than (just) names to works is that you get a good idea of the chronological order of a composer's music over his lifetime. This is irrelevant in pop music, but important in classical - for instance, there is a huge difference in style between Beethoven's Op.2 piano sonatas (still influenced by Haydn) and his late piano sonatas (Op.109-111), and a huge difference between his Pathetique (Op.13), Appassionata (Op.57) and Hammerklavier (Op.106) - which their names don't convey.

Opus numbers don't always correspond to the chronological order of composition, of course (they relate more to the order when the pieces were published - for instance, Chopin's and Beethoven's second piano concertos were composed before their first). That's where Kirkpatrick (Scarlatti), Köchel (Mozart), Deutsch (Schubert) and other people come in, with their cataloging......

I doubt we'll ever know the actual order of composition of Scarlatti's works and later scholars don't always agree with Kirkpatrick. To complicate things further some insist on still using the L numbers. But imagine the task of naming 555 sonatas by imaginative names

Cathy

Just think how low our IQs would be without piano!

Before the thread gets too far off topic I thought I'd have a quick go at answering the initial question...

I think the reason is that as tonality developed the music was based more on thematic ideas too abstract to be given a title, the titles would have been too difficult to think of without misleading the interpreter or the titles would have just been meaningless.

When instrumental music began to be written for it's own sake it was largely concerted music (small groups like recorder consorts, not orchestras) or dance music. By the late Baroque when renaissance (modal) music had given way to tonal music the form and the key was description enough without a descriptive title. Also, an opus number or the serial number of a piece within an opus, was enough to distinguish one piece from another.

Most of the pieces in the Baroque period were simple binary or ternary form and the tempo was indicated by a dance style. Sarabandes and minuets were slow dances, courantes and gigues were fast, for example. A prelude was a harmonic progression, a chaconne was a repeating harmonic sequence, a passacaglia a melodic one etc.

It wasn't until the Romantic period where composers began to personalise the music and convey moods and emotions that more descriptive names were appropriate though number and key were still equally significant and names can still misrepresent. Look, for example at the Moonlight Sonata. Moonlight conveys calm rather than tragedy - completely the wrong idea.

Thank you Richard, that was really some good points. And explained in a way that I can get my head around

Not having studied the history of music, made it more difficult to grasp these things, so that is something I want to remedy.

I have lots of Beethoven's music, and the opuses and WOos flummox me too- I'll be like which one is that..? The oh yes, that one too lol

Some I don't forget like opus 130, as so many times I have listened to it...but yeah..

I think they didn't give them titles so as to make the music speak for itself, being absolute music rather than programme music.