The concept gradually spread to other European countries and by the mid-seventeenth Century many established composers chose to recognize their compositions with an ‘opus number’. During this period the convention was established in Europe amongst many composers especially those residents in Italy. Using the word ‘opus’ or (Op.), for musical compositions dates back to the 17 th century. Franz Liszt’s catalog of works has an ‘S’ after the musicologist and composer Humphrey Searle and Franz Schubert a ‘D’ after Otto Erich Deutsch. For example, the compositions of Joseph Haydn are prefixed by ‘Hob’ then the number after Anthony van Hoboken. The different cataloging systems adopted by different academics that regularly include a thematic index alongside their unique cataloging methodology have gone a long way to ironing out the confusion and establishing what has been accepted as accurate. This led to the cataloging of composers’ work by an impressive selection of individuals to place each composition in some semblance of the correct order. For publishers in the 19 th Century, it served as a convenient way to keep track of a given composer’s works but for anyone with a deeper desire to comprehend the composer’s life and works not so satisfactory. For musicologists and classical music enthusiasts alike, this makes understanding the sequence of compositions and their context a challenge. What we discover as we delve deeper is that with an ‘opus’ number alone, there is not always a way of knowing the date of the composition or compositions, as the numbers were frequently assigned as the compositions were published. A single work sometimes is referred to as ‘Opp.’ As opposed to a collection that uses ‘Op.’ Less commonly known is that The ‘plural’ of the opus is ‘opera’. Quite often people refer to an author’s best work as their ‘magnum opus’ or greatest, biggest, and best work. Its etymology is as you might expect is from the same Latin word meaning ‘a work, labor or exertion’. The abbreviation, often written as ‘Op.’ refers to this word that means work. You will notice that the word ‘opus’ is used in the context of the composer’s works or compositions. This is because many of Beethoven’s works had no catalog number when they were published leading to some significant confusion about when they were written. This gave rise to catalogs of composers’ works having a variety of pre-cursors like ‘K’ for Mozart’s compositions, ‘BWV’ for JS Bach’s and Beethoven commonly, ‘WoO’ meaning ‘works without opus number’. For many, this was arranged posthumously, and not always with a great degree of accuracy. Keeping composition work in order and cataloged was not something many composers took time to do. Composers are not always known for their organizational skills.
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