Thematic catalogs are a type of reference source that is unique to music, but student musicians rarely have experience with them. The results of thematic catalogs are probably familiar to many of you: Köchel’s catalog of Mozart’s work, from which we get the “K” numbers associated with individual pieces, is an early model of the thematic catalog. Usually, a catalog is dedicated to a single composer, like Mozart, but some present works grouped in other ways, such as instrumentation, genre or origin.

The catalogs are called “thematic” because they usually include musical notation of the beginning of the piece (though this is technically an incipit rather than a theme). This means that pieces are identified first by their musical/melodic contents rather than by title, instrumentation, etc. This can be very useful if you want to identify a work, or to verify that the information listed corresponds to the work you are interested in. You will then see a number of short entries about the piece, usually including such information as:

• Composer, and any doubts about the composer’s identity
• Date of composition and first/early publications of the work
• Opus number or other existing identifying numbers
• Original instrumentation or key
• Related work, such as revisions, arrangements, etc.
• Date, location, performer and other details about the premiere
• Dedicatees or special occasions for which it may have been created
• Surviving manuscripts of the piece and their locations
• Bibliography of important secondary literature about the piece

This page is taken from the Schubert Thematic Catalogue, edited by Otto Erich Deutsch; it’s the first entry.[1] As you can see, it begins with the title, including “erroneous” titles that might be used and identifying numbers. Next, we get the opening phrase of each movement, including tempo and dynamic markings. The next section presents a list of manuscript versions and sketches (MS. is the abbreviation for “manuscript”), and who owns them. The date of the first edition–1888– then appears. The editors have then included a paragraph about instrumentation, and explanation of how the manuscript ended up in multiple locations, and what other early copies might be of interest. Finally, they’ve included “literature”: in this case a single citation they deemed important as a reference for this work.

Information about the first edition and the location of surviving manuscript (handwritten) copies is very helpful in finding primary source materials. One important thematic catalog for primary source identification is RISM; we’ll discuss this source more when we talk about primary sources.

In recent years, projects like thematic catalogs have increasingly become projects of the “digital humanities.” Database technology and searching functions have changed the way we organize this kind of information. For this reason, you may want to consult thematic catalogs online. For one example, look at this online catalogue for the work of Benjamin Britten.

Online thematic catalogs offer different possibilities for organization (note that you have to follow links to look at incipits, lists of manuscripts, etc.) They also make it easy to include longer incipits, and even audio incipits, as you can see here. If you’d like to learn more about how this kind of project develops, see this article on its development. It’s fortunate for us that this catalog is in English, but many are not. Especially because of the origins of musicology as a field in German academia, many catalogs appear in German, and others appear in French or other languages. However, the formulaic and abbreviated nature of the catalog makes them usable even if you are not fluent in the language of the catalog: reading the notation and locating important names and dates can be done without reading fluency.