[78-L] Haydn numbers
Rodger Holtin
rjh334578 at yahoo.com
Wed Feb 15 06:05:23 PST 2012
Pulled out my 1929 Victor albums of Haydn's Surprise Symphony by Boston/Koussevitzki and Haydn's Clock Symphony by New York/Toscanini and noticed that they were identified on the labels and albums as Symphony # 6 and # 4, respectively. Same in the 1930 and 1940 Victor catalogs. I grew up knowing these as # 94 and # 101, just as shown in the 1947 Victor Book of the Symphony.
Curiosity sent me to Wikipedia and learned some cat named Hoboken renumbered all that stuff in a 1938 book which seems to have been printed in Germany. So, to me it looks like after the war the free world jumped on that numbering system and it's in use today. I was aware of the K numbers for Mozart work, but never picked up on the fact that a similar system was ever used for Haydn, much less that it had been changed.
I'm fortunate enough to have a copy of the Edward Young discography of Koussevitzki in the Spring 1990 ARSC Journal and he uses the new numbers throughout. If he noted the discrepancy between the labels and the new system in his narrative, I’ve missed it.
My question for the 78-L Board of Experts is:
When did Victor make the change and did they have some announcement or feature article about it in some printed item such as a catalog or monthly supplement? How about Columbia?
Rodger
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