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  • Giacomo Puccini: Catalogue of the Works
  • Henry J. Grossi
Giacomo Puccini: Catalogue of the Works. By Dieter Schickling . Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2003. [ 446 p. ISBN 3-7618-1582-2. $167.50.] Music examples.

Many readers may remember a popular undergraduate music history text that made only begrudging reference to Puccini, relegating the discussion of his entire oeuvre to a paragraph. The unspoken judgment was that any work that enjoyed wildly popular success in a twentieth-century opera house was somehow unworthy of scholarly scrutiny. I remember my first national American Musicological Society meeting, in the early 1970s, when all opera was relegated to the Sunday morning slot, and even then the only Italians deemed fit for discussion were Verdi and Rossini.

Happily that is all behind us, thanks largely to a handful of pioneering musicologists who looked more deeply at Puccini's works and their sources. Linda B. Fairtile's survey of the history of Puccini scholarship documents the history of the increasing interest in the composer (Giacomo Puccini: A Guide to Research [New York: Garland, 1999]). A serious hindrance to Puccini studies, however, has been the lack of a [End Page 738] comprehensive catalog of sources. Musical sources for the operas are voluminous, as the composer was seldom content with what he had written, and was one of the great revisers in the history of music, often adjusting things well after the premiere according to what worked best onstage. Relating the manuscript sources to the chronology of the genesis of the work and identifying the relationships between the various printed editions are daunting tasks, further complicated as more sources come to light and knowledge of the composer's work habits increases.

With his masterful biography of the composer (Giacomo Puccini: Biographie [Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1989]), and a steady stream of important articles, Dieter Schickling has established himself as one of the preeminent Puccini scholars of our day. And now he has taken on the task of surveying all the musical sources.

Cecil Hopkinson's A Bibliography of the Works of Giacomo Puccini, 1858-1924 (New York: Broude Brothers, 1968), essential though it is for collectors, is primarily concerned with printed editions; an appendix lists manuscripts. Schickling's catalog, however, gives detailed attention to all the musical sources, including all editions that show distinct musical states of the work. Where Hopkinson lists 26 works, Schickling accounts for 88. The amount of material presented for any one work shows the same degree of expansion. Schickling devotes two to seven times more space for any given opera than does Hopkinson, partly due to the differing aims of the two authors. A bibliography of the printed editions will not include the scope of material needed for a real understanding of the musical sources.

Schickling assigns an identifying number to each of the works in his catalog, in chronological order. Included are all the works that Schickling is reasonably sure were written by Puccini, including 25 composed during his student days in Lucca and Milan, currently inaccessible, but listed in auction catalogs and elsewhere. Schickling includes them, anticipating their eventual rediscovery. After the catalog was compiled, some works listed as "unknown" by Schickling were uncovered in the Puccini family's holdings in Lucca (see, for example, Michele Girardi, "Il catalogo è questo," Il giornale della musica 19/195 [July-August 2003]: 28, and Julian Budden, "Letter," Il giornale della musica 19/195 [July-August 2003]: 10).

The organization of information for each work is under several rubrics: Time of Origin, Performances, Cast, Instrumentation, Incipit, Sources, Literature, and Notes. Schickling's great work in establishing a Puccini chronology is reflected in the first two rubrics, as well as in the notes. The performances listed are first performances of all versions, with identification of the principal singers and the conductor. The cast list includes all roles with their vocal assignments, including the voicing of the chorus. The instrumentation is given in full without recourse to abbreviations or a list of numerals.

Incipits are present for some of the non-operatic works, but not for those "readily accessible in modern editions" (p. 11). Of the 80 titles in the catalog, disregarding the lost student works...

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