Gabriel Fauré: Catalogue des œuvres by Jean-Michel Nectoux (review)

Thematic catalogs in music form an important output in musicological research and are always eagerly awaited. The current catalog, published as part of Bärenreiter's Œuvres complètes de Gabriel Fauré, certainly lives up to expectations. It is a thoroughly researched and well-presented volume that gives a comprehensive overview of works and sources.

To the Fauré scholar, Jean-Michel Nectoux, general editor of the series and author of this catalog, will need no introduction. Beginning in 1968, Nectoux's career focused on the life and works of Gabriel Fauré. He visited the archives then kept by the family and subsequently cataloged the collections donated to the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in 1978. Nectoux's name appears in any significant Fauré bibliography, and he is eminently well placed to tackle this extensive project as a key contributor to Fauré research since the 1970s.

In his introduction to the catalog, Nectoux provides the context for source studies relating to Fauré, with an emphasis on manuscript music and correspondence but also including other available documents. The description of Fauré's problematic relationship with his publishers and a patchy, partly retrospective assignment of opus numbers is of particular relevance for Nectoux's choice of structure for the thematic catalog. An earlier catalog of Fauré's works by Octave Séré (pen name of Jean Poueigh) in Musiciens français d'aujourd'hui (Paris: Mercure de France, 1911) orders compositions by genre. Later came lists of works according to opus numbers, in particular through the work of Philippe Fauré-Fremiet, Fauré's youngest son. Further research and a detailed study of available manuscripts and correspondence enabled Nectoux to establish a more precise chronology, which forms the basis of the new system of "N" catalog numbers. Nectoux allocates an N number to each composition, with lower case letters referring to different versions of the same work and numerical subdivisions to individual songs in song cycles. Songs that were published together but were not composed as a song cycle carry unique N numbers.

The main body of the catalog consists of detailed descriptions of each work. Entries include the following components: N number, opus number, title, scoring, key, music incipit, literary incipit, duration, source of texts, description of manuscript sources, date of composition, dedicatee, date of first performance, publishing contracts and successive editions, transcriptions, comments, and bibliographic references.

The comments are a great source of information for users of the catalog. For the earlier works, the exact chronology is difficult to establish, and Nectoux illustrates and justifies estimated dates based on supporting documentation. When comparing the N sequence and entries with Nectoux's worklist for Fauré in Grove Music Online, we find that Nectoux's continuing research has unearthed new information that has influenced the estimated year of composition (entries N12, N17) and original key of songs (entry N23). The comments clarify the reasoning behind many choices made by Nectoux where information is ambiguous or possibly contradictory. In the case of entries N12 and N17, he bases their order in the catalog and the assignment of N numbers on the manuscript date (1869) rather than a possible earlier date as described in the comments.

That being said, the comments do not explain everything. For example, it is not clear from looking at the entries why N18 and N19, estimated to be composed around 1863, follow a sequence of works composed in 1869. In his introduction, Nectoux states that "as far as possible, [the catalog] lists the works in their chronological order of composition" (p. xxiii), but the reason behind this exception is not made clear, which might make the catalog confusing for budding Fauré scholars. The same concern applies to various other entries throughout the catalog. In some instances, if the N number is not based on the manuscript, the determining factors appear to be the publisher contract, first edition, first performance, or...