Mozart: Finished... ...for some definition of 'finished'!

The new catalogue of Mozart's works is now finished.

All items have been categorised (though some will no doubt disagree with my categorisations for various pieces). Where the scores exist, incipits have been prepared from them and assigned to the appropriate catalogue items. Where recordings exist, 40-second audio extracts have similarly been prepared and assigned.

This means that the DZ numbers are now finalised and definitive: they will not be changing from this point on. Should Mozart musicologists unearth new works by him, they will be added on to the appropriate section, with numbers incrementing from the point they reached on 19th February 2020. The category listings will then, progressively, cease to be chronologically-ordered.

Similarly, if items already in the list are subsequently discovered not to be by Mozart after all, the notes for those items will be updated to reflect the fact, but the item will not be removed from the catalogue or moved into an 'appendix'. No 'gaps' in the DZ numbers will thus arise.

The title of this little blog piece mentions that the catalogue is 'finished... for some definition of finished!' What I mean by that little IT-related joke is that whilst items in sections 1 to 5 already have proper 'long notes' assigned, the list items for sections 6, 7 and 8 do not. Works in these three sections instead have rather long 'short notes' -so long that, in many cases, they wrap and distort the look of the listing. But I need to tidy that all up so that if there's much to say about a piece, it's said in the appropriate 'long note' field, not crammed into the 'short note' one.

This requirement affects 332 items out of the 672 in the total catalogue . So for some definitions of 'finished', I am actually only half-way there!! I hope to finish the remaining 'long notes' for the 332 works, however, by the end of March 2020. The catalogue is nevertheless useful in its current state, so I'm declaring it 'done' (mostly!) now.