The Bizet Catalogue

Washington University in St. Louis and the distinguished 19th-century music historian Hugh Macdonald have announced the online publication of the first comprehensive Bizet Catalogue, HERE. The project was designed, from the outset, as a website, allowing corrections, revisions, and updating as they become necessary. It was developed and is managed by the Humanities Digital Workshop at Washington University and deposited at the university’s Olin Library.

This is primarily a list of Bizet’s works, providing essential information about the history and content of each one. It gives information on manuscript and printed sources, on documentary materials relating to the composition, performance and publication of each work, and is intended to provide a full historical documentation of Bizet’s work as composer and transcriber.

Some samples:

• Preface
• Short biography of Bizet  
• List of works (alphabetical)
• Entry for Patrie

The Catalogue appears near-concurrently with Macdonald’s new life-and-works, Bizet (Oxford UP, 2014), for the Master Musicians series, where it supersedes its long-standard predecessor by Winton Dean (1975).

Hugh Macdonald is best known as General Editor of the New Berlioz Edition and editor of Les Troyens (1969), Béatrice et Bénédict (1980), and Benvenuto Cellini (1994ff.); the edition concluded more or less on schedule, with the last volume to appear (21: Miscellaneous Works and Index) dated 2005. After appointments at Cambridge and Oxford, Macdonald was named Gardiner Professor of Music at Glasgow University in 1980, where he remained until 1987, when he was appointed Avis Blewett Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. The Macdonalds now reside in Norwich, England.