Liszt Ferenc: A Complete Thematic Catalogue

The first catalogues of Liszt’s œuvre were published during his own lifetime. In 1855, the Thematisches Verzeichniss appeared in print, but this included only a selection of his published works. An expanded version was issued in 1877, although it was still missing many published compositions. 

After Liszt’s death in 1886, it took a long time for there to be any serious scholarship focused on cataloguing the vast quantity of music by this prolific composer. The German composer Peter Raabe compiled the first exhaustive work-list in 1931, revised by Felix Raabe in 1968. In England, Humphrey Searle’s 1954 catalogue for Grove’s Dictionary of Music introduced “S” numbers, which neatly organised Liszt’s works by genre. This system of “S” numbers quickly became the standard for identifying and cross-referencing the music of Liszt both in academic circles and by general musicians. In 2001, Mária Eckhardt and Rena Charnin Mueller introduced a new system with “LW” numbers in The New Grove Dictionary, though its complexities and omissions have limited its use.

The current Thematic Catalogue by Leslie Howard, Minkyu Kim, Aidan Módica and Michael Short is an attempt to preserve and amplify the work-list in a comprehensive and comprehensible way, retaining and extending the Searle enumeration.

The thematic catalogue

- organises all of Liszt's works, including original compositions, transcriptions, alternative versions, and missing or doubtful works. It retains Searle numbers for continuity, while expanding the list with newly discovered works to ensure a complete and coherent reference.

- provides a connected view of multiple versions, transcriptions, and revisions, with cross-references

- ensuring no version is overlooked or misrepresented.

- includes full thematic incipits for all works, making identification of Liszt’s pieces easier.

- documents all known manuscripts, first editions and revisions, along with detailed references to Liszt’s correspondence and significant scholarly articles, offering essential historical context for research.