Foreword
J.P.E. Hartmann (Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann, 1805–1900) is one of Denmark’s greatest composers. Throughout his long life he played a central role, not only in Danish musical life but in the entire cultural life of the nineteenth century, although he never became as well known abroad as his son Emil Hartmann (1836–1898) or his son-in-law Niels W. Gade (1817–1890).
Since the 1990s The Royal Library’s research and publication programme has had focus on J.P.E. Hartmann as a composer and as a central cultural figure. During 1999–2002 his correspondence with his circle of acquaintances was published, and in 2002 a scholarly-practical edition of a selection of his musical works was initiated. An extensive biography of the family by Inger Sørensen was also published, in 1999.
A survey of his enormous production has long been in preparation. His works include nearly five hundred works composed over the span of seventy-six years, and here they are presented in a scholarly, thematic-bibliographic work catalogue. This publication, the culmination of its author’s many years of work on J.P.E. Hartmann’s oeuvre, his life and times, is intended as a tool for future research in Danish music- and cultural history of the nineteenth century.
Bibliographic catalogues of composers’ works appear in many shapes and flavours. The scholarly thematic-bibliographic catalogue dates back to the nineteenth century when the music historian Ludwig Ritter von Köchel established an international standard with his Mozart catalogue of 1862. It has since appeared in many editions and impressions (1863–1999), and provided a model that has been developed and followed by musicologists in many countries for other great composers. In Denmark, a catalogue of Carl Nielsen (1865–1931)’s works was published by The Royal Library in 2014 and 2016.
The HartW, the catalogue’s official acronym, has been prepared employing the new database software developed in an international context by the Danish Centre for Music Editing at The Royal Library for precisely such work catalogues.
Publications of this kind cannot be prepared and published without generous support from many quarters. The work started with a personal grant in 2010 from Augustinus Fonden to former senior researcher, Inger Sørensen, so that the project could be housed at the Danish Centre for Music Editing. This was followed by a new grant to The Royal Library when the catalogue was nearly finished, which meant that the preparation of the incipits, the introductory bars of each section or movement for the identification of the musical works, could be completed. On behalf of The Royal Library, it gives me great pleasure to extend my warmest thanks to Augustinus Fonden for this invaluable support.
The Royal Library
October 2016
Erland Kolding Nielsen
Director General
