Background

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the cello has never been so popular, been played by so many people all over the world, and been heard so often as a solo and ensemble instrument. Each year many new works for cello are composed and forgotten or neglected works from earlier centuries find their way back into print or the recording studio. Of all the music ever composed for the cello, more has been published and recorded today than ever before.

And yet there still remains a huge quantity of cello music that is unknown or little known. This bibliography tries to map the whole extent of this body of music, known and unknown. It has been compiled out of a love of the cello, its history and performers, and from a sense of curiosity about all the music written for it.

In compiling the bibliography, the intention has been to include as many works as possible. Earlier attempts to produce similar bibliographies had more limited aims. The Handbuch der Violoncell Literatur by Bruno Weigl (Universal Edition Wien, 1911 & 1929), Vadding and Merseburger´s Das Violoncello und seine Literatur (Merseburger Leipzig, 1918 & 1920) and Edouard Nogué´s La Littérature du Violoncelle (Libraire Delagrave Paris, 1925 & 1931) were early attempts; the repertoire list in Elizabeth Cowling´s The Cello (London / New York, 1975 & 1983) and Cello Music since 1960 by Donald Homuth (Fallen Leaf Press Berkeley, 1994) are others; Dimitry Markevitch´s book The Solo Cello (Fallen Leaf Press Berkeley, 1989) is an outstanding survey of the literature for unaccompanied cello.

This bibliography, however - the result of intensive work and years of research - is the first in the history of the cello to aspire to being complete. Its aim is to contain every work ever composed for the cello, whether for the concert hall, the salon, domestic music-making or for the teaching of the cello. Many important collections of cello music (together containing about 30,000 works), more than 500 books about the cello, all the main reference books and earlier bibliographies have been consulted, as well as the resources of the Internet. In addition, this bibliography has benefited from the help and input of many cellists worldwide.

But a work of this kind can never be complete. Music is being written all the time, and, because the bibliography includes music in autograph score and manuscript, many works are still likely to be missing. When the project began in May 1995, the literature of the violoncello was estimated to be about 25,000 works. By 2003, 60,000 works had been documented. These include 2,500 concertos, 4,500 sonatas, nearly 25,000 small pieces, 350 methods, and 700 books about the cello. Another feature of this bibliography is that it lists, as far as possible, every printed edition of a particular work, e.g. 105 editions of J.S. Bach´s Six Suites for Solo Cello.

To include every work of chamber music with a single cello part would have made this bibliography several times its present size. But chamber works containing an obbligato cello part, two cello parts, or both a cello and double bass part, have been included.

The first edition of this new bibliography is, we hope, a significant step towards completion. The compilers now hope that anyone with additional knowledge will make it known to them in order to improve it still further.

Background

The CD-ROM

The Categories

The Entries