BY THE NUMBERS

posted by James Reel

    Saturday night, driving from one play to another and then home, I had “Music Through the Night” on the car radio, and as usual the Minnesota-based announcer did something annoying. When back-announcing one of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances, she said, “That was from his Opus—oh, let’s just say his first group of dances.”
    Obviously, somebody at C24, which gives us “Music Through the Night,” has forbidden the use of opus numbers on the air. Judging from how the announcer stumbled over herself to avoid giving the dreaded number, the punishment for noncompliance must be severe, on the order of being forced to listen to Lara St. John’s techno-Bach CD at least twice. A similar guideline, though without that penalty, has been in place at KUAT-FM for several years. The theory is that clogging announcements with a lot of numbers and other technical details will alienate listeners.
    There’s good reason to drop the opus number in many cases. Declaring that we’re listening to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in c-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 isn’t going to be as communicative to a listener as simply calling it Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. If you hear it on the radio and want to buy a recording or printed music, “Moonlight” Sonata is plenty to point you in the right direction.
    Sometimes, though, the opus number is important. Saying that a dance comes from Dvorák’s “first group” isn’t going to help you track it down. You’ll have to do some sleuthing to learn that the “first group” is Op. 46, which is how every recorded and printed collection of that set is labeled. If you want to buy a recording of that particular dance, knowing right away that it’s from Op. 46 saves you a lot of time and trouble.
    Similarly, the opus number is critical to sorting out Haydn’s string quartets. Unlike his symphonies, the quartets aren’t numbered sequentially, from 1 to 68. For the most part, they were published in groups of six, under widely spaced opus numbers, and recordings are usually released by opus number. Announcing “Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat” is tremendously uninformative, because Haydn wrote more than one quartet in that key. Saying “Haydn’s String Quartet No. 1 in E-flat” is absolutely misleading, because it may be No. 1 in the Op. 20 set, but it’s by no means the first quartet Haydn ever wrote. Giving the opus number of a Haydn quartet is a real service to any listener who wants to find a recording or score; withholding the opus number because some consultant thinks it will frighten the cowering infophobic ninnies they assume to constitute our audience is a disservice and an insult to our listeners.
    We need rules, but inflexible rules are created by and for people who don’t know what they’re doing.