THE COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF BOCCHERINI SOURCES COLLECTED BY YVES GÉRARD

Luigi Boccherini

The Centro Studi Luigi Boccherini offers the musicological scientific community, researchers, musicians and any enthusiast an up-to-date research tool on Boccherini’s sources.

On this site, it is possible to consult the complete catalogue of Boccherini sources collected by Ives Gérard for the realisation of the catalogue of luigi boccherini’s works. Each source is presented with a descriptive card, complete with references.

History

At the origin of modern Boccherini studies were the passion for the arts and the patronage of Germaine Alice Halphen (1884-1975), who had married Baron Édouard de Rothschild in 1905.
The Baroness liked to conduct her own biographical research, but was fully aware of the need to rely on competent people for historical-critical investigation; she combined this with the philanthropic inclination, inherited from her mother, which induced her to turn to deserving young scholars, offering them all the financial support and materials they needed.

The interest in Boccherini had arisen in Germaine de Rothschild from a family affair.
In 1937, her daughter Jacqueline had married the great Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976), whom she had met two years earlier in the United States, where he had settled after a period spent in Berlin.
The ceremony, however, had taken place in Paris, at the request of the Rothschild family; returning to Paris periodically was after all a wish of the couple, but they had to give it up for good at the outbreak of the Second World War.
Piatigorsky considered Boccherini the greatest composer of cello music of all time, and felt that his work was unjustly neglected.
However, he soon came up against the difficulties associated with problems of authenticity on the one hand, and the exact identification of the work numbers on the other.
Piatigorky, for instance, was aware that the ‘Sonata in D major’ attributed to Boccherini, which was to be recorded by him in 1964 together with Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) at the latter’s request, was in fact a spurious piece.
Moreover, as a professor of cello at a number of prestigious academic institutions, he had known the difficulties involved in identifying the Boccherini pieces he intended to propose to his students: he had not been slow to realise that the same work number could correspond to different pieces, and vice versa. This need to bring order to the production of his favourite composer therefore prompted Piatigorsky to turn to his mother-in-law, who at the time (1956) was already seventy-two years old, but was more willing than ever to tackle the task.
On the one hand, the Baroness personally undertook the biographical research, while on the other, she contacted a Conservatoire student to tackle the research on the works.
The choice fell on Yves Gérard, who at the time had already graduated in Philosophy from the University and had already attended the Conservatoire’s History of Music course; he was, however, still attending courses in Aesthetics and Musicology at the Conservatoire.
There was very little on Boccherini at the time: only Picquot’s monograph and the list of autograph manuscripts sent to Pleyel, which was kept at the National Library of France.
Fortunately, a rich collection of autographs came to light in the collection of the Opéra: it was Picquot’s personal collection.
Thus, research abroad could also begin: England, Belgium, something from Switzerland, etc.
But of course the biggest problems arose with countries that were then dictatorships, such as Spain, Portugal and the countries behind the curtain, including Berlin.
In Spain, for example, at this time the royal palace was empty, it was very difficult to obtain a permit to enter it and the list of documents it contained was not in alphabetical order.
As for the Berlin sources (precious, let us not forget, because among them were the compositions sent by Boccherini to the King of Prussia), initially it seemed inevitable to give them up, because according to the official version all manuscripts had been destroyed during the war.
Later, however, it turned out that this was not the case: the manuscripts were in Russia, which made it impossible to consult them at the time.
When, in 1968, the catalogue was ready to go to press, the Baroness received news that the manuscripts had returned to Berlin.
The printing of the catalogue was stopped and Gérard went to Berlin: it was the time of the wall, even the suspicions of the guards had to be circumvented, but eventually the work was completed and the catalogue came out in 1969. 

Partners