Hoboken Number (Hob.)
Hoboken's genre-based catalogue of Haydn, cited as group and number after Hob.
Related
Hob. is the Hoboken number, from the catalogue Anthony van Hoboken published between 1957 and 1978. It divides Haydn's output into more than thirty genre groups: symphonies are Hob. I, string quartets Hob. III, piano sonatas Hob. XVI, oratorios Hob. XXI, with the number after the colon giving the place within the group.
The order inside a group is not a timeline. Hob. I:104 is the last of the "London" symphonies, yet the numbering only roughly follows chronology and cannot be read as a year-by-year list. A single work often has two names: the "Emperor" Quartet is both Op. 76 No. 3 and Hob. III:77.
The usual mistake is to read the Roman numeral as "the first group". I means the symphony genre, not group number one. Hob. says which shelf and which item, not when it was written or how it ranks.
Read deeper → Opus · Köchel Number
Sources
- 海顿 Hob. 的分组与编号，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Hoboken, Anthony van" 与 "Haydn"；目录本体参 Hoboken-Verzeichnis（1957–1978）；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.