This box will walk you through different editions and catalogs and their usage.

Performing editions: These are the scores that you'll find on the 2nd floor of MPAL.

• They have been edited by publishers, teachers, and performers to include fingerings, phrasing, and sometimes tempo indications.
• These editions range in quality, but you'll find that publishers such as Henle, Wiener Urtext, Breitkopf and Hartel (among others) tend to put out better editions than, for example, International.

Collected works or Critical editions: These are sets of composers' collected works compiled by scholarly editors to try to give the closest indication of what the composer truly intended.

• Critical commentary is included that discusses any alterations in accidentals, notes, ornaments, and so forth.
• The editors refer to any manuscript sources available and also research whether the composer later made changes (such as notes or cuts, etc.).
• These editions are also sometimes called ‘complete editions’ or ‘Gesamtausgabe’.

Monuments or Denkmäler: Are collected editions that focus on a particular country, region, or type of music rather than a single composer.

Thematic Catalogs: Provide organized lists of a composer's works.

• Many include incipits for the beginning of each work or movement.
• Thematic catalogs can help you locate individual works in a composer's collected edition or locate the original manuscript and other significant copies. 

This box explains how to find Collected Works and Thematic Catalogs through the Library.

Monuments & Collected Works

• Collected editions for composers are primarily classified in the M3s (located on the first floor at the back of the Reference collection).
• Monuments or Gesamtausgabe are in the M2s.

You'll likely need to first find the call number for the set you need. Do this by searching the library catalog:

• You can search the library catalog with the title you find in Grove, Heyer, or Hill, or, you can simply do a keyword search for [composer name] and works.
• Caveat: sometimes we call things by nicknames, and you won't find those in the catalog. Perhaps the best example of this is the Neue Bach Ausgabe. This is what we call it, but the official name, and the name under which it is listed in the library catalog, is Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke.

Thematic Catalogs

To find a thematic catalogue for a particular composer you can:

1. search in the library catalog for the composer's name and catalog or thematic catalog.
2. check in Barry S. Brook's Thematic Catalogues in Music: An Annotated Bibliography ML113 B8955 T4 1997 (Ready Reference)
3. check the Grove entry for the composer, which often lists the thematic catalog before the works list.

You can also use the following tools to identify online thematic catalogs: