What does HOB stand for in Haydn's work?

It is intended to cover the composer's entire oeuvre and includes over 750 entries. Its full title in the original German is Joseph Haydn, Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis ("Joseph Haydn, thematic-bibliographic catalog of works"). Anthony von Hoboken was one of the first musicologists to catalog Haydn's works. read more

It represents the person who catalogued Hayden’s music, Anthony van Hoboken. Other composers had different people catalogue resulting on different abbreviations. read more

Opus number 12, for example, was assigned, successively, to five different works (an opera, a concert overture, a string quartet, and two unrelated piano works). In other cases, the same work was given as many as three different opus numbers by different publishers. read more

"HOB" stands for the Hoboken Catalog. Each composition that Haydn wrote was assigned a number. Some of his works for strings are more readily identified by Opus numbers, which allows the grouping together of works published at the same time. read more