Clement Lo:

>This might seem a trivial issue and I don't mind people telling me I'm
>wrong but pieces' names has been something that's interested me for quite
>a long time (ever since I started playing the piano).

It's not a trivial issue, Clement, it's very interesting.  Works' names
often reveals some aspects of what did musicians, editors and audiences
from other times thinked about music.

>Is naming sonatas, concertos etc.  based on one movement justified? Is
>it possibly some musicologists' slight laziness in not bothering about
>remembering opus numbers? (I might be too cynical here).

There are many possible answers for this question:

a) "No", if you think that music can't (or shouldn't) be read according to
any extramusical meaning.

b)  "Not always", if you think that names provided by the composer are
legitimous and those provided by editors, musicologists or audiences are
just mystifications (a frequent case, by the way).

c) "Always", if you think that history and custom can legitimate
everything.

Concerning the lazyness of musicologists, I'm tempted to agree.  Perhaps
the names of many works were "born" of this metonymical custom (in fact,
metonymy is a sort of elegant lazyness).  The same thing happens when you
name a friend because one of its particular characteristics ("baldy",
"chubby" etc.).

>Opus numbers or not, it would seem as though most works (if
>named) are labelled on the basis of their first movements.

Depends on the source of the name.  When the name comes from an
extramusical asociation (Beethoven's "Harfe" quartet, for example), the
basis is often the first movement, as you rightly points.  However, if
the name comes from a quote of other music (remember Schubert's "Trout"
quintet), the source may be a "tema con variazioni" type movement, which
is never the first one in a classical-romantic work.

Pablo Massa
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