The Frescobaldi Thematic Catalogue Online

The New JSCM Instrumenta Edition

The Frescobaldi Thematic Catalogue Online was created in 2008-2010 and during its first eleven years was hosted by Duke University. In those years the site was visited by countless musicians and scholars from all over the globe. One feature has proven particularly useful: the catalogue provided for the first time catalogue numbers for every known composition of Frescobaldi, the “F numbers.” F numbers have since been introduced on several online reference sites. including The Grove Music Online, the RISM Catalogue of Musical Sources, MusicBrainz, the Catalogue of Works in Hammond (2020), as well as in the Frescobaldi Opere Complete and the new Bärenreiter edition of the complete keyboard works (ed. Stembridge).

In the summer of 2021 I was informed by the University that the software with which the FTCO was written would no longer be supported and that major updating would become necessary. Since this involved a radical transformation of the database software, I decided it would be a good moment to realize a hope I had entertained for some time: to have the FTCO join the JSCM Instrumenta series. This is a collection of databases hosted by the online Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, which was initiated in 2007 by then Editor-in-Chief Bruce Gustafson and already includes five databases of great utility to scholars in the field. The current Editor-in-Chief welcomed my plan with enthusiasm and the firm of Crooked River Design was enlisted to handle the migration and to design and develop the new site.

The new FTCO edition looks rather different from the original version on the Duke site but provides the same services as well as a few new features. At the same time, those familiar with the other Instrumenta volumes will note that the FTCO does not conform in every aspect to the norm set by those volumes. This is for two reasons. When the FTCO moved to JSCM Instrumenta, it was already a pre-existing entity. Furthermore, it is constructed in an entirely different manner: the earlier Instrumenta volumes are based on searchable PDF files, while the FTCO is a relational database, allowing compound searches on virtually all its elements.

The move of the FTCO was made possible by the cooperation of three people to whom I am much indebted: David Tremmel of Duke University’s Trinity Technology Services, Chris Borgmeyer of Crooked River Design, and Lois Rosow, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music.

Alexander Silbiger
General Editor and Project Director of the Frescobaldi Thematic Catalogue Online
October 2021