Preface
The present database is the first ever, descriptive catalogue of Johann Adolph Scheibe's (1708–1776) production including his musical works – ranging from large-scale cantatas and oratorios to sinfonias, chamber music and to communal songs – translations, fiction and satire, studies on music theory, and history as well as performance practice.
The catalogue's point of departure is different from the traditional ones in that it seeks to include those musical works which apparently have not survived but for which there is clear evidence of having existed, for example represented by the large number of printed librettos. The database provides not only new information on Scheibe, the composer, translator and educator, but presents also new light on the musical life in Denmark and in particular Copenhagen during the eighteenth century.
The Introduction to each work draws on primary sources in The Royal Danish Library, The Royal Archives in Copenhagen as well as other places. Among the secondary sources, the following have been employed in particular:
Vilhelm Carl Ravn, Festsktrift i Anledning af Musikforeningens Halvhundredaarsdag (Copenhagen 1886), vol. 1, pp. 28–98
Vilhelm Carl Ravn, ‘Scheibe, Johann Adolph’, in Carl Frederik Bricka (ed.), Dansk biografisk Lexikon, (Copenhagen 1887–1905), vol. 15, pp. 98–102
Carl Thrane, Fra Hofviolonernes Tid (Copenhagen 1908), pp. 74–95, 105–118
Inge Henriksen, ‘Johann Adolph Scheibe og Det musikalske Societet i København’, Dansk årbog for musikforskning, 7 (1973), pp. 103–24
George J. Buelow, ‘Scheibe, Johann Adolph’, in Grove Music Online (2000) at oxfordmusiconline.com
Ludwig Finscher (ed.), Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel 2005), vol. 14, cols. 1201–05
Peter Hauge, ‘Johann Adolph Scheibe (1708–76) and Copenhagen’, Fund og Forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks samlinger, 50 (2011), pp. 315–43
Peter Hauge (ed.), Johann Adolph Scheibe: Passion cantata (‘Our harp has become sorrow’) (Copenhagen 2012), pp. v–xxvi
Peter Hauge, ‘Composer, translator and educator: Kapellmeister Scheibe and the emerging liberal market during the second half of the eighteenth century’, Fund og Forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks samlinger, 55 (2016), pp. 179–211
Peter Hauge, ‘The critical editing of a musical work on the basis of incomplete performance material: Scheibe’s second Passion cantata, “Sørge-Cantate ved Christi Grav” (1769)’, Danish Yearbook of Musicology, 40 (2016), pp. 9–32
