the above mentioned symphony by Sergei Rachmaninoff It means "work." Its just a way of cataloging the work of different composers. Opus is a simple word for works. That's it. I don't really know why I'm responding; you already have the correct answer from responders #-1 and #-2: I think that it is either Latin or Italian for "work".
Sergei Rachmaninoff: his 2nd Symphony and 2nd piano concerto, are two of my favorites. And the "Symphonic Dances, and the "Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini".
So I guess why I responded, was to share with you the above mentioned compositions. They are very beautiful; but don't seem to be much in vogue nowadays. Don't know why.
Wotan Opus, as has been said, mean's 'work'. Opus 27 means that this was Rachmaninoff's 27th work that he thought was good enough to publish as his opus.
If he were to write something really bad, he might not publish it, so it wouldn't be given an opus number. Indead, opus means 'work' and compsers use it to number their works.
Opus 1 however doesn't have to be someones first work. A lot of composers don't number early works and start only at the time that they consider their works to be good enough.
Beethoven for example wrote a lot of music. Some works didn't have an opus number at all, but some works good enough to get mentioned did get a pseudo opus number.
woo (werke ohne opuszahl)
A lot of composers didn't catalogue their own music, so no opusnumbers exist for them.
F.a. Bach didn't and Mozart didn't so others did it for them. That's why we know BWV (Bachs werke verzeichnis) and KV (K枚chel verzeichnis) for Bach and Mozart. "opus" means work
therefore "opus" 27 would mean it was his 27th work/piece opus = Latin word meaning "a work" ~ the plural is: opera !!
... a "magnum opus" is a person's great work,
as opposed to something trivial he might have written or composed or painted ....
...."m.o." ~ is short for "modus operandi" which
means "a person's way of working" ....
and is pronounced "emm oh" ..... so if you are mystified by someone's behaviour, you might ask, "Well, just what is his 'm.o.' anyway???" Meaning, "Just what makes him tick ???"
to make certain of any of this information:
Opus - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus Opus means work in Latin. But sometimes you would also see instead of that word, it is replaced by something else. Example:
1. BWV. No, it's not a new BMW. This refers to Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, or simply Bach's Works Catalogue. Some bloke named Wolfgang Schmieder assigned these numbers for works that are (believed to be) authentic works by Johann Sebastian Bach. Works that are of uncertain authenticity are placed under BWV Anhang (BWV Appendix), and it looks like this: BWV Anh.
2. Hob. This means that the body of work was catalogued by Anthony van Hoboken. He mainly catalogued works by Haydn.
3. K, or KV. This means K枚chel (or K枚chel Verzeichnis), the person's name who catalogued mostly Mozart's works.
3. Op. post. This means the work was published posthumously.
So far those are the ones that I find different from usual. Hope that was informative. Belongs To Mr. Holland | 