Anthony van Hoboken

Who was Anthony van Hoboken?

Anthony van Hoboken was a collector and musicologist. He was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and died in Zurich, Switzerland.

Hoboken trained as an engineer in Delft, before studying music in Frankfurt and Vienna with Heinrich Schenker. He began collecting early editions of music from Bach to Brahms; eventually this collection amounted to over 5,000 items and is now in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. He moved from Austria to Switzerland in 1938.

Nowadays he is best known for his J. Haydn, Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis, or Hoboken-Verzeichnis, a catalogue of the compositions of Joseph Haydn. Haydn's works are often referred to by their "Hoboken number", taken from this catalogue.