Anthony van Hoboken was a collector and musicologist. He was born in Rotterdam

Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...

, the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, and died in Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

Hoboken trained as an engineer in Delft

Delft

Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland , the Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam and The Hague....

, before studying music in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 and Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. He began collecting early editions of music from Bach

Bạch

Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...

 to Brahms; eventually this collection amounted to over 5,000 items and is now in the Austrian National Library

Austrian National Library

The Austrian National Library , is the largest library in Austria, with 7.4 million items in its collections. It is located in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna; since 2005 some of the collections are located in the baroque Palais Mollard-Clary...

 in Vienna. He moved from Austria to Switzerland in 1938.

Nowadays he is best known for his J. Haydn, Thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis (published 1957), or Hoboken-Verzeichnis

Hoboken-Verzeichnis

The Hoboken-Verzeichnis is the catalogue of over 750 works by Joseph Haydn as compiled by Anthony van Hoboken.Unlike Ludwig von Köchel's catalogue of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's works, or Otto Erich Deutsch's catalogue of Franz Schubert's works, which are both arranged chronologically by date of...

, a catalogue of the compositions of Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

. Haydn's works are often referred to by their "Hoboken number" (usually abbreviated to "Hob" or just "H"), taken from this catalogue.

Source

Hoboken, Anthony van. In: Haydn (Oxford Composer Companions), Ed Wyn Jones D. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002.