Post by Brian SchweitzerPost by Leiv HelleboBut I am a bit shocked after my CD ripper told me yesterday that a
"Modulating Prelude to Concerto for Piano in F major transitioning to C
major, K. Anh C 15.11/(K3) 626aII/I/KV deest Fr 1765a" [1]
This title behooves the study room more than the living room. Do we have
to have to all of this in the track titles?
While the point is admittedly valid, I would draw some exception to
the particular example chosen,
It would be wrong to base an evaluation of the copy-from-CSGS/Mozart
methodology on this example alone. Yet, it clearly shows that the
scholarly-approach-fits-all attitude has its clear limitations: It
should not be necessary to read an instruction manual to appreciate the
hypothetical soundtrack "Piano Teacher 2".
(I am not saying that you are suggesting to use it for soundtracks and
everywhere else, but I haven't seen any discussion on scope and/or
limitations of the CSGS/M yet.)
Neither should I need to have your help to read up on K?chel editions to
be able to decipher my own track titles. (I'd much rather have
"Modulating Prelude, 1765", possibly with the keys, thank you. If I knew
what "KV deest" meant, maybe I'd like to have that there as well.)
Besides: What if the track listing on my CD uses another edition than
that of the CSGS/M, and I'm particular about my K?chels? Then what?
[snip]
Post by Brian SchweitzerI agree, the titles can be complex. But if you put in your common
1. Symphony No. 40 in G minor without clarinets, K. 550: I. Allegro molto
2. Symphony No. 40 in G minor without clarinets, K. 550: II. Andante
3. Symphony No. 40 in G minor withou clarinets, K. 550: IIIa.
Minuetto. Allegretto / IIIb. Trio & IIIa. Minuetto. Allegretto
4. Symphony No. 40 in G minor without clarinets, K. 550: IV. Allegro assai
[Snip No. 41]
Post by Brian SchweitzerThat's not so complicated, is it?
It's better, but not quite there.
I don't really want to get bogged down in a particular discussion on
this or that work, since it to me seems obvious that we do need to
strike the balance between the needs of different user types. At least
we need to do so in the absence of more fields to enter our data and
some yet-to-be-thought-of way of handling them, and in the absence of
the dumb-my-classical-picard-plugin, which I believe will be hard to write).
In short my suggestion on track titles is that the medium packaging
should be regarded as the prime arbiter, with the CSGS/* performing
miscellaneous helping roles, much like we use Wikipedia today. (Yes, I
do think copy-pasting from CSGS/* should be encouraged, but I'm
skeptical towards entering typographically advanced stuff there.))
The rationale behind this I hope is discernible from the following
discussion on your formatting of No. 40, and various related issues:
For No. 40 I think we might disagree on at least three places:
1) Your decision to leave out the common name "Great"
2) Your decision to include the "With/Without Clarinets" part.
3) Your formatting of movement number three
1) and 2) concerns level of detail: How much should we cram into the
title? How do we measure what's relevant and what's not?
3) is not so interesting to discuss, but since I dislike it pretty much,
I'll say some about it.
----
1) Would the title you and CSGS/Mozart suggest be better or worse with
"Great" (or "The Great" or "The Great G minor") included:
Symphony No. 40 in G minor Without Clarinets, K. 550 "Great": II. Andante?
(After all you're currently using this bastard:
Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 173dB / 183 "Little G Minor": II. Andante
)
IMO this should be left to the track listing, and to the ad hoc
discussion among the editor and the voters:
The submitter might say "my track listing has/has not the common name
included and I'd like to follow/override it", some discussion might
follow, but in the end a good enough title for MusicBrainz will be
agreed upon. I may personally disagree and vote "no", but it's good
enough for MusicBrainz.
* If someone takes the trouble to add data for their personal music to
MB, we might do a disservice to the community if we start saying: "Thank
you for adding this, but you should note that the common name you
include here is not present on CSGS/ObscureComposer. Please step aside
while we sanitise this title now."
And do we want to continue:
"If you have any objections to how your formatting of the data on your
CD should be done, then please voice your opinion on the wiki/mailing
lists, and in due course the task force of CSGS/ObscureComposer will
start a serious discussion about in on mb-style, where such discussions
are always concluded in a sensible manner."
If we go for "the CSGS/* is always right", perhaps a common policy on
common names is in order:
"How widely used does a common name have to be to become a certified MB
common name? Does it matter if the composer coined it?"
"What if the composer disliked the common name?"
Without a common policy, the inclusion or the exclusion for each and
every one instance may be reasonably discussed and agreed upon (but
hardly always) by whoever is active at the time of discussion:
"Should we translate 'Rheinische' (by Schumann) for English track titles?"
"What about 'Path?tique' (by Beethoven), then?"
"Is 'Great' and 'Little' relevant common names at all, when we already
have the symphony numbers to distinguish them? Shortening the names is
in general a good idea, isn't it?"
I doubt we will ever be satisfied with what we agree upon, in the
unlikely event that we actually care enough to come to an agreement on
something at all. After all, who cares what common name is (NOT)
included on this particular release from 2003 which some random new
editor brings in?
And remember, the reason we started discussing this is that we feel we
need more fields for the track title.
--
2) With or Without Clarinets
Moving onto something which is slightly more musically interesting now.
(Background: Mozart's early symphonies are without clarinets, but the
late ones have them. For No. 40, Mozart wrote a second version (the NMA
score says "2. Fassung", there is no ArtistIntent for "With/WIthout C.")
of the score where he included a voice for clarinets, and altered the
oboe part a bit. The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (henceforth NMA) has them both.
About No. 40 Wikipedia says: "Notably missing are trumpets and timpani".
Because all orchestras have clarinets these days, and because the
version with the clarinets sound better (according to some review I
found), recordings without clarinets are rare.)
The inclusion of With or Without Clarinets is IMO only relevant in
contexts where both versions of the symphony are present. This may e.g.
be a single disc release, a box set, or - the use case Jim mentioned in
another post - collection wide for the classical freak. In these cases,
this extra information is conceivably useful, much like the cluttering
of performer info into release titles is currently useful for
distinguishing between releases with otherwise identical names.
But, if track lists doesn't mention this, why should we bother?
MBVoter: "Is your version the one with clarinets, or not?"
Submitter: "Uh, dunno, how does a clarinet sound? Do you have some place
where I can upload the mp3's for this, so you guys can help me out?"
[Yes, Submitter probably has the version with the clarinets, so please
think of this as a possible example of the more general case where we
have two or more versions of something. According to the booklet of my
latest H?ndel's Messiah, there exists 10 versions of it...]
Personally, I do know how clarinets sound (at least the modern versions,
I may have trouble picking out the sound from copies of older versions,
and I guess this is more difficult if I have to pick it out from the
rest of the orchestral noise.) Nonetheless, I was previously unaware
that my three recordings of No. 40 all use clarinets. (I've probably
read it in booklets, and forgotten it right afterwards.)
And being somewhat of a classical freak myself, I do think that the
presence or not of an instrument, the use of (perhaps only some) old
instruments, the size of the orchestra, the tempo, the omission of
repeats.... etc. is fascinating.
Still, this is stuff that belongs in some wiki, or perhaps the
track/release annotations. The important thing is not whether Mozart had
the time and maybe made an extra dime on making a new orchestration of
some piece of music.
I do not want by default in the track titles that enter my living room,
because the important thing here is, to me, and for lack of better
words, the "ta-da-dam ta-da-dam ta-da-daaa, ta-da-dam ta-da-dam
ta-da-da" of the opening, and the excitement of the last movements, and ...
A final note: A remove-the-k?chels regexp is probably not so hard, but
the more diverse info you put in there, the more difficult it will be to
write a dumb-my-classical to help out those who just want the minimum.
----
3) Some words on the ugliness of
"IIIa. Minuetto. Allegretto / IIIb. Trio & IIIa. Minuetto. Allegretto"
(First I have to admit I don't even get what you're trying to convey by
the use of "/" and "&". If it's MultipleTitleStyle you want it should be
"/", what's commonly used at MB for classical subparts of movements
within the same track is, of course, "-")
Contrast your suggestion with the track list of my three No. 40:
"III. Menuetto: Allegretto & Trio"
"III. Menuetto: Allegretto - Trio"
"III. Menuetto: Allegretto"
So what if they're inconsistent, and that none mention the da capo? So
what if the last one doesn't even bother mentioning the Trio?
Why should we improve on these titles?
Perhaps even a case for ArtistIntent could be made for two tiny details:
1) Using the colon as delimiter lines up perfectly with SubtitleStyle
and what's on top here:
http://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/nma/scan.php?vsep=111&l=1&p1=161#161
2) The score use "Menuetto", which according to
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuetto is allowed.
What I don't get is:
1) Why should CSGS/M use a bastard form that cannot be found *anywhere
else*? (Why don't scholars use it, e.g.?)
2) How are your suggestions better than my track lists?
leivhe