The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part1) The anatomy of a composition To tag classical music properly we need to mention the composition which the most fundamental and complicated piece of information, hence the topic of Part 1. When we are faced with a text describing a piece of music, like W.A. Mozart’s Symphony in C No. 41 “Jupiter” K551 or L. van Beethoven’s Opus 59 No. 2 String Quartet No. 8 in E minor “Rasumovsky”, what does it all mean? We are going to try to shed a bit of light on this esoteric topic…. Name or form Usually the first word describes either the scale or the form of the piece. This name can vary of lot: from typical names like sonatas and symphonies to rare ones such as cassations, partitas or even new ones invented by the composer himself such as nocturnes (yes, before Mr. John Field [1782-1837], that stuff did not exists). A Symphony involves a whole orchestra, a quartet four players (I know you guessed that one), a sonata can be one to three etc. Look at Wikipedia for a complete description of all musical forms; it excels at that. Instruments Pretty self explanatory, a piano sonata or a violin concerto involves the instrument(s) stated. However, sometimes the piece is performed by another instrument than the one intended, so it can get a bit confusing. For example, J.S. Bach’s Chaconne for violin has been played with a guitar or a piano. Or, a suite for keyboard can be performed either with a harpsichord, a piano forte or a piano. But in most cases when a piece is written, say, for a violin, a violin is the instrument one hears, a fact I find most comforting. Altough another instrument not mentioned anywhere, such as a piano or a harpsichord could be heard too, but ignore it. Opus The Opus (or Op.) designates an order in publication for a composer. It has different meaning during the Baroque era or later. During the Baroque, the composer would try to compile his best works irrespectively of the date of composition in order to get money from the publication and sales of the scores. Later on, most composers did catalogue their work themselves in order of completion. For example: Vivaldi’s famous “Four Seasons” were packaged in the Opus 8 “Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione”, twelve violin concertos all written between 1723 to 1725. Now remember for later that an Opus can be composed (no pun intended) of more than one composition. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Beethoven catalogued his compositions himself except when… he did not; because he did not think there were important enough or who knows what was going on in this old grumpy man’s head. As consequence the (in)famous

Bagatelle in A minor, WoO 59 ‘Für Elise’ that any piano beginner destroys ad infinitum is WoO (without Opus) number 59. This lack of opus is also true of most of Beethoven’s vocal music. Another exception has to do with the speed of the Grim Reaper; composers did not always have the time to do it themselves, so it gets published by, of course, somebody else. An example of this is Schubert’s extraordinary three last piano sonatas, which were written in the last months of his life, but were not published until about ten years after his death; they are written Op. posth[umous]. Ranking This part has to do with the No. abbreviation, Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, conveniently numbered 1 to 9, usually in chronological order. In the same fashion, but nothing is that simple in life, Mozart wrote 40 symphonies, numbered 1-41 (gotcha here). Because the Symphony No. 37 in G major, K. 444 was actually composed by Michael Haydn (brother of the more famous Joseph) and was removed from Mozart’s catalogue. So expect to sometimes have gaps in the numbered list due to historical factors. Going back to our first example: for L. van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 8 Opus 59 No. 2 in E minor, you will notice that there are two numbers No. 2 and No. 8 (these old guys are really tricky). Now if you recall from above (if not, pay more attention or seek medical help immediately) an Opus may have more than one piece (in the case of Op. 59, three), so the No. 2 represent the sub-opus number (the second piece within the Op 59). This number is always the one that appears closest to the word Opus; the No. 8 is the absolute ranking among the whole collection of Ludwig van’s sixteen string quartets; crystal clear by now… Catalogue The amazing thing about human beings is their diversity (do not worry nothing very profound is coming after that). Some people actually spent their entire life running after dusty manuscripts and letters in attempt to catalogue a composer’s complete work, and that was way before the creation of federal grants. So I guess they were really into it, baffling if you ask me. Ludwig von Köchel (1800-1877) is responsible for W.A. Mozart’s list of compositions, abbreviated with K or KV. Why V? Because “Verzeichnis” means register in German, but it omitted sometimes. So, the Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183 (173d B) the K. 183, is the original number, but of course this catalog has been amended several times, leading to ambiguity over some K numbers, one of which was renamed, “173d B”, just to mess with us. Moreover, very few of Mozart’s compositions have Opus numbers, because he hardly published anything during his lifetime, so numbering by Opus numbers would be impractical. So the K number is the way in this case. Some catalogues are arranged by genre (a thematic catalog), while others, as we saw with Mozart, are in chronological order. For Johann Sebastian Bach, we have BWV (Bach-WerkeVerzeichnis i.e. Bach Works Catalogue). By the way, notice that the scholar involved in this enterprise, Mr. Wolfgang Schmieder does not appear anywhere in the initials (unlike Köchel) – W does not represent Wolfgang but work. The BWV catalog is thematic so a lower number does

not mean it is an earlier composition, Bach’s cantatas are numbered BWV 1 to 244 and Violin concertos BWV 1046 to 1051. For the thicker part of our audience, let us clarify a bit: Bach the father did not start composing cantatas at 18 years old only to suddenly switch to solely writing concertos at around 45. Tonality Tonality denotes the musical key of the piece. Obviously, this does not apply to some examples of atonal modern music, nor to opera or sacred work. If you want to learn more about it, consult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonality. Because I understand as much about musical theory as I do for indoor marine plumbing, I just know it is the part that starts with “in” like “in E minor”, sometimes it can be stated with the do, re, mi scale instead of the C, D, E notation for foreign recordings. Moreover, you might have the word Major/Minor, or the half tone flat/sharp for the note. It may happen that, for not so famous composers, (I could not write minor here) that is all you have, for example: Jiránek, Concerto for Bassoon in G minor (who knows this guy?), so the tonality can be a crucial way to identify and correlate a composition with the instrument. Nickname Sometimes another name is added to a composition usually in single or double quote. This is the nickname. Because many musicians needed patrons to survive, it could be the name of the person who commissioned (translate bought) the work. As far as the String Quartets Opus 59 “Rasumovsky”. Count Rasumovsky having excellent taste in music asked Beethoven to write few pieces for him for a fee. It could also be a dedication, a grateful note to thank for a past favor or a kissing of rump in the hopes of a future position at court. There are other types of nicknames; the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 “Emperor “ was coined as such by the unscrupulous publisher hoping to make more profit using a catchy name. Nearly never, these (often silly) names are given by the composers themselves. A few make sense but most often they seem to have been chosen by a party of musicians inspired by a few barrels too many of schnapps. How about “razor”, “donkey”, “the joke” and “How do you do” to prove my point? By now we are all expert in decrypting compositions, so we can go to the next phase (Part 2) on how to use this for tagging our music audio files….

The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part 2) Tagging classical music is not an easy task, partly due to the shortcomings of the current number of fields proposed by most data sources that cater more for Rock music; but also due to the more complex nature of this musical style. After having digitalized a few thousands of CD s, we came up with the following solution. However at time, there no one unique way to perform this task, we will try to explain why…..By the way if you still think that “Orchestral suite #3 BWV1069 “refers to the 3rd room for the sole use of the musicians, followed by a Zip code, please refer to Part 1 at once… 1. A) Here is a list of all tags at your disposal first the usual: 2. Album 2. Artist 3. Genre 4.Composer (sometimes) 3. B) Then the ones we introduced: 4. Period or style 2. Album Artists (aka Performers) 3. Instruments 4. Grouping 5. Composition A-1 Album Now you can keep the album as album, we introduced a composition field so you do not have to fudge things by writing the composition there. You may want to check that the main performer is duly noted. The album rightfully called Mozart: symphonies 36-41 is moderately descriptive, given these have been recorded hundreds of times. So Mozart: symphonies 36-41; Walter would add a little something. Be the judge… A-2 Artist Absolutely redundant and useless, but you need it to keep backward compatibility with the rest of the world, portable devices included. We recommend you copy the composer there. A-3 Genre Usually, it has the value “Classical”, which is as useful as a comb for Yul Brynner, especially if you have created a library consisting solely of this type of music: You know it is classical, thank you! We give you the opportunity to assign a much more detailed meaning, with a tree like structure (see picture below). You can modify this list easily if you wish. It would show

Symphonic Music > Ballet.

A-4 Composer Hopefully self explanatory, with our MusiCHI Clean feature and database, we will normalize the spelling and indicate its birth dates and a default period or style (see more B-2). No more of:Beethoven, Ludwig van and L. van Beethoven (1770-1827)followed by Ludwig Van Beethoven which will create thee different entries for the same guy, so you are sure to spend unnecessary

time to find a particular piece spread across you library, if you ever find it. The only point of contention would be transcriptions (see more below) for example, Busoni’s transcription of J.S. Bach’s violin chaconne, would you pick: Busoni, Ferruccio (1866-1924) or Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750) and make a mention of the other composer in the composition field. Again it depends…if you feel that Ferrucciocontributed enough in the matter, vote for Ferruccio else elect the original owner. B-1 Period or Style This field is a kind of a “time value” variable, such as Baroque orRomantic, which is very useful for selecting music depending on the mood and time of day: breakfast-> Baroque, candlelight diner-> NOT Medieval, unless…well make your pick. You might disagree at first glance: Vivaldi corresponds to Baroque; Chopin to Romantic, so one composer has a one to one relationship with an area/musical style (which we kindly provide a default value automatically with our MusiCHI Clean). Nope! Let us take the example of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), this naughty boy initially developed a highly lyrical tonal language that one can classify as “post romantic” or “romantic “ depending where you situate the cut off years, but then treacherously started to compose completely atonal music which you have to categorize as “Modern”. So there depending of the CD you bought you have to decide. It gets worse; Franz Liszt (1811-1886), a Romantic for sure, was very capable of composing his own stuff but wasted an enormous amount of time stealing other’s music so he could play these tunes, selfishly on his piano. Among others Johann Sebastian Bach, so this transcription “Adagio from Sonata for violin & keyboard No. 4 in C minor, BWV 1017”; which period would you assign “Romantic” or “Baroque”. It depends if you are into the strict chronological order of things or the style of the music itself… B-2 Album Artists (aka Performers) One of the main reasons why the “Artist” field is useless, it can only accommodate one line, which is fine if you are going to just put Frank Sinatra there. But already, when Franky does a duet things start to get tricky…For classical, more often than not, many actors are involved. Our Album Artists is multi line so there is room for everybody and their roles, for example a Vivaldi’s opera Bejazet: Fabio Biondi [Conductor] Europa Galante Patrizia Ciofi [Soprano] Vivica Genaux [Mezzo-soprano] Elīna Garanča [Mezzo-soprano] Marijana Mijanovic [Alto] Ildebrando d’Arcangelo [Bass-baritone] David Daniels [Countertenor] You see, we really meant everyone, for a less crowded production a Mozart’s piano concerto (note multiple roles): Murray Perahia [Piano][Conductor] English Chamber Orchestra As a convention, there is no need to assign a role to an ensemble. But one could, for example: English Chamber Orchestra [Orchestra]

But just now, you had a glimpse of why it might be optional; but if you feel deprived of something, a smart work around would be to list everyone and their instrument from the first violin to the titular of the timbales. Optional as well… The MusiCHI database manager will parse the lines and create one unique entry for each person/entity in the Album Artist Column. That is why we offer the same data cleaning feature that we have for composers. You would be surprised by the many possible combinations that existed for Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, our clear winner in term of multiple occurrences. You may find all these, and more, among various data providers: Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Academy of St Martin in the Fields Academy Of St. Martin In The Fields Academy Of St Martin In The Fields Academy of st Martin in-the-fields We stop here not to bore you, but the list is considerably longer… B-3 Instruments We introduced this field (also with a tree structure), see the image below. At times you might feel a bit down and want to cheer up a bit by listening to a mandolin concerto, what else is there, really? (Not that there is yet, a proven correlation between mandolin acoustics and depressive states: The results are still under serious debate among academicians). Or you would like to remain miserable and select Viola de gamba or Cello Solo (Off the record, we have been told that, here, they are much closer to achieve significant results). At any rate, with our system you may select the instrument you want and alter your mood accordingly. How to fill it up? The purpose is to input there, the main instruments of the piece. It is a multi-line field too, because you may have more than one instruments being the stars of the show, for example: Mozart, Flute & Harp Concerto, you would pick, stating the obvious, (04.03) Winds>Flute and (03.07) Strings>Harp. Please refrain, once again, for a symphony, to list all the instruments involved; (01.01)

Ensemble>Orchestra or even nothing is fine.

For older Baroque pieces, we feel it is optional to list the basso continuo: for violin sonatas it may not be worth to mention the harpsichord or the viola de gamba, just (03.01) Strings>Violin would do. Otherwise you will be swamped by compositions involving harpsichord and this instrument does not really characterize these compositions. However for posterior chamber music, let’s say Mozart, Trio Clarinet K498 “Kegelstatt” in Ef-M, you could post (04.02)

Winds>Clarinet only, but as you could as well add (03.02) Strings>Viola and (03.01) Strings>Violin. We will leave the choice to you, the “it depends” returns. B-4 Grouping This field is very useful for an opera, a box set or a special edition, so you could select in the MusiCHI player all CDs belonging to this group. For example if you are dying to listen to the 170 CDs of theBach Complete Edition (Hänssler Edition Bachakademie)without interruption, an easy task for our software, you could (provided of course, you filled up the Grouping field appropriately). But beware of sleep deprivation, as a wise man once said: “It not because it can be done, that it should be done”. B-5 Composition This topic will be the subject of part 3 of the, now world famous series (or should be or soon to be- thanks to the Internet) “The Zen of Classical Music Tagging”. This part 2 would be too long otherwise. But for those eternally grateful readers shivering with anticipation, do not fear, it will come very, very soon.

The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part 3) How to write albums and compositions At the end of the part 2 we had written that we would come up with part 3 very soon. We lied, it has been more than a year. Given we keep re-electing people in high offices who constantly do the same or worse, we will not lose sleep over it and we hope you will forgive us. However, this long period of reflection might have been for the better, it allowed us to distill the final truth on the topic. We are painfully aware that “Truth”, especially final ones, are very personal values, nevertheless, disagree with us at your own risk. 

Albums

One of the criteria you are after is uniqueness for identifying that album, plus optionally some extra information. So, will “Symphonies 5 & 7” suffice? You bet, like Philippe Jaroussky singing the lead role in Boris Godunov, there are too many composers who wrote a 5th and 7th symphonies. How about, we add the composer then: Beethoven, Symphonies 5 & 7, again we fall short because a gazillion conductors and orchestras have recorded these works together. Beethoven: Symphonies 5 & 7; Carlos Kleiber, Vienna Philharmonic, should be the final cut unless Carlos had the audacity to record these pieces twice with the same orchestra, hence one might want to add one more qualifier, the recording year for example. However uniqueness is not enough, let’s have a look at this amazing CD: Style fantastique by le concert brisé, unique title indeed. But what does it tell about the musical content? absolutely nothing, it has a subtitle though: 6 Sonatas Op.3 by Pandolfi-Mealli. Let us keep in mind the purpose of the exercise: we are not publishing out the precise catalog of a record label but tagging our audio files to be able to later, select and listen to them, so be the judge: what is more informative? Pandolfi-Mealli: Sonatas Op3; Le concert brisé [composer: a descriptive title; an ensemble] or Le concert brisé: Style fantastique [a main performer: a non descriptive title] if you prefer the 2nd option, you should stop reading immediately, search the definition of the word “logic” in a dictionary and copy it 500 times with a goose feather dipped in squid ink. 

Guidelines for writing an album

A CD with a single (or two, maximum three composers and even that is pushing it), pattern: Composers: Album name; Performers Schubert, Beethoven: Arpeggione Sonata (D821), Notturno (Op42); Imai, Vignoles

Other case too many composers or a recital Henri Barda in japan Kioi Hall, Tokyo, 2008 Bassoon Concertos; Karen Geoghegan, Orchestra of Opera North Now whether it formatted as above or Karen Geoghegan, Bassoon Concertos or even Geoghegan, Karen: Bassoon Concertos it is up to you, but be consistent. Basically the pattern now is: skip the composer(s) and it is Artist: album name or Album name: Artist. We would vote for the first case because when the list of albums is displayed, the first item will always be a name (composers or artists) and not composers disrupted by instruments. But really it is for the sake of alphabetical listing esthetic, which beauty touches very few persons on this planet (which is kind of comforting). 

A quick word about delimiters

Another good idea is to have unique punctuation to separate the logical units such as composer, album name compositions, performers etc. So you can be sure to break the line in all its components easily, in the case of a search and replace operation. “:” are good candidates for the composer and “;” for the performers for example Hummel: Piano Concerto in A flat, Concertino in G major; Shelley, London Mozart Players Below what NOT to do Hummel – Piano Concerto in Af–M , Concertino in G–M – Shelley, London Mozart Players If you do not see why, again stop reading then grab a feather, a squid… 

Compositions general format

In our humble opinion, Albums and compositions have a completely symmetrical role, although some refined minds that we know, refuse to acknowledge this simple truth. As a wise man once said, there is no worse blindness, than the man that refuses to look…. So we mainly agree, except the ones busy copying the dictionary, that Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor is not enough and we need a composer for example: Sauer, Piano Concerto #1 in E-m or Melcer, Piano Concerto #1 in E-m Where we do not all agree is whether we should add a performer after the composition itself. Now the chance that you have 5 interpretations of Melcer’s masterpiece is equivalent to the Dalai Lama opening a Burger King on Tienanmen square, in this case the description will suffice. But what about the good all’ Ludwig van’s Piano Concerto #3 Op37 in C minor (of which we have 22 versions)? We are now touching the symmetry theory mentioned previously: We consider the composition field like a mini album or performance hence all our versions are labeled with the performers at the end Beethoven: Piano Concerto #3 Op.37 in C-m; Uchida, Sanderling, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Beethoven: Piano Concerto #3 Op37 in C-m; Aimard, Harnoncourt, Chamber Orchestra of

Europe etc up to Beethoven: Piano Concerto #3 Opus37 in C-m; Weissenberg, Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Other distinguished member of the community are shouting murder because a composition is not a recording (implied by the addition of the performers) and a composition is sufficiently defined with a composer and the name, Opus or catalog number; true in theory but let see the pro and cons in the context of listing music. The goal is to be able to select easily a PERFORMANCE, you cannot listen to a composition you need players (or you can read the score and start mumbling but it is slightly outside the scope of this paper). Our method: In the MusiCHI Player if you select Composer: Beethoven, Genre: Concerto and Instrument: Piano, you end up up with the list of all the performances you have of the piano concertos and the 3rd in particular, so can pick your fancy: Today let’s choose the version with Fleisher, Szell, & The Cleveland Orchestra, then click and play. If you were to scroll down the composition column, the album cover would be corresponding to the work. A side note: given the inconsistency of the classical meta-data an attempt to sort on the Title (or song) field for the same composition will give you very little extra information most of the time, unless you have painstakingly edited them manually. Following are some example of the third movement of this concerto included our collection; all came from the various internet datasources available for tagging. Klavierkonzert nr. 3 in c-moll, op. 37 – iii. rondo – allegro 03 Rondo. Allegro 3 Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37: Rondo: Allegro The “other way” (no performers in the end): In selecting in a same way, Ludwig van and Piano concerto, you end up with only 5 entries and you can pick the 3rd, but you have no idea who is playing the stuff, and the cover displayed will be the first coming up. To play something then you have to look in the track lists for performers and movements, hoping to have them in the right order, then select the 3 movements…Now if you are a music critic or a student conductor and your movements are identically formatted which with the global population distribution and internet data quality, would have a slightly higher probability than the Dalai Lama and the burger join, closer to His Holiness and a fresh veggie juice bar, then this strategy is fantastic for comparative listening of various movements, otherwise…. 

The Composition string

Let us abandon this bloody minded (we are from the MusiCHI world after all) academic debate and have a closer look on how to write the composition string itself. There are no perfect ways because we are limited to one line text tag. Hence a “Zen” riddle… 99.9 % of compositions can be modeled with 7 variables (please read The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part 1): The anatomy of a composition for more details). This model breaks down a bit

for transcriptions (see special section below), but it is not that crucial: on moral grounds, should not we buy only original works and refuse to sponsor blatant plagiarism? Only instruments, name, catalog number/opus are useful for sorting purpose and if you keep insisting that one could also sort by tonality, proceed to the fish market buy a squid, followed by a trip to the butcher for a goose and….. 

Generic guidelines for compositions

Orchestral music Beethoven: Symphony #1 Op21 in C-M Pattern: Name, Rank, Opus Beethoven: Overture Op. 062 “Coriolan” or Beethoven, Overture “Coriolan” Op. 62 Pattern 1: Name, Opus, Nickname, note the 0 because there is among other things an Overture Opus113 “Die Ruinen von Athen” and it would be nice to have them sorted properly by opus number (that is the whole point with this pattern). Pattern 2: Name, Nickname, Opus. The list in this case would be organized alphabetical by name so you can number the opus as you please and skip the 0 or leading blank Some composers were too lazy to number their publications or did not attract famous scholars to dig their catalog up so you are left with a name only, to add assault to injury the name could be filled with strange characters. Up to you to apply the locals’ way, but be consistent. Ravel: Bolero or Boléro Pattern: Name only Concertos Here there is a clear winner: to have the instrument first, except for special cases (see later special cases), when the concerto genre is selected you can have the works grouped by instrument in an obvious manner, which is handy. Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 Op73 “Emperor” in Ef-M Pattern: Instrument, Name, Rank, Opus, Nickname, Tonality instead of Beethoven: Concerto for Piano No. 5 Op73 “Emperor” in Ef-M Chamber music Up to a quintet the pattern: Instrument, Name, Rank, Opus, Nickname, Tonality also works very well Beethoven: Flute, Violin & Viola Serenade Op25 in D-M or Beethoven: Cello & Piano Sonata #04 Op102/1 in C-M

After that, it would be a bit silly to list all instruments in case of a larger ensemble Onslow: Nonet Op77 in A-m, unless they belong to one group Beethoven: Winds Octet Op103 in Ef-M or one instrument is the star of the show Beethoven: Piano Quintet Op16 in Ef-M. Now if you favor for sheer sake of completeness Beethoven: Violins(2), Viola & Cello Quartet No. 15 Op. 132 in A-m over Beethoven: String Quartet No. 15 Op. 132 in A-m, We are afraid that light psychiatry has a nice name for you. Solo music Instrument first is also a good idea Bach CPE: Oboe Sonata Wq132 (H562) in A-m except when it is not. In a case of composer that mainly wrote for piano solo Chopin: Piano Ballade #1 Op23 in G-m to add piano in front could be a bit of an overkill Chopin: Ballade No. 1 Op. 23 in G-m would suffice. A not so clear cut case is Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 03 Op. 2/3 in C-M versus removing the word piano Beethoven: Sonata No. 03 Op. 2/3 in C-M; a matter of taste then. 

Transcriptions

Again with only one field (i.e. one line) to deal with the original author and the plagiarist. The most reasonable may be is to put both. Then in which order? you consider that the finished product has more of the copyist contribution, put him first else the original author. For example: Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827)/Liszt, Franz (1811-1886) for the symphonies on piano Beethoven/Liszt: Symphony No. 5 Op. 67 in C-m (trans. Piano S463a) S463a being the Liszt catalog number for this piece In the case of the fabulous Busoni’s Chaconne, it is not so cleat cut, from a violin that can play one note or two at a time compared to ten with a keyboard, Ferruccio must have added quite a few thing of his own. So Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750)/Busoni, Ferruccio (1866-1924) or Busoni, Ferruccio (1866-1924)/Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750)? Your call and for the composition we have the same dilemma: Busoni/Bach JS: BV B24 Chaconne in D-m from Bach JS BWV1004 Violin Partita No. 2 or Bach JS/Busoni: Violin Partita No. 2/5 Chaconne BWV1004 in D-m (trans. for Piano BV B24). The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is famous for this quote “Ta Panda ri” (everything flows) he could have done an international double whammy by changing it just a bit “Ta Panda gri” (everything is gray). Indeed no black and white in the world of classical meta-data. 

How about?

Why not use the opus of the catalog number first for all works? Given that not all pieces have an opus or catalog number, or that the catalog number is either thematic or chronological, this approach does not offer definitive advantages, except in special cases (see later). Besides unless one has photographic memory, it is very hard to select a piece this way. “Now I want to hear

Ludwig’s Opus 3 sub-opus 2” is not for everyone, but kudos to you if you can manage this method. 

Special cases

In the baroque area, opus had a slightly different meaning that thereafter, only the pieces that the cupid composers thought would bring “mucho dinero” were sent to publication. In proportion to the total output, it is generally a small part but they are often recorded together. Although we mentioned previously that having the instrument(s) in front for a concerto offered definitive advantages, if you have a few complete set of Vivaldi opus recordings, it is quite convenient to have the opus listed first Vivaldi: Opus 08/01 Violin & Strings Concerto RV269 “La primavera” in E-M versus Vivaldi: Violin & Strings Concerto RV269 Opus 8/1 “La primavera” in E-M This applies strategy does apply to all baroque composers not just Antonio. Another anomaly Bach’s cantatas for example: “Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden” BWV6. Unless you are born in a Germanic culture or studied 5 years in Heidelberg, “Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden” does not tell you much and mnemonically speaking, it is a nightmare. Do not take our word for it, ask any classical aficionado in Bangkok, he will confirm. So for the rest of us, having little connection to the “Vaterland” to have the cantatas sorted by catalog number instead of alphabetically is a plus. Bach JS, BWV0001 “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” Bach JS, BWV0002 “Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein” etc… 

Conclusion

As you saw, given the complexity of the data itself and personal tastes, we can give only some guidelines, in most case there is no right nor wrong, except for the cases worth of a copying assignment. What could be wrong, may be, is to forget what is the purpose of tagging (a quick reminder: to select music) and err in the over-documenting side of the fence: for example defining a custom field for the year of the composition (easy) and populating it (very time consuming); although it is a very interesting piece of information in its own right, would really ask yourself this? “What can I listen for my breakfast ambiance composed in1805”, but then again why not? It was a very good year for music…..

The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part 4) Errare humanum est A friend of mine and one of our power users, had for the longest time a separate tag for the catalog number or the opus of a composition, at first this choice appeared to me going overboard in the documentation of one’s music collection. I was even a tad sarcastic about it (see previous blog): “This approach does not offer definitive advantages, unless one has photographic memory, it is very hard to select a piece this way: Now I want to hear Ludwig van’s Opus 3 sub-opus 2…” But I was wrong (I did make amend with him too)…….and here is why: Like Monsieur Jourdain in Moliere’s The Bourgeois Gentleman who had “been speaking prose all his life, and didn’t even know it!”, since you have been digitizing your music you have entered in the mysterious world of data modelling like any of the database management IT guys on the planet. Indeed we are trying to model a complex world with recordings, composers, instruments, performers etc… (worse case, being the transcriptions where the author is not really the author, nor sometimes the instruments) and with fewer tools than the DB designer, our tags are only a one line text in most players. MusiCHI player being an exception.

Primary key In data modelling, there is a sacred principle called “The primary key” it is piece (or a combination) of information that uniquely defines an object. For example, you are defined by a social security number, a unique number that is given to each person. In an invoice, the combination of “order number with a part number” defines an item ordered. You are by now, asking yourself, what is the connection with digital music? What defines a uniquely a composition in most case? It is the catalog number or the opus for a lot of composers, at least. Mozart, Piano Concerto No.15 K. 450 in B flat major Brahms, Symphony No. 4 Opus 98 in E minor Schubert is one of the special case, he has both Schubert, Impromptus D. 899 Opus. 90, use either the catalog number or a combination D. 899Opus. 90, Opus alone does not cut it, because you have plenty of Op. Posth. which does not point uniquely to one piece, as it should. Some modern composers do not have an opus sometimes, nor a catalog, a lot of Stravinsky’s for example: “Trois mouvements de Petrouchka”. In this case, use the name, or if not descriptive enough, use a combination of the name, the tonality, and the year or a number.

Couperin Louis, Suite in C Major would be enough IF Monsieur Louis had composed only one of those. But as you guessed already, he came up with quite a few in C. So Couperin Louis, Suite in C Major (16??) or Couperin Louis, Suite in C Major No. 2 or you do not assign an “Opus/Cat no.” at all because it does not add anything and it looks too much like the complete composition text.

Why bother? a) being able to select all the recording of one same composition Indeed you are not expected to remember Opus 3 sub-opus 2, but with a two way click you can select all recordings of one work. If I select Beethoven as a Composer, Concerto as a Genre and finally Piano as an instrument, the resulting list will be:

Now if you click Opus 19 in the metadata column “Opus/Cat.

Then we are left with what we want: Only the recordings of the Piano concertos No. 2.

b) The chamber music or transcription problem IMHO it makes sense to write the instruments first in a chamber music work. Hence, the famous Schubert, Cello & Piano Sonata D821 “Arpeggione” in A minor should be formatted as such. I selected Schubert as a Composer and Chamber music>duet as a Genre but look at the picture below:

There is a viola version and even a flute & piano duet. To add assault to injury there is an orchestral version of that piece too. But by selecting D821 and the composer, you can catch them all.

Also, there are compositions which have been written first for 2 pianos and then orchestrated, and they carry the same reference. These type of works do fall in the same case. c) You can be more careless on how you format/write you composition field. If you had one entry written “Concerto for Piano…” mixed with some written “Piano Concerto…” You will find them distributed in a totally different region of the composition list, having the Opus tag allows you to select them no matter how it is written.

Conclusion Any decent player (like MusiCHi’s) will allow you to create and populate custom fields. Besides now, we have new feature in MusiCHI Clean, any part of a composition (for example Opus or Catalog number) returned by the reference database can be written straight back to a custom field, so there is no extra work involved; Click here to see a nice example on how it works. My friend was right, any classical music library should have that tag present.

The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part 5): The case for a separate “Movement” tag Given that there are no standards for publishing classical metadata what is given in the tag “TITLE”, that we label “Name, title or movement” is a complete inconsistent mess. If you happen to have multiple version of the same work and intent, for example, to compare interpretations of the same movement, you are out of luck. Here is what I have for Mozart’s 41st

Symphony:

As you can see, typical of what you have surely encountered, some lines with or without the composition label, some numbered with roman numerals other with decimal or not numbered. If you were to sort on that field here is the useless result:

We have all the tools in the MusiCHI tagger (or ripper) with the “Text processing” utility to extract the movement portion and number it consistently. But where ? We could replace the content of the “TITLE” tag, but it violates one of the fundamental principles of data processing, always keep a duplicate of the data, so in case something goes wrong you could come back to your original state. So 2 valid approaches are possible here: 1) Copy the content of “Name, title or movement” in the “Comments” field or a custom field like “MCHICUST4″ to “MCHICUST6″ (NOT 1-3 used for selection) and extract the movement from it and copy it back to its source. So “TITLE” becomes you movement field but you have a backup of the original in either “Comments” or “Custom 4-6″.

2) Use one of the custom field like “MCHICUST4″ for movement (my favorite choice by far) and extract the movement to it.

So with the text processing tool, the option most often used would be the “Search from delimiters” separated by “-” or “:”, first or second occurrence, right part.

Further you can use the “Numbering movement” panel to number them, if it is not the case, or use the function convert from numeric or roman to the preferred choice. I like roman but any format will give you a bad sorting result after 9 entries, which I grant you is quite uncommon, only the (ugly) notation 01,02, 03 etc would always give a perfect sorting.

After this quick processing you get to the Nirvana of comparative interpretation listening……

I may agree that, if you just have a couple (1 or 2) versions of the same piece, this is a very futile exercise. But for a collector, I think creating a separate “Movement” field consistently formatted, without loosing the original source of the text is a very nice things to have. MusiCHI offers all the tools, so you can perform this task, the fastest way possible. Until the classical music industry wakes up and starts offering downloads with proper metadata. However, when it comes to this topic, the labels and music vendors are currently in the same state as Sleeping Beauty (after the spindle event), with a Prince charming being stricken with a severe case of amnesia while advised by King Lear…It will take some time before consciousness arise…..so start tagging!