Classifying Classical Music

[Richard Moss]

Folks,

Further to the 'other' thread about storage and backups, I've decided to initiate a long-term 'rip and save' of my CDs to my PC with removable back-up - all the other options, on reflection, need too much planning or documenting or technical awareness or money. 

However, before I start in  earnest, I want to have a set of standard PC folders, per composer (only using the ones required per composer) that reflect the various genres of music (e.g. symphony, concerto).  Effectively, I consider my collection of CDs to be in the sequence composer/genre/work/track, although I use my cross-reference index to keep track of works for example, under a CD of another composer. 

So, if that is a reasonable view, I want to organise my rips/back-up along those lines.  As it corresponds to how I've indexed my music, it also allows, if necessary, a check that the folder(s) contain what the index says they should!

In consequence , my thoughts at suggesting a set of folders that would encompass all classical music types I'm aware of are below.  If the greater experience of  UC members can suggest either omissions or a better approach, I would love to hear before I start.

My suggested set of folders is (unfortunately the indentation was lost when I copied it!):

Categories of Music
1   with voice(s)
•   unaccompanied
o   secular
o   sacred
•   with orchestra
o   stage works (opera & musicals)
o   melodrama (i.e. spoken)
o   choral
o   soloist
•   with other accompaniment
o   lieder
o   other
2   Orchestral (excl. 1 above)
•   ballet
•   featured soloist(s)
o   concertos
o   concert pieces
o   concertante works and similar
•   other multi-movement works
o   symphonies
o   suites
o   film scores
•   single movement works
o   overtures
o   preludes
o   tone poems etc.
3   Chamber Works (3 or more instruments)
•   Trios
•   Quartets
•   etc. to
•   Nonet
4   Instrumental (1 or 2 instruments)
•   Solo instrument (e.g. piano sonata)
•   Two instruments (e.g. cello sonata)
5   Other Ensembles (excl. 3 above)
•   Band
o   wind
o   brass
•   Other (if /as required)

Sorry if this is a bit of a long post!

Best wishes

Richard

[Double-A]

I think I would do this flexibly as I go along.  You'd have four folders:  orchestral, vocal, chamber, solo.  Then, depending on the composer I'd choose subfolders according to the character the composer's oeuvre:

So for Haydn I would have a folder "string quartets" under chamber music, ditto for Mozart and Beethoven.  For Brahms however it will be more useful to have a folder for "strings only" containing quartets, quintets and sextets, a total of 7 works and still a small folder--plus a second folder for chamber music with piano containing the piano trios, the horn trio, the clarinet trio and the sonatas for violin and for clarinet/viola.   And again in Onslow's case there would be a folder for string quartets and one for string quintets, each with above 30 works if memory serves.  For Chopin I'd call the solo folder "piano solo" and divide it into Polonaises, Waltzes, Etudes etc.  Other than that you'd have a folder "other" with the rest of Chopin's oeuvre.

In Schubert's case you could have a "Lieder" folder under vocal and subfolders by poet, including one "miscellaneous" for less well represented poets.

I think you get the idea.

I am using mostly sung composers as examples because everybody can be expected to be familiar with their output.

One last point:  I have never understood the definition of chamber music as 3 people and up.  What are sonatas for piano and violin if not chamber music?  I get it when organizers of chamber music work shops demand a minimum of three players:  You don't want to "waste" a coach on just two players; but as a matter of definition I don't see what sets duos apart from the larger combinations.

[Ilja]

A categorization is a sensible idea, but I wonder whether a file-based approach is the best way to go about it – not in the last place because there is a real possibility that the file as we know it may disappear. If it comes down to accessing your information, proper metatagging is far more important. Not all music players are suited to playing  classical music unfortunately, but here Apple's oft-reviled iTunes shines for once.

[Richard Moss]

Gents,

tks for quick replies  and ideas.  Food for thought indeed.

1) I agree I'd only use the folders applicable to the extant oeuvre I had for that composer. For me, I'd put all chamber works in a single folder and name the individual files by:- composer, genre (e.g. chamber), format (e.g. piano quintet), opus (or similar work number - e.g. KVnn for Mozart), the composers or 'known as' title (if any) and composition date (if known) - by the time I've done all that, per track, I can see why point 2 below about 'tags' becomes more attractive by the minute!).

The only reason for putting 'duos' into 'instrumental' is that when I've browsed catalogues (printed or online), then cello, violin etc sonatas always seem to come under instrumental even if there are two performers.  It seems arbitrary to me too, so I was only trying to conform to what appears to be common practice. Is it common - what IS instrumental??

2) As an IT person I like the idea of using meta-tags in lieu of folders - it is only the sheer (envisaged) overhead of manually applying multiple tags to thousands of tracks that puts me off.  Previous experience of using Windows to rip CDs (and it auto-tags while you're at it) is that the resulting tags come second to a chocolate fireguard in terms of usefulness in a classical context!!!) and even when, after a trial rip, I'd gone and re-named a file to conform to my current catalogue approach, then WINDOWS ignores that and keeps on using its own tags to say burn an audio CD!!!

However, done right, the tags approach would have the further bonus of bringing all of a composers' oeuvre together, regardless of from which physical CD it originated (apologies to the purists for the mangled English there!)

Does anyone know how many files a WINDOWS folder can hold before it falls over?

Cheers

Richard

[TerraEpon]

I put my digital collection in the same order as CDs (though I let them lay in whatever alphabetical they fall within each DIR).
I've been sorting my CDs this way for probably ~13 years now.
Basically I have an order that prioritizes whatever is earlier in the process. So I go this way:
01 Composer: Usually the whole disc composed by one composer, though arrangements can fall in there too if they are deeply tied (and some special cases like Liszt piano music). This is further broken up into a specific order (*see below)
02 Instrument: Multiple composers dedicated to an instrument; solo, chamber, concerto, whatever. Song collections are under 'voice'.
03 Choral: Multiple composers where the whole disc is of choral music, unaccompanied or not
04 Country: Multiple composers discs dedicated to a specific country, specifically.
05 Ballet: Multiple composers of ballet music
06 Marches: Multiple composer discs dedicated to march music
07 Wind Ensemble: Multiple composer discs with wind ensemble only
08 Brass: Both brass quintets and larger brass ensembles fall in here
09 Chamber: General chamber discs, further broken up into string quartet, wind quintet, etc and various
10 Misc Other: Only one disc actually falls into here....anything not really fitting into another category
11 Early: Early music and baroque music that don't fall above
12 Misc. Orchestral: All the rest though some of these may have wind ensemble, choral, and even the occasional solo piano piece or whatever

My composer discs order fall into the general categories of symphonies (all orchestral), ballets, overtures, other stage, other orchestral, wind ensemble, instrument, various instruments, choral, opera, chamber (wind quintet, string quartet, trio, misc), songs, mixed comps

Film scores FWIW is an entirely different section apart from classical, though many of the classical discs have film music in them here or there...

[Ilja]

@Richard Moss: NTFS (the file system underlying Windows >NT) apparently does not have a file maximum per folder; but putting more than about 500,000 files in one place is not recommended, and you'll see a serious performance impact in any folder with more than around 15000 files in it.


My own file system is non-existent in the sense that I let iTunes (both on Windows and Mac) deal with it and it puts all the files in folders categorized by Album Artist (the composer, in my case) > Album title (Which I use for the work title) > Performers. There are some hacks which allow you to use the Year or Genre (or any other) fields for this purpose, too. But I almost never interact with the files themselves, other than through iTunes.

[Christopher]

Any minute now Alan is going to say "unless there's a point to be made with respect to unsung composers...."


http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,5607.msg59040.html#msg59040

[Christopher]

On  serious note, we have recently had a few topics to which many have contributed, including:

- The future of music storage
- Classifying Classical Music
- Bose and Classical Music / Bose ... - recommendations for enjoying a large classical music collection

Maybe we could have a section called something like "classical music and technology issues" to discuss the various challenges at length? There is nowhere else for this that I can see, and yet the challenges are significant and contribute enormously to the demise of classical music generally, and renders the chances of Unsungs ever becoming Sungs still smaller.  Those to whom it's not of interest need not read!

My pet peeve is the frequent omission from Apple's Itunes store of the composer name, and thus you are told that a certain disc includes "Symphony" (or whatever) played by the LSO. Great.  Apple and others are simply unaware of this and need to be told. Their London offices are very close to me, perhaps if others of us are also London-based and are motivated enough (I am) we could collectively ask for a constructive meeting with Apple managers (not the kids in the store).

[Richard Moss]

Ilya,

When I've tried letting the system do it for me, I seem to end up, as  Christopher above notes, with a 'track within artist' structure, not composer/(genre - e.g. concerto)/work/movement etc (if more than one) which is what I want.

I suspect that most of the systems for on-line music are originally USA dominated or originated in terms of the software where artist and song, not composer/work/movement is how those who wrote the software saw the world.  (in fairness, I would expect the same result from the UK music industry if they'd happen to have been first to this.  You can still see this to some extent by the way the  old major labels still largely concentrate, so it seems, on headlining the artist, not the composer.

If a 'petition' to i-tunes, amazon or whoever will work, let me know where to sign!

Alternatively, there is clearly a niche here for some bright spark  to write a system to interface to i-tunes etc and then store the tracks how the downloader wants them, not how the source system dictates.

Dream on, Richard!

Cheers

[TerraEpon]

When I tag my music, I just use 'Album artist' for the performer(s), even though that's not what the tag is for. I also tag everything specifically (which can take a LONG time, but at least it's usually right...) because it's unfathomable for credit a violinist on a symphony just because he plays a concerto on the same disc (as a for instance).

(Incidently I put composer under artist, but I also put composer under composer...the difference is if there's an arranger or whatnot they also go in the composer tafg, such as "Modest Mussorgsky (orch. Maurice Ravel)")

But that's just me, and I know that most people look at it differently.

It really comes down to what works best for you.

[semloh]

I've been storing digital music files for 20 years, and I have the following categories for my classical music:

'collections' (then divided according to genre),
'nationality' (then divided by composer),
'film & TV' (inc. some division by composer),
'Bach family' (divided by composer)
'pop versions' (Loussier, classical versions of pop, etc)
'radio progs & podcasts'

These six broad groupings serve me well, and even if it were possible I wouldn't change. The only problem I encounter is that I need to know the nationality of a composer to instantly locate their music, and that can be quite a challenge, esp. when they have multiple 'affiliations', as it were! There are always going to be some anomalies and overlaps, but I rarely duplicate a file/folder and I generally know where I've put them, so this works for me.

One thing is clear - once you've decided on your scheme and set it in motion there's no going back!

[Ilja]

@Christopher: metatagging by online stores can be a real pain, and even those that should be more sympathetic to the cause (such as JPC and TheClassicalShop) have shown erratic behavior in this respect. Especially for someone collecting works by unsung composers (Alan, see what I did there?) this can be a real problem when all you have to go on is a "Symphony in A minor" (which has happened to me) and the possible composers range in the hundreds.


As for correcting the issue, I'm frankly not optimistic. Not only is classical music a small niche these days, the position of the music industry as part of the entertainment industry as a whole has been better. The only way to improve it is to raise such a stink that companies need to address it for PR reasons.

[Double-A]

Seems to me there are two separate issues to deal with here:
1.  The best way of organizing a system for storage and easy retrieval of recordings.  This is at the end a problem of handling computer technology and I can't contribute.
2.  The significant amount of labor involved in getting the information entered that ought to be connected to each recording to make it fully valuable:  Composer, interpreters, year of recording, label etc.  Ideally a link to the CD booklet would also be part of it.
2. is making 1. complicated.  As a practical matter people will hesitate to spend money on this issue since this does not immediately help improve sales figures.  Also, as always in a "free market", getting a set of competitors to agree (and to enforce) universal standards is hard.
As it is there seems to be nothing wrong with people doing it flexibly and according to their own needs.