How so? You’ve explained previously how recording artist in all cases would work (“to set the track artist to performers/conductors rather than composer” – this is already the case for recording artist on both classical and non-classical releases.
What’s the problem with using recording artist for all tags, regardless of whether it’s classical, assuming you always want the performers?
I hear your central argument that if I always wanted to get the performers on a song just using the recording artist would work well quite. But what I want is to get the closest representation on the sleeve and for non classical, when it does differ track artist more accurately represents how the artist is credited on that particular release doesn’t it, and that is what I have always used for non-classical and what I have always done, I think Picard uses TrackArtist rather than RecordingArtist doesnt it.
I don’t know of a way to even access the recording artist when tagging a release with Picard.
You could also look at the AcousticBrainz data (if available) for the recordings, it has a few models that attempt to identify genre. Ok, really only one that attempts classical…
I tried to find Classical composers in database, maybe worth sharing
This SQL finds all artists born after 1600 and died before 1900, the dates are quite arbitary but its a starting point, it generates 2951 rows
SELECT
t1.name,
t1.begin_date_year,
t1.end_date_year,
t2.id,
t2.name
FROM
musicbrainz.artist t1
INNER JOIN musicbrainz.area t2
ON t1.area=t2.id
WHERE
t1.begin_date_year > 1600
AND
t1.end_date_year < 1900
ORDER BY
t1.end_date_year
I then looked at the person areas with this
SELECT distinct
t2.id,
t2.name,
count(*) as count
FROM
musicbrainz.artist t1
INNER JOIN musicbrainz.area t2
ON t1.area=t2.id
WHERE
t1.begin_date_year > 1600
AND
t1.end_date_year < 1900
GROUP BY t2.id, t2.name
ORDER BY count DESC, t2.name;
and this generated this list
id | name | count
--------±-----------------±------
81 | Germany | 667
73 | France | 439
105 | Italy | 355
221 | United Kingdom | 307
14 | Austria | 173
222 | United States | 98
176 | Russia | 92
214 | Turkey | 83
194 | Spain | 74
56 | Czech Republic | 54
202 | Sweden | 52
432 | England | 51
57 | Denmark | 43
170 | Poland | 42
72 | Finland | 40
150 | Netherlands | 37
103 | Ireland | 34
97 | Hungary | 31
21 | Belgium | 30
435 | Wales | 23
203 | Switzerland | 18
160 | Norway | 17
434 | Scotland | 16
67 | Estonia | 13
117 | Latvia | 10
107 | Japan | 9
138 | Mexico | 9
84 | Greece | 8
171 | Portugal | 8
30 | Brazil | 7
99 | India | 7
4434 | Paris | 5
175 | Romania | 5
11 | Armenia | 4
53 | Croatia | 4
54 | Cuba | 4
241 | Europe | 4
1178 | London | 4
219 | Ukraine | 4
653 | Wien | 4
10 | Argentina | 3
13 | Australia | 3
167 | Peru | 3
228 | Venezuela | 3
38 | Canada | 2
44 | China | 2
47 | Colombia | 2
62 | Ecuador | 2
98 | Iceland | 2
21849 | Napoli | 2
7020 | New York | 2
1829 | Alsace | 1
12383 | Alstahaug | 1
15 | Azerbaijan | 1
328 | Bayern | 1
23722 | Bayreuth | 1
26 | Bolivia | 1
14816 | Bologna | 1
17965 | Casalmaggiore | 1
245 | Czechoslovakia | 1
9622 | Dublin | 1
23664 | Dubrovnik | 1
14665 | Durham | 1
3822 | Edinburgh | 1
530 | Erzurum | 1
69140 | Gotha | 1
23744 | Göttingen | 1
273 | Hawaii | 1
115501 | Ireland | 1
252 | Isle of Man | 1
5090 | Kolkata | 1
124 | Luxembourg | 1
12030 | Lyon | 1
8854 | Mainz | 1
45561 | Mâcon | 1
292 | New Jersey | 1
295 | New York | 1
153 | New Zealand | 1
433 | Northern Ireland | 1
299 | Pennsylvania | 1
3975 | Plymouth | 1
1805 | Praha | 1
5249 | Salzburg | 1
254 | Serbia | 1
7976 | Sevilla | 1
1891 | Sicilia | 1
189 | Slovakia | 1
190 | Slovenia | 1
684 | Tamil Nadu | 1
224 | Uruguay | 1
234 | Yemen | 1
Very few from outside Europe for this time period, I could of course filter out non European but its not gojng to make much difference.
There’s quite many popular composers outside the scope. To name a few: Sibelius, Elgar, Holst, Dvorak, R. Strauss, Saint-Saëns, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Fauré, Prokofiev, Shostakovich…
There’s also a similar list for 21th century composers.
I believe these rows include some opera performers and teachers. I’ve been adding old premiere events with their performers, like for example this and this.