Thank you for the validation. That’s what I’m leaning towards also.
I agree. It would be nice if that could get a push from this discussion.
OK, I like that. It will get tedious to enter 26 translation-works by hand, however. Maybe this doesn’t happen until there’s a web app feature or a user script to do the repetitious work.
I like the idea of being able to record relationships between music scores. However, we have to define better what it means to be “different musically”. Thickness of paper doesn’t count. Fixing errors doesn’t count, even though it might result in a difference in performed sound?
What about the difference between orchestral parts (played by the orchestra) and a piano-vocal reduction (from which the chorus sings)? And what if the chorus is using a hodge-podge of four different editions of vocal scores? I’ve sung Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with exactly this mix of music score editions.
Agreed, that’s a tough decision. In my case, there are two Releases with two different music scores, each giving the same arias in different transpositions. The transposition is the essential reason for there being two Releases, not just one. Same Work, or different Works?
I like using “editors are able to identify them” as a good rule for Works on MusicBrainz. It resonates with my intuition that MusicBrainz is really “RecordedmusicBrainz” with a bit of “BiographyBrainz” built in.
That’s a reasonable division of labour. We would then probably have lots of situations where one “Work” in MusicBrainz corresponds to multiple “Music Score Editions” in BookBrainz. There’s still the problem of tracking the musical essence of relationships between different scores. I suspect BookBrainz won’t want to be in the business, and will push that back to MusicBrainz. That in turn will lead to MusicBrainz needing to have Work distinctions that aren’t audible. Difficult.
We should remember that a lot more goes into the audible differences between recordings, than the details of which scores they used. The modifications each musician makes to the score for performance, their musical skill, their artistic interpretation, their instruments, their performance practice: all of these are differences that will never be captured by tracking music score editions. I think this is an area that MusicBrainz doesn’t yet attempt to record.
I recall making that same point in another thread :-), but getting strong resistance. I do agree with being practical, however.
Thank you, everyone, for the good ideas. Please keep them coming.