I’m a newbie here, and hopefully not stepping into a minefield (or rehashing settled topics, though I did some searching before posting).
From reading some other threads (e.g., When is a part not a part?), it seems broadly agreed that classical works should not be “part of” the film soundtracks they appear on. For popular works, the clutter of dozens of such relationships would obscure the more meaningful relationship to their true parent work. A notable exception seems to be the Fantasia soundtrack, which has “parts/part of” relationships with each constituent work.
(I stumbled across this while using Beets and its “parentwork” and “alternatives” plugins to create symlinks grouped by a parent work to all of its recordings in my collection. All of the relevant Nutcracker numbers from multiple [non-Fantasia] albums ended up grouped under Fantasia rather than The Nutcracker. No disrespect to Fantasia, but that definitely seems wrong! I’m sure I could come up with a Beets-specific workaround to this quirk, but I feel the issue is more general than this particular tool.)
I can understand an argument that the Fantasia soundtrack stands as its own work, with these other works as parts. But many of them appear in other soundtracks as well, and it seems like a slippery slope. Disney, Stokowski, et al, certainly seemed to think of Fantasia as a concert in visual form, even naming it the “Concert Feature” while in development (see Fantasia (1940 film) - Wikipedia). Seen through this “concert” lens, it does not seem appropriate to view these works as “parts” but simply as performances/recordings.
I considered just removing the relationships, but thought better of it given a) my newbie status and unfamiliarity with the norms and guidelines here and b) the relatively high profile of both these individual works and the Fantasia soundtrack itself. And I’m also unsure if there is a more appropriate way to capture the relationship between the soundtrack and these works, given their collective significance in the history of both film and popular appreciation of classical music.
So I thought I’d throw this topic out to see if there is consensus either for the status quo or in favor of a particular resolution. Eager to hear any thoughts!
I’ll preface this by saying I’m not a classical editor, but I’d consider myself a tiny bit familiar with works…
how I’d probably enter the Fantasia works would be to create new works (disambiguated with “Fantasia (1940)” or something) and relate those to the respective original Nutcracker works with some “Version of” relationships. those works would then be related to the Fantasia soundtrack work, not the Nutcracker works.
the only issue I can foresee, we then possibly end up with a couple exact duplicate works, where they were included without any changes. a very rare case, I’m certain, but definitely very possible.
edit: I’ve actually had some ideas bouncing around my head about this in general, mostly about popular songs… for example, how throughout the Shrek movies they use popular songs and re-arrange them, such as “Holding Out For a Hero” and “Livin’ La Vida Loca”. since these songs are arranged differently, they could get their own works related to the originals.
I actually looked at the Fantasia soundtrack work, and I believe the first part is the correct way to enter these:
Yeah, I was thinking that might be a useful approach for the rest of the works as well. It would certainly address the issue of the main works having multiple “part of” relationships. And in this case, it really is a different arrangement/orchestration, so having a separate work is definitely the right answer.
One thing that didn’t smell quite right, though, is that while the Toccata and Fugue was actually orchestrated by Stokowski, I believe most of the rest are the original orchestration/arrangements. (Note: I am no expert here, so someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.) For instance, Stokowski re-orchestrated A Night on Bald Mountain, but in the end they used the standard Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration. In these cases, would it seem a little artificial/hacky to create a new arrangement solely for the purpose of having different “part of” relationships?
My understanding after reading the relevant Wikipedia page is that this is true only for the re-releases from the 1980s onwards?
In any case, the article also mentions that “[m]any found fault with Stokowski’s rearrangements and abridgements of the music”, suggesting that yes, these should indeed be at the very least different arrangement works. What is unclear to me is whether the often-recorded Stokowski concert versions of the Mussorgsky and the Bach, for example, are the same arrangements made for the film.
Quite right, it looks like my own reading/memory was too cursory.
It does sound like a reasonable justification for adding Stokowski arrangements for the other works as well.
A couple different sources (here and here, p. 2) say that the 1927 orchestration of Toccata and Fugue in D minor is the same as the one used in the film. As for the Mussorgsky, this answer suggests the film’s orchestration was exclusive to Disney and is not generally available. (I have no idea if any of these are accurate, however.)
I’d like to try to revive this topic, since it recently “bit” me. The way things are currently set up, whenever Picard tries to tag any recording of a work used in the Fantasia soundtrack, it will set the top-level work to Fantasia. For example, I have a recording of Beethoven’s 6th, and when I look at its work metadata I see “Fantasia”. That’s clearly wrong for all recordings except the soundtrack.
I’m wondering whether it would be better to characterize the Fantasia soundtrack as a series of works, rather than a work of works. That would fix the Picard problem while retaining the hierarchical nature of the Fantasia soundtrack entity.
This issue is not specific to the Fantasia soundtrack, BTW. Consider, for example, the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is also comprised of a collection of previously-composed works. It seems that no one has tried to capture the soundtrack as a single entity, though. All the releases of the 2001 soundtrack that I looked at consist of multiple works, as if they were typical classical music releases.
If I’m not mistaken, this Fantasia work was created to tag a single release, which appears to be a recording of a later performance of the complete soundtrack by an orchestra unrelated to the Disney / Stokowski production.
These soundtracks are essentially large-scale medleys. Or maybe arrangements. But I don’t think they’re works.
In this case, should we apply this to all soundtracks, or only those that use already-existing works? I think that the first solution, i. e. creating new works for the recordings made as part of the soundtrack would be more appropriate, if more difficult to implement. The problem then is if a recording is created as the original work and then re-used in a later release as part of the soundtrack, like this recording. Maybe soundtracks should get their own category as their own type of relation between two works.
I’m not sure it usually makes sense to add existing works to a new soundtrack/score work - it would feel that they are either significantly new arrangements that deserve to be their own work, or they are not really part of the score work anyway?
Would it be justified to create a new work relationship ‘part as soundtrack’ or something along these lines? Or create entities for Fantasia (the film) and then have a relationship ‘soundtrack of’ ?
Is this a common issue, or just one with Fantasia? I feel in most cases most scores are new and even when reusing an existing work we probably wouldn’t link it to the soundtrack work, and Fantasia is a weird edge case being basically a collage of classical works - in which case I’d much rather just drop the relationships and have the works be linked to the release, honestly.
Classical music is used for other soundtracks, 2001: a space odyssey is cited as an example previously, but there is no work created for its soundtrack. It seems something specific to Fantasia, as far as I can tell.
I feel like there’s a not insignificant number of examples, but I don’t think it’s very common. another similar example is the original Lemmings soundtrack, which includes arrangements of traditional (and some not traditional) American songs
So the question remains, does it make sense to consider a soundtrack as a work unto itself? If we say yes, then we have to have some way of having both the soundtrack, and any prior works that the soundtrack includes, both be top-level works. That is, both Fantasia and Beethoven’s 6h Symphony need to be seen as top-level works, even though the latter is a sub-part of the former.
If we say that a soundtrack is a series and not a work, then we can capture its nature as a primary, standalone creation, which can be realized by multiple releases. Because of the way Picard works, the top-level work will in most (all?) cases be the symphony and not the soundtrack.
Alternatively, we can say that soundtracks are not standalone creations, in which case any recording of the soundtrack, either complete or excerpts, simply refers to its component works. There are many examples of this already in the database.
I don’t have a strong preference for either approach, but I do think either of them is preferable to the status quo, which causes demonstrable problems. Can anyone make an argument for one over the other?
I strongly believe that soundtracks can be standalone creations, just look at the soundtrack of movies like Star Wars or Harry Potter. It is a series of works that belong together, that have been written together in a set order for a common purpose. It just isn’t always the case, sometimes they are composed of independently existing works and sometimes they are in part written for this purpose and in part picked off existing works.
Maybe a new type of relation should be created, ‘part of soundtrack’ or a new entity that works can be part of. I don’t think that the data structure of musicbrainz should be adapted to the needs of Picard, I believe the opposite should be the case.
Normally we consider the score a work, with children works of pieces of the score. I would not consider a soundtrack a work if they took pop songs and used them, and would not add them to the score work. In a film that includes both a score and reused music, I’d probably only link the new score bits to the soundtrack work.
Fantasia is a good choice of soundtrack to use. Not only does it include many famous pieces, but there are a few variations of the content of the album. The original release of Fantasia included various parts that have been changed and censored over the years.
This leads to one of the confusions that often occurs with Soundtracks - multiple versions with different content.
It would be nice to see some kind of special “Soundtrack” entity that can replace the current way a Soundtrack Work is used. It always seems odd to me that a famous pop tune has to be kept off of a Soundtrack (Pulp Fiction for example).
A “Soundtrack” “Work” as currently used is a distortion trying to fit a task. If you are talking to someone about the Soundtrack of Pulp Fiction you are meaning all the pop tunes that are included. If you are discussing the Soundtrack to Clockwork Orange it would be good to have something that can refer to all the parts without disrupting how Works are used elsewhere.
Similar to is mentioned above in this thread, I see a “Work” as the sheet of paper that holds a copy of the words and music that are being performed. The way Soundtracks for 28 Days Later are being used seems to distort that concept.
Maybe it needs to be a type of Series? It does need its own type otherwise you’ll forever find Soundtrack collectors gravitating to this current “Soundtrack” type and trying to make it fit the task.
A soundtrack is commonly understood to be the music from a film/movie… so when I click on the link above, for Clockwork Orange, I should get to a description of the film, not the soundtrack.Instead it’s circular reference to itself! Musicbrainz does not cover films… so either it should (Moviebrainz) or link to somewhere else like IMDb Clockwork Orange - Kellopeliappelsiini (1971) - IMDb for references to movies