Classical works with variant movements

MusicBrainz
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I came across the following anomalous entry of category “Work” for one of Bach’s French suites for keyboard (BWV 815).

This is a catch-all for alternative versions of the movements of

However I think that the existence of an entry for BWV815a is an error, and that its “parts” ought actually be parts of BWV815. I have seen elsewhere that alternative and optional movements are present in MB “work” entries, though I am a newbie and couldn’t quote policy on this.

The current arrangement generates several issues

  1. “BWV815a” would never ever be recorded as an entity. It is incomplete.
  2. In fact it seems unlikely that these movements would ever be performed together.
  3. There is no MB relationship between any of its constituent movements and the work they would be performed as part of (this French Suite)

This causes problems for downstream software which collates recordings into works for player purposes (Songkong and LMS in my case).

Do more expert seasoned and classical editors agree with me that this pseudo-”work” should be deleted and its parts assigned to children of BWV815? Or is there another solution that I as a newbie am missing?

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I would at least not expect the parts to be under BWV 815. It could make sense to have alternative BWV 815 parent works with different parts, in the same way we can have different works when a movement was added or removed through a revision (Symphony “Symphony no. 5 in E-flat major, op. 82” - MusicBrainz / Symphony “Symphony no. 5 in E-flat major, op. 82” - MusicBrainz). But that mostly makes sense if the work gets performed as a consistent (alternative) set of parts, which might not be the case here?

I know @ListMyCDs.com has been working on Bach cleanups, maybe he has an opinion here.

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Is not a catch-all work or pseudo-work and shouldn’t be deleted. It’s one of the versions of French Suite no. 4, identified earlier with BWV 815a and now in the latest BWV-catalog it’s BWV 815.3. So there’s actually 3 versions of the work:

  1. BWV 815 early version (Fassung A), now BWV 815.1
  2. BWV 815 later version (Fassung B), now BWV 815.2
  3. BWV 815a, now BWV 815.3

Some movements between these versions could be identical and we are most likely missing some data.

See BWV 2a catalog for example Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis : nach der von Wolfgang Schmieder vorgelegten 2. Ausgabe : Schmieder, Wolfgang : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Ah, thank you for the clarification. Very glad to hear that you are trying to systematically tidy the Bach catalogue stuff! According to

there is no Menuet in the variant version BWV815a.

I think it likely that Jarrett was playing the Anna Magdalena version B in

but with the order of the Menuet and Air reversed.So the reference to 815a is wrong.

Would there be any objection to my making the edit?

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Some releases and other sources might list Menuet in BWV 815a because it has been published together with BWV 815a couple of times. Only one of the three versions actually have this movement (version B = BWV 815.2) so you are right about the Jarrett performing it.

I made some edits so we now have all 3 versions of the work: BWV 815.1, 815.2 & 815.3. I believe it makes sense to share the same movement between the versions when there’s minimal difference between them.

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