Community Cleanup #1: Debussy

Hi all!

It’s time for the first Classical Community Cleanup! The community vote decided that we should start with Claude Debussy. So hopefully in a month or so we’ll have Mr. Deb looking much nicer than he is now!

Remember: if you have any questions, just ask! I’m hoping for this thread to see a lot of activity with editors both asking and answering questions.

Tools:

What to work on:

  • Review the existing works and catalogues to make sure there are no duplicates and the info looks correct (I see @ListMyCDs.com, @loujin and @stupidname at least have already been working on that recently, so it might be that it’s basically ready).
  • Check the release list for anything that doesn’t follow the classical guidelines. Not only that should be fixed, but that’s a good sign of the recording and relationship info being incomplete too.
  • Check the recording list. The only recordings that should be here by the end of the cleanup are of Debussy himself as a performer. Anything else being here should have performer relationships added to it if missing, then the artist credits for the recording should be changed to list the main performers (you can use the relevant script for that). Try to fix the whole release the recording is on, even if it’s not all by Debussy! But in the case of a very large compilation, it’s always acceptable to fix only the Debussy content on it.
  • Add missing Debussy recordings! If you have enough info to add a Debussy release we’re missing, that’s always useful. Just make sure to try to add as much info as possible from the get go, so we don’t have to clean that addition up as well :slight_smile:

If you add all the possible info to a release, please set the data quality to High too! Only do this if you’re confident you’ve added all the possible data (you have the release, or at least a full booklet, in front of you and you have added all relationships, including engineers, producers and the like).

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Exciting!
I don’t edit classical but looking forward to hearing how it goes :slight_smile:

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Stuck here: https://beta.musicbrainz.org/release/db91c97b-b4df-4738-ac89-5ecc670f4cd5 . Debussy “4 Preludes” - can only find a couple of obscure references. Don’t want to add a new work and upset all the good work. Any thoughts, please.

2 possibilities come to mind:
A. (the most likely) the track consists of a selection of Debussy Preludes, in line with a common practice when performing Debussy.
B. There is a Debussy work called “4 Preludes”.
However nothing with that title appears on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Claude_Debussy_by_genre

If A. is the situation and the exact constituents are undiscoverable then might creating a “series of works” for Debussy’s Preludes, and have the track be “part of” that series, be a way forward?

Cross-referencing your release with this compilation suggests that the 4 preludes are: 9, 8, 6, 12; arranged by Robert G. Hughes for 5 trombones.

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That looks quite, likely. Awesome work.

Is that the right approach, rather than to call it a medley of the 4 preludes?

If we know the four preludes, I’d just link to all four (or to catch-all works for them) and be done with it (not as medley either). If we don’t, I’d link this as a partial recording of the preludes main work(s).

Oh, one thing. If you add all the details to a release, please also set it as high quality! :slight_smile: I know we don’t display that much at the moment, but still. I’ll add that to the top post.

I just came across of this release.

It contains only the work “Children’s corner” which should be about 15 minutes in length only (no timings given). Medium type is not specified ant there is no discid. It has been entered as type “Other”. My feeling is that it might be an inofficial compilation. The recordings have been merged into ones with recording year 2008, which is clearly not ok as the release was submitted already in 2005. The submitting editor dicy was active only till 2006.

My personal opinion is: Lets just delete this release. I don’t see any value in it. Things are inconsistent, and I don’t see how we should ever have a chance to track down what this was supposed to be, originally.

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Agreed. Cases where there’s just no way of figuring out what something is should be removed - if someone has a hunch, they can always vote No and ask for more research time.

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I agree, see that it is marked for deletion now anyway. Probably an editor error based on the fact the same editor did https://beta.musicbrainz.org/edit/2490573

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Maybe the next cleanup target should be the release additions of editor dicy

EDIT: Edit #2490573 - MusicBrainz doesn’t look that bad to me. It is disc 3 of this release. Also, from skimming though the edit list, the other release additions of dicy look ok too me.

Yea they seem to have mainly done recording edits. I think the above one was just an error at the time.

I noticed your “Low Quality” edit and made an edit to remove this before reading your posts on this topic. I’m usually removing similar releases which are impossible to identify. For example another Debussy release being removed: Edit #46949831 - MusicBrainz

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I have a strange problem:
I took the cover art from this discogs release and uploaded it here.

However, the upload of the 5th image (booklet, track list of CD 1) always results in an error at the point where normally “creating edit” should appear. I tried it yesterday several times and also now.

Could you try this: Download the corresponding image at discogs (full size) and try to upload it to the musicbrainz release (should go to position 5).

Any explanation why this particular image gives trouble?

Didn’t work for me either. I guess there’s something wrong with the file. For text picture quality (because of compression) isn’t that important so I just opened it to Photoshop and saved again. It’s now added to the release.

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Thank you! Agreed, compression artifacts is not an issue in this case.

I may be missing something but I understand each single Prelude to be a main work. As in they stand alone and are preludes to nothing.