After a very successful first project, it’s time for the second Classical Community Cleanup! The community vote decided that we should give a hand to our good old Gustav Mahler. Let’s make this as successful a month as September was!
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:
My Classical Editor’s Toolbox, especially if you’re a relatively new editor. You’ll definitely want to install most of the userscripts mentioned there.
Discogs page for releases where we don’t have enough info, but they do.
What to work on:
Review the existing works to make sure there are no duplicates and the info looks correct, and add any missing works (keep in mind while it is perfectly ok to add lost works, it’d be good to specify they’re lost so that people don’t accidentally use them on recordings).
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 Mahler himself as a performer (probably mostly this piano roll album). 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 Mahler! But in the case of a very large compilation, it’s always acceptable to fix only the Mahler content on it.
Add missing Mahler recordings! If you have enough info to add a Mahler 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
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).
I’d prefer joining the truncated recordings into the complete recording since they ARE the same recording just split into separate tracks (like stated in the track titles).
Is there a common sense in dealing with this case? Sorry, could not find any hint in the style guides or discussion neither in the issue tracker.
I commented on the edit, but this should not be merged - the recording guidelines specify that. One thing that isn’t too clear by the choice of the word “recording” is that a recording in MusicBrainz is more like a “mix” or “edit”, rather than just the result of the actual act of recording something. These should be linked to the original with the edit relationship.
These are also separate recordings according to the previous definitions. However, since the combination of the two parts equals the longer one, it’s better to use the compilation relationship for these.
That said, I agree that we could use a good way to copy all the relationships from one recording to another for cases like this. I’m not sure if there’s already a userscript for this purpose.
Well, that’s a bit less obvious. In fact we have two edits of a master tape recording for vinyl and later on they use the original recording, but I see that it is the only way with the given relationship types in rare cases where the “complete” recording is not available.
I was wondering what to do with the Piano Quartet. We currently have it as the one-movement work it mostly ended up being, but there’s apparently a very short fragment of a Scherzo that has been completed as a “second movement” by, at least, Schnittke. Should we have a second “parent” work for the quartet that has the “Piano Quartet in A minor” work as its first movement or?
What we currently have as “Piano Quartet in A minor” should be renamed to “Piano Quartet in A minor: I. Nicht zu schnell”. New masterwork could then be created for both movements. URL-relationships and premiere should be moved to this masterwork. Annotation could explain that recordings typically should be linked only with the first movement.
For sure if you are able to fit something that makes sense into it. Something on master work should hint to use first movement or it’s too easy to incorrectly select.
I tried looking through https://isrc.soundexchange.com to find any possible matches (based on track name & length) and couldn’t. There are times a little longer (like 29:08) and shorter (like 28:53) but none match. Of course, that presumed the track title matched "Finale. Allegro moderato" which is already 53 pages of results.
How does a release get in to the database with no edit history, anyway? How long ago must this have been added? (having an idea of the date would of course rule out more modern releases). Seems like if we could find the related disc 1, we’d have better luck matching it to something…
Well, the first edit in history is 2003-11, so it must be before that. Probably an auto-import from somewhere, which might mean there’s no matching disc 1.
