Complete recordings of multiple part pieces: best way to link Recording to Work

MusicBrainz Classical
1

Currently it is not 100% clear to me what is the best practice whenever I have a complete recording of a piece in multiple parts.

For instance, I have a complete recording of “Sonate en la mineur”, where each track on the CD is a part (1. Poco allegro, 2. Largo, 3. Presto)

Do I link each track to the complete work, with the tag ‘partial’?
Or do I link each track to the respective work part?

To keep track of the recordings, it seems to me best practice would be to link them to the complete work + partial tag. It’s also how I understand the style guide.:

from Style / Classical / Works - MusicBrainz
Complete multi-part works
If a multi-part work is presented as a single recording, you can link the recording to the “container” work, instead of linking to every sub-part.

Do I understand it correct?

2

If each track (recording) is a movement, link them to the movements. What the guide says is that if you have one track (recording) for the whole work, you should just link to the whole work rather than link all of the movements to it.

2 Likes
3

Good question!

I agree with @reosarevok 's answer. Let me expand on it a little bit.

The first thing you should do is check that MusicBrainz contains the correct Work entities. There should be a Work entity for the entire sonata, and then a Work entity for each of the three movements. Each of the movement Work entities should have a “part of” Relationship to the Sonata work.

So, for example:

work/419719, Sonate en la mineur, FK nv8 has parts:

  1. work/0473a2, Sonate en la mineur, FK nv8: I. Poco allegro
  2. work/74e639, Sonate en la mineur, FK nv8: II. Largo
  3. work/15ca8d, Sonate en la mineur, FK nv8: III. Presto

Then you make a Recording-Work relationship from your track 1 to work/0473a2, Sonate en la mineur, FK nv8: I. Poco allegro, from your track 2 to work/74e639, Sonate en la mineur, FK nv8: II. Largo, etc.

The general documentation on Work entities and the Style/Work guideline describe Work entities for movements a little. Surprisingly, the Style/Classical/Works guideline does not really talk about Work entities for movements, or the “part of” relationship, as far as I can see.

2 Likes
4

Thank, that’s clear to me.