I like most of that, but do we need different attributes for movement/act/scene? Some way to differentiate them from collections as meant to be played together, definitely, but it seems to me like we can just say “Y is inherently part of: X” and let the work type specify which of the three it is. Or am I just resurrecting the earlier debate by saying that?
This. We need attributes to specify the type of part because it’s not clear based on the type of the work. For example without it you can’t tell if a part of opera is an act or an actual opera piece. Using relationship attributes is the most logical solution when we try to indicate the type of relationship between two works.
Could I just clarify re the XML. Does the
<relation ... type="parts">
remain, but with the addition of something like
<attribute-list>
<attribute>collection</attribute>
</attribute-list>
?
In other words any existing XML lookups using the parts type will still work?
Yup, that’s how this should work.
I don’t understand the definitions of Collection and Movement, especially Movement:
This would apply to just about every multi-part work, wouldn’t it?
Determining when to use (and not to use) Act and Number would be less trouble since these are usually already included in the work title.
Probably does apply to just about every one. At least symphonies, concertos, etc. I think “movement” will be by far the most common one.
@reosarevok BTW, in your list of options, which would use use for Wagner’s Ring? It’s odd to call the four operas “movements”, but that seems match the definition given. I suppose we can continue to use the generic part/part of for things that don’t fit?
I would expect to just use “part of” for everything which isn’t really anything of the others, yes (and I’d expect it to be used quite often). More options can always be added in the future if we see a need.
It was suggested earlier that the Ring Cycle operas should be a “collection” type rather than “movements”, or perhaps both at once?
I added the attributes I listed in my first message today (without link phrases for now, because orderable rels ignore them at the moment anyway):
Of course, it seems that broke something again, since I can’t load every relationship editor for works now. But I have @yvanzo on the case.
@MetaTunes: see Sylvia : Acte I for an example of how it looks now 
(I’ve also asked @yvanzo to change the ws to have an XML attribute with the ID of the relationship attribute like we have for relationship types right now)
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It looks great! Is there any way to see a full work (like the Sylvia one) on a single page? A “flat” version of all the parts/movements/numbers…
Editing works to use this would be a lot easier if we could set an attribute for all child works with one click.
Looks good. Next week I’ll take a look at incorporating an option into Picard “Classical Extras” plugin to take advantage of this. The new version of the plugin will also cater for multiple parents, partial recordings, medleys and arrangements, as well as reading saved file tags and allowing saved options to be used when re-tagging.
Great, although Number doesnt really mean anything couldn’t we use Scene instead
Scenes and numbers are completely different things. Scenes might change several times during a single number. For ballet we might consider having a scene attribute. For opera we typically shouldn’t even have scene works (as explained on the guidelines).
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I agree that “scene” doesn’t work, but I’m not sure what to make of “number” either. Movement and collection add information, but I don’t see what would be the difference between “number” and an un-typed part-of relationship.
If something is a number we know that it’s typically part of stage work (theatre, opera, or oratorio…).
Not all parts of a work with numbers are numbers, too. See the Mozart Singspiel I shared earlier where the sung sections are numbers but the others aren’t.
Hmm. Leaving aside that an oratorio is not a stage work, wouldn’t it be better to use work type to say if a work was an opera etc.? “Number” is not an accepted term for musical parts of an opera or oratorio AFAIK. Typically such parts might be preludes, overtures, arias, recitatives, choruses, finales or just plain (instrumental) movements. For a “musical”, “number” might have a specific meaning (similar to aria) and my understanding is that it is this usage that has been borrowed for the new scheme for classical works. In other words, only arias etc. would be “numbers”, not recitatives or spoken sections. Given the potential for confusion, I think some style guidelines would be needed for this. Also, should the part types I have listed above be applied in some way - but as work type or relationship attribute?
Finally, oratorios tend to have Parts rather than Acts, so perhaps that should be a specific relationship attribute?
True, even though sometimes staged by definition it isn’t a stage work.
Recitatives are music and by definition these can be also numbers (even though composers often haven’t numbered recitatives).
Work type defines the type of work but the attribute defines the type of part (or type of relation).
I’m pretty sure there’s no specific name for oratorio parts so this seems unnecessary.