I’m not sure where this discussion is headed. On the one hand, I can see the benefit of greater consistency in the naming of works in MB. On the other hand, to move away from a style that has usability as well as consistency as an objective might be counterproductive. I don’t think this is necessarily a language issue. After all, no-one would want to rename “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” to be “A little night music” (or, more accurately, “a little serenade”) would they(?), but equally “Moonlight Sonata” is more universally recognized than “Mondscheinsonate.”
Incidentally, the MB entry for the former is Serenade no. 13 for Strings in G major, K. 525 “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” - a mixture of English (generic) and German (specific). Are we seriously going to re-name all the generic components of work names depending on what language they were first published in? In any case, these generic components of the work name (which are important in achieving consistency and usability) are frequently omitted from or post-date the published manuscripts. (Ironically, Mozart himself only wrote the words “a little serenade” as a purely generic description of the work.)
I fear that an over-enthusiasm for academic purity in work-naming will only:
- reduce usabilty
- create a huge amount of re-naming effort by what is a fairly small band of classical MB editors
- increase inconsistency as a result of an incomplete effort (resulting from (2))
So I think a compromise is needed. Where works of a composer are consistently named in a widely-understood manner and in accordance with current CSG, I do not think we should start wholesale renaming. Where a composer’s works are poorly and inconsistently named, I do agree with the idea of having an agreed and documented style for that composer. Some time ago, there was an effort at selecting individual composers for a “tidy-up” by classical MB editors. This worked pretty well, I thought - perhaps it is time to revive it?
A word about aliases. I fear that this is not a solution - i.e. putting an “academic” work name as the main name and the commonly-used name as the (what language?) alias. Aliases are not subject to any guidelines and can be changed at will by editors without any voting; they should be seen principally as additional information that is useful for search purposes.
In conclusion, I think that it is right to raise the question of better guidelines for work naming, as the existing CSG guidelines focus on track titles not work names, but that the way forward is to be consistent with existing guidelines and to focus on achievable improvements that enhance MB’s usability.