Non-music (entrance, exit, applause, curtain call) tracks in a live concert release: Track Artist? Recording Artist? Track Title? Relationships?

I’m entering a Release which is a DVD of a concert of a single long classical work: Bach’s Matthäus-Passion (St. Matthew’s Passion), a fantastic semi-staged performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, directed by Peter Sellars, etc.

Three tracks of this 2-DVD, 71-track set are special:

  • DVD1 track 1 “Vorspann”, or entrance of the performers onto the stage, to audience applause, before any music is played;
  • DVD2 track 1 “Auftritt”, or entrance of the performers onto the stage after intermission, again to audience applause, before the music of the second part begins;
  • DVD2 final track “Abspann”, or performer bows, audience applause, conductor recognising soloists from the orchestra, etc.;

The other tracks all have music from the Matthäus-Passion BWV244 Work, and are not remarkable. Track boundaries correspond to Number boundaries in the work’s score, and to Works which are MB “parts” of the root Work. Note that the DVD1 final track has music for the final number of Part One, and some seconds of audience applause after the music ends.

So, for these three special tracks, which have no musical sound, but plenty of interesting recorded sound and video action featuring the performers, what are the applicable Style guidelines?

  • What should the Track Artist be? The composer of the work we aren’t hearing in this track, but hear in the other 68 tracks? I don’t see any guidance in Style / Classical / Track / Artist or Style / Release.
  • What should the Recording Artist be? The performers we aren’t hearing in this track, but who are the object of the applause we do hear, and the visual points of interest in the video we do see? Again, no guidance in guidance in Style / Classical / Recording / Artist or Style / Recording.
  • What performers should I attach to these tracks by Relationships?
  • What should the Track Title be? Should I include the work name, per Style / Classical / Track / Title?
  • In an edit comment, there is a suggestion that such tracks should get Track Artist and/or Recording Artist of [no artist]. Is that correct? If so, is there a style guideline to that effect? The Special Purpose Artist guideline doesn’t really say so clearly. Should I propose additions to the relevant style Track Artist and Recording Artist pages?

Thanks in advance for any clarifications. I’m happy to correct the Release entry once I know what guidelines to follow.

1 Like

Personally:

[no artist] feels appropriate appropriate for both the track and recording artists.

I think you wouldn’t attach any performers to Vorspann and Auftritt. But it sounds like the conductor might be a performer (spoken vocals) on Abspann.

I think you should include the work title, at least if the track listing considers it part of the work. (Can’t tell, your album art doesn’t include the track listing).

Since those are scans you made, I suggest switching to ≥300ppi. Also, they have some terrible artifacts, e.g., in “MATTHÄUS”, and the text around the logo is barely readable. Remember you can have Picard use 500px cover art if you want to save disk space in your locally-tagged copies—please upload high-quality (large) files to CAA.

2 Likes

I thought I had scanned at 300dpi. Looking at the cover art via MusicBrainz, however, it looks like there are indeed artifacts. Also, when I export the scans from the PDF file where I keep them, they come out way too low-resolution (911x1412 pixels) and in the wrong aspect ratio. Sigh. I should re-scan them.

Thank you for pointing this out.