Recording artist question

MusicBrainz
1

I’m editing this release, and I’m unsure how to handle something.

The Recording Artists for every track currently has the composer and one of the soloists (who was originally entered as the sole Release Artist - that’s being fixed). There are 3 other performers, and I have no way of knowing which tracks were performed by which artists. I don’t know if the one soloist, Dieltiens, actually performs on every track or not. The back cover image doesn’t say, and I’ve been unable to find a booklet track list, which I presume would give more per-track info.

  1. It’s obviously wrong, per CSG, to have the composer as Recording Artist.
  2. It might be wrong to have all 4 listed performers, (Dieltiens, van der Meer, Junghänel, and Kohnen) as Recording Artists on all recordings.

My question is, would it be better to leave the obviously wrong values (1), or to change it to the probably-wrong values, which at least removes the composers from Recording Artists?

1 Like
2

While still a bit of a guess:

The back cover says the Bononcini is for two cellos, so there we know the two cellists must appear.

Every instrument here (theorbo, harpsichord, and secondary cello) are common instruments in basso continuo.

This Spotify release includes what seems to be the same recordings as disc 1, and credits all 4 for everything, except the Bononcini which has just the two cellists.

As such, I’d probably add all four to all except the Bononcini. Track 7 might be the two cellists alone, even though it’s credited to all of them on Spotify; you could listen and try to verify. Dieltiens is probably the cello soloist rather than the basso cellist, but we don’t really have proof for that so I wouldn’t claim it.

3

I did what you suggested. I listened to portions of a few of the tracks. I’m not certain the basso continuo is present on every track of the works where it’s credited, but I didn’t listen to all tracks completely. So I followed your suggestion and credited all four to all recordings except the Bononcini, where I credited just the two cellists.

At least the composers will be off the recordings as RAs.

(Now that I think about it, I hope my earlier edits renaming the tracks/recordings won’t interfere)