Any original classical works can be added to MusicBrainz
To my mind, that means that you can’t add, as a parts of a work, things that are not an original part of the work.
Fair comment (as in this case the composer did create the work) - if you can link the works (I can’t bring them to mind just now) then that would help
To return to the planets (per last.fm):
In 2000, the Hallé Orchestra commissioned the English composer Colin Matthews, an authority on Holst, to write a new eighth movement, which Matthews entitled, “Pluto, the Renewer”. Dedicated to the late Imogen Holst, Gustav Holst’s daughter, it was first performed in Manchester on 11 May 2000, with Kent Nagano conducting the Hallé Orchestra. Matthews also changed the ending of “Neptune” slightly so that movement would lead directly into “Pluto”.
He was not commisioned to write, neither did he write, a new work “The Planets Suite for Orchestra, op. 32 (with Pluto…)”
what’s to stop me adding another random rock to the suite and listing a new work, calling it “The Planets Suite, op. 32 (with two tings on a triangle for Astraea by MetaTunes)”?
Unlike yours, Colin Matthews’ work has several recorded performances by different artists, and thus satisfies the criteria for a work.
Still, when you look at the ways those are presented, I do agree that they are not attempting to present a new composite work, but a performance of Holst’s The Planets followed by a performance of Matthews’ Pluto. As such, I agree that the composite work we have at present of The Planets plus Pluto is a mistake.
Pluto has been downgraded now anyway. It isn’t even a planet any more.
Working on it
But seriously, I’m glad someone understands the issue with this particular “work”.
On the other matter which @reosarevok raises regarding work revisions by composers where only some parts were revised. I’m still trying to track these down. One instance that comes to mind (now) is Stravinsky’s Firebird suites (of which there are 3 - 1911, 1919 and 1945), but I think that the orchestration is different throughout, so all the parts are subtly different. In MB the revised versions have separate work names, so I’m still looking for an example of a part which is genuinely an identical part in two separate parent works.
Assuming such an example exists, I think it is a MB database issue, not just an issue for my plugin: i.e. for any particular recording, how are we supposed to know what work it is actually a recording of? It may be possible to see this from the context (either by the other parts in a release, or from a track title in a release), but for the recording per se, this is not possible without either (a) a disambiguation of the related work or (b) a specific relationship attribute. Otherwise it would appear to be a quantum superposition of two works.
One example that comes to mind is the parts of “The Four Seasons”, e.g.:
(This is more out of pragmatism than being a separate Work per se, due to how often and well know the Four Seasons is outside of “Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione”.)
The subtle difference there is that the relationship with its parents is “part of a collection”. I see no reason why works cannot be parts of several collections, depending on how they were published. I’m still looking for a work which is a part of two or more created works.
Milhaud: Str4 14 —5 , ad lib performed simultaneously as octet ; all 3 works sharing opus number 291.
(From thread Levels in the structure of works, @derobert looking “for works that are part-of more than one work”.)
This “Janus-faced work” comes from reördering the same 3 of 4 movements:
Piano Sonata:
“sonata-allegro”
“scherzo”
“slow movement”
“finale”
Grindlemusic:
Premises [“finale”]
Questions [“sonata-allegro”]
Soul Music [“slow movement”]
Mood Music [“scherzo”]
In opera also numerous cases of number revision (Fidelio/Leonore), arias and else going in and out of score, sung recitative replacing originally spoken dialogue (Medea, Carmen), notably differing versions (Don Carlos), …
Excellent! Thanks @Griomo. I knew about Op130 but had forgotten. The others add to my education .
In terms of how they play into the current discussion (regarding works with multiple parent works):
Große Fuge: This is shown as a stand-alone work, separated from its original parent, which contains the late allegro as well as all the other parts. I think this is correct since it was subsequently published as a separate work (Op.133)
As regards the Mahler, all the parts of the different versions are separate records in MB. I am assuming that there are, at least, subtle orchestration differences throughout so that none of the parts are the same as the corresponding parts of previous versions.
Milhaud: I’m not familiar with this work, but as far as the MB database structure is concerned, none of the parts are shown as “part of” more than one parent work. The linked thread took me to Work movement reused in another work - Relationship type?. which I realise is almost identical to the question I am now trying to resolve. Unfortunately, it did not get answered. In that post, @alex_s7 asks what approach to use where a composer re-uses one of (their own) work movements:
I think there is a fourth option: Place only the new/revised works in the later “container” work. That said, I think (in an ideal world) option 2 would be best, but it would require an additional “(re)used in” attribute. Failing that, I would go for option 3 (with disambiguation to make it clear that the movement is just re-used).
Atterburg: Symphony 2 (another new one to me!). Here the original work in MB has no parts - the parts are just movements of the later revision.
The Ben Johnston work would be an excellent example (when the movements of the sonata are played in an alternate order, the piece is titled Grindlemusic) . Unfortunately, Grindlemusic is not in MB as a separate work.
So, to sum up, although the specific quoted works are all excellent examples of re-used movements, none of them have been implemented in MB as a part belonging to more than one work. I haven’t investigated all the suggested operas, but I looked at Fidelio and, again, that is implemented in MB by using different work records for the parts of the revisions - i.e. no parts with more than one parent.
As far as I remember, when asking that question, I was editing works of Luigi Boccherini. He was a very prolific composer (nearly 600 works in the catalogue), but in his late years he sometimes took two movements from two earlier works, added a new movement and published all three as a new work. Sometimes he transposed re-used movements into another key, sometimes just keep as they were published earlier. Lazy bastard !
After 1 year I do not remember 100%, but I believe I have added new MB works since I got no answer which relationship to use. To really clean up Boccherini, one has to go work-by-work through the catalogue of his works. I was satisfied with more-or-less improving meta-info for a CD box I own, without attempting to attain perfection
I just remembered one slightly different case where I indeed assigned a part to 2 different parents.
Handel’s oratorio “Belshazzar, HWV 61” was originally written in English, and later translated to German. There are recordings of “Belshazzar” in both languages. For a German translation I have created a separate MB work linked to the original work as “translated version of”. For most parts (“numbers”) I have also created separate MB works linked to original works as “translated version of”. But there were a couple of parts without lyrics. For such parts creating a “translated version of” would be wrong: there is no translation, it is exactly the same part. But such instrumental parts belongs to both the original work in English and to the German translation. As a result, the Overture and the Sinfony belong to both parents.
As does A Martial Syphony [sic]. The last 2 of those 3 are actually not correctly named (in addition to the typo) - they have been given names which are consistent with the other parts in the German translation, but not with the other parts in the original. If they were to have names consistent with the other parts in both cases, then the works would need to be duplicated. Otherwise, I think the name should be from the original. Alternatively, the names of the translated parts should be exactly as per the original plus the disambiguation, then the identical parts will fit into both schemes.
Ironically, none of those 3 parts cause my Classical Extras plugin any problems as the parent works have the same name, disambiguation aside. However all the other parts do cause problems, for reasons that I have not yet been able to fathom. Thanks for finding a good test case .
Thank you for spotting typos. Original (English) version was created by another editor, I added a German translation, so mistakes in purely instrumental parts are not mine, but still
You actually found an interesting case: what shall be a right approach when the content (music) of a part is identical in two different contexts, but the correct name is context-dependent? A purely instrumental part is absolutely identical in context of a translated work, but it’s name in such context may be different.
I suppose a clean solution may be a possibility to reference a work under a different name from a parent. For example, when a particular work is considered in a context of parent English version, it is called “March”, in a context of German translation the right name is “Marsch”. Somewhat similar to “credited as” property for a link from a recording to an artist, where an artist may be credited by a different name in a context of a particular recording.
Odd that the 3 parts that are common are consistent with the German translation, not the Original. Maybe to do with the sequence of edits made.
I had thought perhaps a ‘work->used in’ relationship might be nice (rather than specify the re-used work as a “part”) or add an attribute to the ‘part’ relationship to indicate ‘used in’. In either case the addition of ‘credited-as’ would make sense. But I suspect that this might be too big an ask for a relatively small number of use cases.
Sorry, you were right. I looked on old edits, and it was my error after all. Fixed: using style of the main (English) parent for names of shared child works.
OK, I’ve been wearing my thinking cap for a couple of days and this is what I have come up with (FWIW)
As regards the “appropriation” of classical works by soundtrack “works”, I think there is a good measure of agreement that they should not be listed as parts.
As regards a composer adding some parts to a work by another composer, unless there has also been revision of that previous work, I do not think that the previous composer’s works should be included as parts in some artificial “overall work” which also contains the new works as parts; particularly where the context makes absolutely clear that there is no such pretension on the part of the later composer. Instead (if the new work contains more than one part) I think it should be named separately with a disambiguation to make the connection clear.
Where a composer has “repackaged” his original work, possibly including new parts or omitting some original parts and perhaps with some parts revised or translated, then I think it is appropriate to contain all this new package in some overall work, even if it contains some parts identical to the original. In this case there are two possible options:
(a) Use the same name for the overall work in both cases, with the difference being clarified in disambiguation. In this case, the common parts will have names which fit in style-wise with the parent work in both cases, so they can be linked to both parents. This might typically be the case for a translation. Only the translated works will have different names and any instrumental parts will be unchanged.
(b) Use a different name for the new overall work (with disambiguation as appropriate). In this case, style guidelines would indicate that the parts of this work should be named “New work name: Part name” (Note that the style guidelines for works are remarkably vague on this, but it is the standard practice based on the guidelines for track titles). In this case a new “work” would be needed in MB as (at present) contextual names are not possible - I would then suggest that the disambiguation makes it clear that it is identical to the part in the original work.
Whether (a) or (b) is chosen would depend on the context and the editor’s judgement.
The implications of this for the works discussed in this thread are:
For The Planets Suite extension (with “Pluto” by Colin Matthews), delete the works (Mars->Uranus plus the original Neptune) that do not belong there. Neptune is a revision of the original Neptune and Pluto is an original work. An alternative (which I think is wrong) to name the extended work identically to the original with a disambiguation (as might be the case if Holst had extended his own work). In any case all the parts of the original are wrongly named and should just be The Planets, op. 32: I. Mars, the Bringer of War etc. (delete “suite for orchestra”). I would appreciate it if those who voted against the deleted works (@reosarevok) would revise their votes and others who agree with my analysis (@monxton et al) add their “yes” votes. After that, I will tidy up the names.
For Belshazzar, HWV 6, I think the approach is reasonable (especially after the tidying up that has been done), but there is a slight inconsistency in the naming between the translated and original parts. The original uses, for example, Act II, Scene2, name whereas the translation uses Act II, no.30, name. This leads to an inconsistency for the common parts. I don’t know the reason for the difference.
As regards how the Classical Extras plugin plays with all this, I am pleased to say that (after discovering a couple deeply-buried bugs that Belshazzar helped to winkle out), it should provide neat and consistent results (in the new version to be released shortly).
Another interesting case is Le tombeau de Couperin (orch. Zoltán Kocsis). Kocsis only orchestrated the fugue and toccata, which were omitted from Ravel’s orchestration of what was originally a piano work. I’m inclined to think that the “parent” work for the Kocsis orchestration should only include the orchestrations he did and not the others which are purely Ravel’s. Le tombeau de Couperin: Prélude. Vif (orch. Zoltán Kocsis) is certainly misleading, but I also don’t think it is right to include Le Tombeau de Couperin: I. Prélude (for orchestra) - the Ravel orchestration - as part of Le tombeau de Couperin (orch. Zoltán Kocsis).
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) would revise their votes and others who agree with my analysis (
