Re: composer name — I was taking the whole thing as if it were an actual title, If it’s a list of works, shouldn’t it be “Symphony no. 1 / Symphony no. 3”?
Re: credits — Having one for old names makes sense. I’ll keep putting them in for the album credits as well, at least when it isn’t too much work.
I can see this title as “Symphonies nos. 1 and 3” (a title) or “Symphony no. 1 / Symphony no. 3” (work list), but I wouldn’t see the composer as part of it in either case. If it was something like “The First and Third Symphonies by Rimsky-Korsakov”, or something more connected, then maybe, but the two things seem fairly separate here.
I put in an edit to change it to a work list. That’s probably better for searching, as "Symphony no. 3" wouldn’t match the way it was. Which I suppose is probably the reason we do lists of works that way.
I guess it’s confusing when everyone prefers different ways but like earlier with artist credits I prefer using same data (title) as on the cover (when it doesn’t conflict with our guidelines). It’s really important to be able to identify and find the correct release. Does someone searching this release understand that he/she should actually be searching for “Symphony no. 5 / Symphony no. 9” instead of what can be found from the cover? I would follow guidelines related to work list only when there clearly is a list. It could be questioned if the current title is really a list.
(presuming you mean 1 and 3, not 5 and 9)
I think a person searching has to either use one of the easier lookup methods (barcode, catalog #) or be familiar with the CSG to have any hope. Otherwise, he/she would probably think the composer name is part of the title.
“A and B” is the standard way to write lists in English, so it strikes me as a list.
https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=release%3A"Symphony+no.+1"+release%3A"Symphony+no.+3"++creditname%3ARimsky-Korsakov&type=release&limit=25&method=advanced you’d expect that to find it—it currently doesn’t.
https://musicbrainz.org/search?query="Symphonies+nos.+1+and+3"&type=release&method=indexed does though… but https://musicbrainz.org/search?query="Symphony+no.+1+%2F+Symphony+no.+3"&type=release&method=indexed shows that format to be more common (but a lot of those are more clearly just lists of works).
So, err, I don’t know. Agree it’d be nice if everything were consistent though. (And maybe it’d be nice if releases had search hints, like artists do).
We have a lot of editors who own only couple of classical releases and mainly edit releases from other genres. Asking them to learn full CSG is little bit too much. It’s important to remember that this data isn’t used just by our editors. For example people using search engines won’t be finding our data if it doesn’t match with real life. If editors just keep linking works with recordings we can easily find them without caring about release titles.
It’s probably not a good thing that they need to learn CSG to have any hope—but I think it’s currently a reality. That one is simple enough that you can just type all the text from the cover and it works. But a lot aren’t. A better search for classical would be nice. (Imagine searching for something that just says “Beethoven: Symphony no. 3” on the cover. Not really useful.) Realistically, finding a classical release needs composer, work, conductor at minimum, and often orchestra and year as well.
And release titles aren’t just for searching; they’re for tagging too. Unfortunately there aren’t search hints (aliases) for releases, AFAIK.
Releases can have aliases: Release “Cello Concerto "Pro et contra" / Perpetuum Mobile / Symphony no. 1 "Polyphonic" / Symphony no. 2 / Symphony no. 3” by Arvo Pärt; The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, Frans Helmerson - Aliases - MusicBrainz
Wow, not sure how I missed that!
Canceled my edit and put it in as an alias (search hint) instead.