Hi!
I’m currently trying to clean up Schütz, and I have run into a problem several times:
Some of his works, especially the oratorios, do not have a default segmentation like others, there are no clear movements so everyone splits it his own way:
As an example, the split of the Johannes-Passion on https://musicbrainz.org/release/0d3ff72f-0c20-4d0c-badf-b88ca2d5058c and https://musicbrainz.org/release/12ec71e4-341d-4ab6-85ea-f217e2b2b924
Now I’m wondering how to handle this correctly: should I split the work into its tiniest possible bits and then each recording will have several works per track (I did this with the Matthäus-Passion Work “Matthäus-Passion, SWV 479” - MusicBrainz and ended up with parts that were about 3 seconds long sometimes) or should I just keep the whole work and make only partial recordings of anything? The first seems better on the pure data standpoint, but it is a real pain to enforce and maintain. How do the Wagner specialists deal with it? I noticed this on the Wagner operas as well.
Also, I noticed that on Schütz (and I guess on others) there is a tendency to replace the composer by the performers in the recording artists before a work is added. This makes it impossible to do what I’m trying to do (go to the Schütz page, go to the recordings tab and process everything that is there). Is there a way to clean up a composer that does also spot recordings where the composer has been removed as a recording artist?
If not, is there a way to, when I go through the latest edits for Schütz, to spot the recordings where the composer was replaced as a recording artist without a work being added (maybe an userscript) without going to the page of each recording to check?
Thanks,
Dorian
I’m wondering if it still makes sense for works of the scale of an oratorio. It seems that the opening and closing choirs are consensual and well identified, maybe I make a work for the opening, one for the closing and one for the bulk.
I did this with a couple of operas, and it is, as you say, a real pain.
That seems a sensible approach: choose the divisions that are pretty much universally acknowledged, and don’t try to subdivide further.
It’s still probably inevitable that different recordings, and different editors, will choose to divide the work into different sections that overlap. This is unfortunate from the point of view of the work entity, which won’t have a clean division into sections and subsections, but I don’t see an easy solution.
Yes. The work has 3 formal parts: Introitus (1) – Evangelium (40) – Beschluß (4)
Number of rough score pages in parethesis to give a hint on proportion.
The MB work entry had several parts, not all main 3 though and only 3—4 of the ~60, in a roman numbering that more likely comes from a release tracklist than a score; not all set in specific ordering, and all on the same ‘part of’ relationship niveau. I have done some lossless tidying:
Edit #59044147 had the bunch reordered. Edit #59044229—31 had the 3 subworks removed as parts of Passion, and after some having had them re-inserted as subworks (parts of) the Evangelium, the new layout will be like:
Aware of “deepening” the Work this way, I find it better than the previous mess; open for completion, still with a “catch-all” Evangelium that is cued to many different Track layouts on releases even of the same parent recording. Are there objections to such ‘multi-layering’ of works’ ‘part of’ relationships?
Another work with recurring different track mapping is Bartók’s Str4 1 where the Introduction to III. Finale is often not “prefixed” to that track, but instead “suffixed” to the II. track. The score is headed: I. – II. – Introduction – III., clear on artistic intent.
Of course, I ran through not checking incipit on that one since it was missing its “Beschluß” while “Das Leiden unseres Herrn” had its “Introitus”. I see you have already sorted out back the ‘part of’ relationships too. Thanks.
Edit: I should not cancel #59044231 of these 3 edits, should I?
@reosarevok I’m wondering if you have an opinion on this: Edit #59043919 - MusicBrainz . It seems to be that we have two times the same recording, but with different cuts (one cuts ~20 seconds earlier, so the first track is longer and the second shorter). How do we deal with this? For me the recordings should not be merged, but I can’t find an appropriate relationship.
Just to clarify to others: The edit concerns 2 tracks of the same recorded interval, that on 2 releases have been cut diffently, but our crux has ramifications: It is about the releases in the above post. The 1989 one has the same ‘parent’ recording cued to 58 tracks, none of which matching any of the 7 on the 2 (1991, 2000) releases in question. Here be dragons.