How would you like your Classical Albums sorted for display?

[DavidL]

A problem familiar to all collectors of classical music is how to catalogue their collection. One commonly used approach it to put the composer work in the [album] tag. I thought it would be useful to canvas views on sorting album titles when used in this manner. Assuming that a separate album is used for each work of a particular type for each composer, how would you like these album titles sorted when they appear in the library display? As an example to illustrate the 2 poll alternatives I'll use Mozart's 27 piano concertos.

 

The results of using the sorting options for album titles of the form: "Mozart - Piano concerto No.n" will be:

 

OPTION 1: Sort album titles on purely alphanumeric character basis.

[Resulting sort order for Mozart piano concertos would be: 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 2, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

 

OPTION 2: Sort album titles on combination of alphanumeric characters and embedded numbers.

[Resulting sort order for Mozart piano concertos would be: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27]

 

Any comments on the sorting behaviour of your favourite music server/streamer/player would be of interest.

[Boris75]

I wonder why anyone would vote for option 1.

[wgscott]

+01

[Musicophile]

Even Itunes does this without problems:

 

[DavidL]

Ah ha!

This would have been my reaction a week ago until I started investigating server software.

Now while Microsoft and Apple system software for file handling produces sorting of Option 2 type, this is NOT the case for most current server software. As far as I can determine only iTunes does option 2, and then only on Macs! I couldn't believe it either. The only explanation (excuse) I can conceive is that implementing option 2 sorting would degrade sorting speed and hence the response seen by users.

Hence my request for comments on 'your favourite music server/streamer/ player' software.

[Musicophile]

For all the bashing ITunes gets, I actually think it get quite a lot of things right.

[Bob Stern]

Does anyone use Album Artist in classical music?

 

I almost always leave Album Artist blank and enter the performers only in the Artist tag. However, there is one situation in which I can imagine finding Album Artist useful. In opera, it makes sense to enter the conductor and orchestra in Album Artist, and to use Artist to enter in each individual track the singers who perform on that track. However, I must admit I've never bothered to do this. Instead, I sometimes include in the Name tag for each track the names of the characters or singers who appear on that track.

 

Any suggestions along similar lines?

[DavidL]

I started to use Album Artist about 3 months ago. I put the name of the single prime artist in this field for a complete album, and leave Artist variable for each track (as typically found by Gracenote or other databases). I made the change to speed up searching by scrolling through successive levels of library elements. Changing the listing from Artist to Album Artist reduced the number to search from 4800 to 1700. In conjunction with a custom set of 22 Genres covering classical, jazz and world music I've used for several years this change has made library browsing far more slick.

[DavidL]

An addition to my post 5, as a result of my gradual progress down a steep learning curve for server/player software:

 

JRMC with JRemote produces a list of albums of Option 2 type. I'm therefore encouraged to persevere with the Mac version of JRMC (I'm not at all keen to add a windows partition to my Mac Mini).

[Audio_ELF]

Even Itunes does this without problems:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10045[/ATTACH]

As an aside; is the tag labelled "Werke" in your screenshot what in English is labelled "Grouping"?

 

Eloise

[Musicophile]

As an aside; is the tag labelled "Werke" in your screenshot what in English is labelled "Grouping"?

 

Eloise

Yes. No idea why they translated it this way, but it suits me well, as "werk" means oeuvre, which is exactly what I use that tag for. Unfortunately that tag is not very widely used elsewhere in ITunes, and even less in the remote app.

[Audio_ELF]

Yes. No idea why they translated it this way, but it suits me well, as "werk" means oeuvre, which is exactly what I use that tag for. Unfortunately that tag is not very widely used elsewhere in ITunes, and even less in the remote app.

That's the use I put it to as well... Generally the "Grouping" tag is "Composer: Composition, Opus number". Makes it easy to find things by either composer or performer.

 

As you say annoyingly it is missing from the iTunes remote iOS app.

 

If only Apple would add a composer tag and allow multiple artist tags then I would be happy :-)

 

Eloise

[Musicophile]

Yes. No idea why they translated it this way, but it suits me well, as "werk" means oeuvre, which is exactly what I use that tag for. Unfortunately that tag is not very widely used elsewhere in ITunes, and even less in the remote app.

That's the use I put it to as well... Generally the "Grouping" tag is "Composer: Composition, Opus number". Makes it easy to find things by either composer or performer.

 

As you say annoyingly it is missing from the iTunes remote iOS app.

 

If only Apple would add a composer tag and allow multiple artist tags then I would be happy :-)

 

Eloise

Sorry for potentially derailing this thread, while I fully agree with the multiple artist issue, what's wrong with the composer tag?

[Bob Stern]

I reverse the normal usages of Album and Group. Because the iOS Remote app displays Album rather than Group, I use Album to store the more important Composition name (BE Sym 9), and I use Group to store information that applies to the "album": label name, remastering date of an analog recording, sometimes catalog number.

[Bob Stern]

Yes. No idea why they translated it this way, but it suits me well, as "werk" means oeuvre, which is exactly what I use that tag for. Unfortunately that tag is not very widely used elsewhere in ITunes, and even less in the remote app.

 

Is "stück" the closest equivalent of the English word "work" or "composition"?

[Boris75]

Is "stück" the closest equivalent of the English word "work" or "composition"?

 

German is a foreign language to me, so native speakers please do not hesitate to correct me, but I think "stück" means piece, such as a movement in a composition rather than the entire work.

[Musicophile]

German is a foreign language to me, so native speakers please do not hesitate to correct me, but I think "stück" means piece, such as a movement in a composition rather than the entire work.

Pretty close.

 

Literally "Stück" means indeed piece, like a "Stück Kuchen" (piece of cake).

 

In classical music, a typical term would be "Klavierstück", i.e. piano piece (e.g. Brahms op. 118, Schumann's op. 32). You wouldn't necessarily refer to a single movement of a larger symphony with this term, that would be a "Satz".

 

To Bob's question: "Werk" is the closest equivalent of "work", and I'm pretty sure the English word here is derived from German. Alternatively, "Opus" obviously works as well, even in German.

[Boris75]

You wouldn't necessarily refer to a single movement of a larger symphony with this term, that would be a "Satz".

 

I learned something today. Many thanks, Musicophile.

 

This is a welcome change from the cable threads, where I do not learn much, except that interest for scientific explanations is anathema to some.

[Audio_ELF]

Sorry for potentially derailing this thread, while I fully agree with the multiple artist issue, what's wrong with the composer tag?

Sorry I meant a conductor tag. The composer tag works fine.

[Musicophile]

Sorry I meant a conductor tag. The composer tag works fine.

Agree. Or at least multiple separate artist, e.g. separated by a semicolon or similar.

[DavidL]

Yesterday Simon issued an update to implement numerical sorting in MinimServer, thus joining iTunes and JRiver MC in this respect.

 

Makes a good piece of software even better.

[astrotoy]

Any classical collector worth their salt orders their collection by label and catalog number! You should know RCA LSC-2436, or Decca SXL-2020. Oh, I forgot, with digital downloads there are no catalogue numbers. :-)

 

Where I have issues is with umlauts. Do you spell Walkure with an extra e, as in Walkuere? I do it sometimes. Also translating Russian to a western alphabet means you have Moussorgsky or Mussorgsky, Glazounov, Glauzunov, Glazunov. So Mussorgsky is split between before and after Mozart.

 

Larry

[DavidL]

As an avid collecter of recorded classical music I beg to differ Astrotoy!

 

First off many performances of classical works are re-issued, often with a different combination of works and / or artists in the album. Almost all of the CD re-issues of works I have on LP contain additional or a different combination of works to those on the LP.

 

Secondly it is much easier to browse a library to first find the work and then choose a performer (my preference) if the library is organised by work rather than album. If it is not organised by work a customised search is needed every time to find all instances of the desired work in the albums, before being able to choose a performer.

 

The concept of 'album' for recordings of classical music is becoming far less important than for recordings of pop, jazz, world music etc. apart perhaps for recordings of classical song recitals which are often themed. I therefore now use the 'Album' field in meta data to identify the work using the format:

[Composer] - [Work]

and 'dismember' my albums into sets of works described in this manner.

 

 

Enjoy the music.

[Musicophile]

Any classical collector worth their salt orders their collection by label and catalog number! You should know RCA LSC-2436, or Decca SXL-2020. Oh, I forgot, with digital downloads there are no catalogue numbers. :-)

 

Where I have issues is with umlauts. Do you spell Walkure with an extra e, as in Walkuere? I do it sometimes. Also translating Russian to a western alphabet means you have Moussorgsky or Mussorgsky, Glazounov, Glauzunov, Glazunov. So Mussorgsky is split between before and after Mozart.

 

Larry

On my side, I use German umlauts and French accents, but am much more sloppy with regards to other variations be it å, ñ or the thing on the "r" in Dvorak's correct spelling for example.

 

On the Russians, I've taken one consistent version from Wikipedia and aligned on that, to avoid having several Tchaikovskys.

 

and honestly, catalog numbers are one step to much for me even though I'm a rather compulsive tagger.

[Sir Real B. Czar]

I am not interested in organizing by who the conductor is, what year it was recorded, or what label. I keep all this info in the metadata, but for organization, I file by the composer. As far as the music itself, I use the year the composition was written to organize so that I can listen to their music evolve.

 

Obviously this doesn't work for all recordings, and can get crowded in some years, but for the most part it helps me keep centuries of Classical music in perspective.