Proposed new genres

[Davydov]

"Stage Works" is a super-category containing other categories, not the works themselves. The works are categorized "Opera", "Ballet" etc, which categories are then grouped under "Stage Works". Mixing all these works together in the super-category is not standard practice, and not helpful for users.

That actually similar to the current system (with 'meta-genres'), but it isn't what's being proposed. The sub-genres will exist independently of the genres, and can overlap two or more genres. For example,

* Tchaikovsky's suites for orchestra will be listed both in the "Orchestral" genre, and in the "Suites" sub-genre
* Rachmaninoff's suites for piano will be listed both in the "Keyboard" genre, and in the "Suites" sub-genre

So:
* The "Orchestral" genre will include all Tchaikovsky's suites
* The "Keyboard" genre will include all Rachmaninoff's suites
* The "Suites" sub-genre will include all Tchaikovsky's suites and all Rachmaninoff's suites

There will be no super-categories, or anything like that.

[Davydov]

Looking at the project page I can see how my poor choice of wording could have been misleading, so I've changed the layout to make things clearer.

[supertchan]

Looking at the project page I can see how my poor choice of wording could have been misleading, so I've changed the layout to make things clearer.

Thanks for your work.
How about word of Concertante?
My English-Japanese dictionaries haven't such word.
Of course, my music dictionaries have it, but its meaning is different from solo-concerto-like work.

[Davydov]

[quote="supertchan"How about word of Concertante?[/quote]

"Concertante" will cover all works for solo instrument and orchestra, not just those which are called concertos.

For people who specifically want to pick out concertos from this genre, there will be new sub-genres for "Piano Concertos", "Violin Concertos", etc., which don't exist at the moment.

It's been suggested in another thread that we should give some thought on making the instrumentation field searchable, so that people could search on combinations of instrumentation, genre, sub-genre, time period, and composer nationality. It might be helpful to standardize the instrumentation field at the same time as modifying the genres, to save going through everything twice.

[Operalala]

Categories like "Suites" are not sub-categories if they can be put in more than one category. It sounds like you're proposing there be a mandatory "Category" field and an optional "Genre" field for each work.
More specific to the mandatory fields, no user is going to be happy wading through operas and incidental music when they are looking for ballets, and vice versa. Having a super-category "stage works" is useful for orienting users and uploaders, but it should only contain other sub-categories, not the works themselves. I'd be happy to see a category tree that looks something roughly like this, with significant (bold-face) categories being mandatory, not top-level ones:

• 1. Stage Works
  • a. Vocal Stage Works
    • i. Operas
      ii. Operettas (including German Singspiele, French Operas-Comiques, Spanish Zarzuelas, English Musicals, etc.)
    b. Dance
    • i. Ballet
    c. Incidental Music (including Film music, spoken stage works)
  2. Choral
  • a. Sacred Choral Works
    • i. Oratorios
      ii. Masses
      iii. Requiems
      iv. Hymns
    b. Secular Choral Works
  3. Vocal
  • a. Art Songs
    b. Traditional and Popular Songs (including Folk, Jazz, parlor pieces, cabaret, etc.)
    d. Early Vocal Music (this is a catch-all for Medieval-Baroque songs for the time being, since nobody has weighed in yet on Early Music.)
    e. Vocal Instructional
  4. Orchestral
  • a. Orchestral Works
    b. Concertante
    • i. the various instrumental configurations?
  5. Ensemble
  • a. Chamber
    • i. the various configurations?
    b. Band (including Marches, Instrumental Jazz)
  6. Solo Instrumental
  • a. Keyboard Works
    • i. Keyboard Instructional
    b. Solo Instrumental Works
    • i. Instrumental Instructional
  7. Writings
  • a. Biographies
    b. Criticism
    c. Theory
    d. Instructional (non-instrumental and non-vocal)

These are categories which most uploaders would recognize, and, more importantly, what users would expect to work with when looking for things. If inevitably an uploader is unsure and miscategorizes something, such as I might do with an instrumental work, this is a Wiki, and another editor more knowledgeable in a given field can make corrections.
Things like Marches, Suites, Jazz, Symphony could go into an expandable, non-mandatory "Genre" field, if applicable.

[Lyle Neff]

The primary problem with the category "Stage works" in this and the previous century is that it leaves analogous works written for film/video, television, and now internet out in the cold. (It would appear that reliance on Grove usage should NOT be relied upon in all cases. ) I realize that perhaps most of such works would not be public-domain; but IMSLP should encourage composers to make their works available, and "stage works" would not do that for composers in the media that I listed.

Another thought I had was that a given work might justifiably fit into more than one sub-category. (Pardon if this hasn't been mentioned yet.). While I disagree with the contention that an opera-ballet should be considered only an opera, if we are to take that stance with regard to every hybrid type of musical work and pigeon-hole it into one sub-category, what do we do with the other part of its nature? I propose that there be a second sub-category field available to account for such works. (Maybe even a third.) After all, we allow more than one title field.

I must add that, as much as I've been trying to keep up with this thread, and just now read the last 10 or so entries, the word "genre" is definitely creating misunderstandings in some readers and is leaving me with little incentive to keep up with the project. It would be a shame to see the new category system suffer from reliance on that word.

[Davydov]

... the word "genre" is definitely creating misunderstandings in some readers and is leaving me with little incentive to keep up with the project. It would be a shame to see the new category system suffer from reliance on that word.

The trouble is that the Wiki has many "Categories", and over-use of that term might cause confusion. And it is the current system of "Genres" that we're replacing, which is why term is being used in this discussion.

Can I suggest a compromise? "Categories" for the eight compulsory headings we're for the moment calling "Genres", and "Work Type" for the rest (operettas, symphonies, cantatas, &c.).

[Lyle Neff]

It does not seem evident above discussion that "genre" is being removed.

If "category" is a problem because of wiki pre-emption of that word, how about "classification," "class," or "meta-class" for the "meta-genre" set? But, yes, "type of work" for the lower level.

[Davydov]

On a point of clarification, the term "Stage Works" is to be taken broadly, and includes any music written to accompany theatrical action (including film scores heard in movie theatres).

There are advantages that are all too easily overlooked to having the two classification systems running in parallel to each other. For example, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony would appear (as would be expected) in a list of symphonies by that composer, but it would also be included in a list of his choral works. (These sorts of lists can be generated by use of the "Intersections" template). Giving it a label either as a symphony or as a choral work would inevitably mean its omission from one or other listing.

So under the proposals every work would have at least one label, and many would have two. To the best of my knowledge there are no technical reasons why, if the situation calls for it, there could not be a third, or a fourth (as Lyle has suggested). But in most cases two will probably be enough

In short, every work must belong to one of the eight genre categories (Stage, Choral, Vocal, Orchestral, Concertante, Chamber, Keyboard, Writings). Additional designations (like symphonies, cantatas, operettas, ballets) can also be given to a work, but may be omitted if not required.

[KGill]

If 'Stage Works' is to be taken broadly as theatrical works in general, why not make it simpler and just call it 'Theatrical Works'?

[Davydov]

If 'Stage Works' is to be taken broadly as theatrical works in general, why not make it simpler and just call it 'Theatrical Works'?

The term "Stage Works" is more widely used, but we could change to "Theatrical Works", unless anyone has strong objections?

[supertchan]

"Concertante" will cover all works for solo instrument and orchestra, not just those which are called concertos.

Sorry, but is the word "Concertante" very common for English speakers? Everyone know the meaning of the word?

[jujimufu]

I really like Operalala's list. I think it's very clear and covers a lot of the music that is to be uploaded on IMSLP.

Maybe we could have a category called "Incidental Music" for film, videogame music etc etc, and we could even have a category called "Electronic Music" for works like Hans-Christopher Steiner's "Solitude" (although I don't know if we can upload this work - still waiting for confirmation; still, it would be good to provide the facility for people to upload scores for electronic compositions).

I don't know how this could/would work with the WIKI interface (and thus IMSLP/PML), but I think a great idea would be the use of tags.

I understand this requires a complete change of the way the site works, but it would be a lot easier if a piece had a certain amount of tags on it, and by clicking a tag you could see all the pieces with the same tag (and you could limit your search by applying more and more tags; so, while under the "piano" tag there would be all piano pieces, if you went for tags "piano" "sonata" "one movement", you could get all the one-movement piano sonatas on the site, etc etc).

The way I see tags as being different to categories is that, categories usually imply a sense of hierarchy: a trait of the piece of music that is more important than the others, and thus pieces must be put in the respective category and the sub- and subsub-categories after that.

Tags would be descriptive elements of pieces laterally, not vertically (like categories and hierarchical categorising systems would), thus creating a network of inter-related tags which would connect pieces in a much more organic and interactive way than a hierarchy could.

As I said, I understand this is not something easy to implement (if at all possible - I don't know the inner workings of wiki's, so I wouldn't be able to say), but just as an idea.. (food for thought..)

[Davydov]

Hi Jujimufu. Thanks for your comments. I don't know if you've looked at what's being proposed:

http://imslp.org/wiki/User:P.davydov/Genre_Categories

... but it's very similar to your suggestion. There are overlapping groups of categories and work types (the equivalent of your tags), which can be allocated to each work more than once. And these are all on a single level, with no heirarchies to worry about.

It might be pushing the boundaries of the Wiki to be able to search for works that fall into three or more categories, but if it's possible then I'm sure Leonard and Feldmahler will make it happen...

[steltz]

To jujimufu: I don't think categories, or the way the various suggested lists are laid out imply that a group that is higher on a list is necessarily more important. But the way they are listed do make clear groupings under which most pieces can be found easily and quickly, and moreover, if you want to browse a category, you can use the search function to have a look at everything IMSLP has in that category.

I'm not sure how the tag search differs, but I would think the simplest is to be able to use our current search function, just with clearer categories than we have now.

To supertchan: the word concertante is well known enough to work for what we need: a genre or category title that can include any work for soloist(s) with orchestra. Not all of these works have the title "concerto", so a concerto category or genre title is too limiting. The word "concertante" will do fine.

Any further comments on where in the listing a concert band group would go? It seems like a really good idea, but it doesn't really belong as a section under orchestral works.