IMSLP Forums

Could anyone suggest the best way to navigate in order to find orchestral music actually scored for orchestra? My searches keep bogging down with masses of pieces arranged for piano, SATB chorus, violin and piano, etc. I only want works with scores for orchestra.

Thanks

Yoj

I know others will recommend the Category Walker, but try a Google search with e.g.
Orchestra instrumentation -piano -chorus site:imslp.org
You can add the instruments you hate with a "-" sign. The drawback is that you will miss works which have both the "genuine" orchestra version and a "lighter" arrangement.
Or try a search with Orchestra instrumentation "full scores". Work pages without the orchestra version don't have a "full scores" section.

coulonnus wrote:I know others will recommend the Category Walker

The huge problem with the CW here is that basically every page is required to have the original instrumentation tagged, which means that every piece will show up under its original instrumentation, which means that the non-arrangement tags are not a good way at all to show which scores are actually on which pages. There is a separate automatically generated category for pages with parts that is contingent on the appearance of the 'Parts' section, but no such equivalent for full scores.

Exactly the problem! It would be great to be able to use the CW to pull up files based on how they actually are - just orchestra scores, or just piano reductions. The "parts" tag doesn't help because I am specifically looking for full orchestra scores that do not have parts. I will give the Google search option a try.

Thanks for the input.

Just FYI - no, a Google search is no improvement. There are just as many false positives, and the results are not even in a coherent order. The only way I can see to do this search is to use the CW and open each page individually to see what is there. Too bad - it is a real weakness in how the site can be used, but I do not see a simple solution and it is probably not worth the effort needed to fix it.

In the same way that the "Arrangements and Transcriptions" header automatically places works into the category "Pages with arrangements", then maybe the "Full scores" header can be made to fill a similar category, like "Pages with orchestral scores".

This depends on the "Full scores" header being used correctly (which it isn't always), but it still would go a long way to resolving your difficulty.

Yes, this is possible to do automatically (and I will do so), though the result will not be perfect. Maybe it will be good enough.

Great! A random sample suggests that we're generally pretty good about using the "Full scores" header correctly, so let's see how it goes..

Does it work if "Scores" is capitalized? I think most of the headers use "Full Scores" as opposed to "Full scores". There are also a fair number where the second word is the singlular "Score".

Carolus wrote:Does it work if "Scores" is capitalized?

Yes it does! Make a try.

yojimboken wrote:Just FYI - no, a Google search is no improvement. There are just as many false positives.

Could you please copy-paste the Google search you're doing into your nest message? Perhaps your search needs just one more word.

yojimboken wrote:... and the results are not even in a coherent order. .

Sure. Google chooses the order.