IMSLP Forums

I get it; you have editorial style guidelines and all that. But please; if I'm the composer (and I am) and I'm uploading my own works, I get to set the titles. My works do not contain capitals. This site has done some pretty bad things with my titles. For example, a work called bs piece got changed to B's Piece. Give me a break. It took some doing, but it's now BS piece, but that's still wrong (it's really bs piece.

I'm glad my music is up on this site, don't get me wrong. But I will pull all of them if this behavior continues. And that would be a shame, since I think this site needs free scores from contemporary (ie, living) composers. I'm all for having some guidelines and having people conform to them; we already do with the various requirements to upload our music. But changing the titles of my music is going much too far.

Hi David. I'm sorry if it appeared anyone was presuming to correct the titles of your works! I don't think anyone would argue that a composer shouldn't be free to use any title or stylisation of their choosing. Yet you're probably also aware that there are technical limitations on the titles of pages on the wiki: they can't start with lower-case letters, can't exceed a certain length or include special symbols, etc.

So how can we reconcile these potentially conflicting requirements? Basically by making a clear distinction between the title of the workpage, and the title of the work itself. The workpage title works like an index at the back of a book, with its own specialised and condensed syntax that can be read properly by the software. Otherwise the titles "Three Pieces" and "3 Pieces" would sort quite differently in lists, to take just one example, which is why we have to follow the guidelines meticulously. It's not just a matter of an editor applying their personal preferences.

We allow for this by having space in the 'General Information' section of the workpage itself for the composer's original title (in whatever form), and any alternative titles or subtitles by which it's known. Whatever's written here will also turn up in any searches people carry out on the site.

Maybe we need to make a clearer distinction between the titles of workpages and the titles of compositions. But I hope you won't be offended when we rename any of the workpages in your category, as it's only with the intent of making access to your scores as accessible as possible.

There might be a workaround to allow him to have bs piece as the workpage title and still have it alphabetize correctly beneath capital B.