The End of "Genres"

[vinteuil]

Mea culpa. Post deleted, new thread coming.

[imslp]

Just to focus the discussion even more since we are now almost reaching the point where we have all the details needed.

@Davydov:
1. I am very interested in the "librarian" idea. I have no objection to that as of now.
2. Your argument for having more detailed categories (e.g. "Sonata for Violin") seems to be predicated on the fact that the category intersect can only intersect two categories at once. This can be corrected, and should be. When this is corrected, it would seem to me to be more efficient to have a search like "Beethoven" + "Sonata" + "Violin and Piano" instead of "Beethoven" + "Sonata for Violin". However, please do object to this if you see something I do not yet.

@Everyone:

Generally, and to strip this entire thing down to the bones, it seems like the following:
1. A certain group of "librarians" will take care of categorization at the exclusion of everyone else. Nobody will be able to select work genre when creating a page.
2. The category system will be substantially similar technically to the current one, using Mediawiki categories. However, the group of "librarians" will maintain the categories, and categorize every work page that gets created.
3. People will be able to search for what they want via mostly the category intersect.

I think we have solved the technical problems. However, there is a big question, or rather, two big questions:
1. How do we figure out the new categorization system? Do we create categories as we go along the retag? Or do we set up categories beforehand?
2. Who is going to lead this project and/or resolve disputes amongst the "librarians"? Who's going to fix the inevitable OCDs that will pop up? Any actual librarians here who would be willing to apply for the position?

This entire thing seems to be getting more and more solid. Very good. I look forward to setting this thing up in January (the only month I will have the time to do this until May), if we work out everything by then that is.

P.S. @Melodia: I forgot to say that I do not think creating an entirely new "tagging" system is the way to go. Having a "tagging" system is basically duplicating the entire Mediawiki category system, and I do not think that is beneficial. It can certainly be argued that the tagging system can be designed to be much more friendly and efficient for category intersections, but I do not think the efficiency gains (if any) outweighs having to write and maintain an entirely different category system.

The design of everything is such that it would be easy to switch to a specially designed "tagging" system when we want anyway. Provided that the categorization system is within the #fte template space, which it absolutely should be.

[pml]

1. A certain group of "librarians" will take care of categorization at the exclusion of everyone else. Nobody will be able to select work genre when creating a page.

I rather doubt that it must be to the complete "exclusion of everyone else", merely that IMSLP contributors creating new works pages will invariably submit what categories they think apply to the pieces, and the members of the categorisation team will come along and fix these as necessary if they don't fit with the established pattern. At present anyone can go and change categories willy-nilly, e.g. someone who thinks Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust" is an (infrequently-staged) opera rather than an (occasionally-staged dramatic) oratorio is at liberty to change the category. (Actually, the existing categorisation for that work is opera, rather than oratorio or cantata. Hmm.)

2. Who is going to lead this project and/or resolve disputes amongst the "librarians"? Who's going to fix the inevitable OCDs that will pop up? ;)

I would hope that the dispute resolutions are carried out in some sensible way, such as bringing up a desired change or a dispute requiring discussion via Talk pages, or over here at the forums, in order to try to find a consensus between all concerned parties.

Edited to add: By the way, you might want to take a squiz over at CPDL to see what categories are automatically populated from various types of works over there, albeit using a completely different system of "tagging". The types are limited to vocal music naturally, and the sub-category of sacred music is dominated by Christian sacred music of the West, but that still admits a very large range from a capella to orchestral accompaniment, handling soloists and multiple or differently-voiced choirs, from monophonic music through to 40- or 50-part polyphony, and so on. (CPDL also includes pages for the texts of vocal music, whereas IMSLP usually ignores them completely, or links to external websites, e.g. opera libretti.)

Regards, PML

[Davydov]

Hi Feldmahler. Thanks for your last response, which I think summarises the position nicely. I have to stress though that it really is important to the structure of the project that large categories are created by grouping together much smaller ones. This isn't because of the intersect function (where people are already searching for something in particular), but to help people browse through the site to see the whole range of works available, without becoming bogged down in long lists of works irrelevant to them, or having to click on each item in a list to find out what sort of work it is.

The idea is that someone going to the "Concertos" page, say, would not just see a long alphabetical list of concertos, but would find the works grouped under the constituent sub-categories of "Concertos for violin and orchestra", "Concertos for 2 pianos and orchestra" or "Concertos for flügelhorn and percussion", and find some things that they might not otherwise have expected.

This "browse" facility should be particularly useful for chamber works, where "Quartets for string instruments", for example, will have sub-categories for "Quartets for 2 violins, viola and cello" and "Quartets for 2 violins and 2 cellos", "Quartets for 2 cellos and 2 double basses", or whatever combinations of works are available on IMSLP. Incidentally, that's another important point to make -- there will be no empty categories, because they will only be created once an existing work is tagged.

Under this system we will also be able to build new categories from existing ones as required, just by changing the links between existing categories, and without having to do any retagging at all. I think it's also true that the intersect function will also be made more efficient if people have a choice of using broad or narrow terms when creating their search strings. But the ability to browse through the site is a key feature of the new system.

While the overall structure may be clear in my head, I appreciate that I might sometimes need to explain it a little better So I've made a start on the project documentation (more to follow), and would be happy to continue in the role of project leader in the new year (assuming you'd like me to, of course ). As KGill has already mentoned, the most efficient approach to the recataloguing would be to work through each of the existing genre categories individually.

It would be helpful to have a dedicated forum or sub-forum where issues arising from the project could be discussed. Although I can see where Pml's coming from in wanting to let uploaders to some of the tagging work, realistically it's difficult to see that working well, and the librarians might end up spending all their time fixing other people's mistakes. An argument could be made that copyright reviewers and admins should automatically qualify as librarians by virtue of their familiarity with the system, and it would be up to them how active a role they want to play after that.

[Lyle Neff]

I may be missing something, but are the new categories for types of pieces -- particularly their subcategories -- going to include instrumentation? E.g.,

• [work-type:] Sonatas -- [subcategory:] Sonatas for kazoo and piano.

Should not instrumentation be in a separate but co-searchable category-set?

• [work-type:] Sonatas
  [instrumentation:] kazoo, piano

[Davydov]

Hi Lyle. The new tags will be of the form [work type+instrumentation], with both the type and the instrumentation described in a consistent format. While the form of the tag may seem strange, this will be an enormous help when people are browsing through categories, as it helps to distinguish different types of compositions from one another.

For example, Beethoven's 9th symphony will be tagged as "Symphonies for solo voices, chorus and orchestra". Now because of the way in which the categories are built from these simple tags, if you were to browse the larger category of "Symphonies", then you would find all the symphonies grouped under the sub-headings of:

• Symphonies for orchestra [which will be the majority]
• Symphonies for solo voices, chorus and orchestra [including Beethoven's 9th, some by Mahler &c.]
• Symphonies for strings [e.g. Mendelssohn's]
• Symphonies for woodwinds [etc.]

...which at a glance will tell you more about each work, instead of having to scroll through one giant list.
Similarly, the page for "Compositions for solo voices, chorus and orchestra" will include sub-categories for:

• Cantatas for solo voices, chorus and orchestra
• Oratorios for solo voices, chorus and orchestra
• Symphonies for solo voices, chorus and orchestra [etc.]

... which again will be more helpful than scrolling through one enormous list.

But none of this will stop anyone from carrying out a specific search for all the "Symphonies" if they want to (as opposed to browsing through the categories), and in fact having a much wider choice of category intersects should help that as well, e.g. "Sonatas for kazoo and piano"+"Romantic", or even "Works featuring the kazoo"+"Renaissance" -- although I suspect the repertoire in those cases could be rather limited .

[steltz]

Here's something else to think about while we are in the construction phase. There are quite a few works with alternate instrumentations. I'll give an example from something I regularly go looking for specifically.

In both my university and high school chamber music courses, there are rarely a surplus of viola players, so anything that has no viola players is good for me to know about.

For example, lots of works have an alternate 3rd violin part instead of viola, sometimes called an "ottava violino" or something like that. I need to know about these works, because they are invaluable to me when we are short of viola players.

How can we work in alternate instrumentations?

[Davydov]

How can we work in alternate instrumentations?

In those unusual cases we would have a separate tag for each variant of the orchestration. So works like "Viola or Violin Concerto No.2 (Stamitz, Anton)", where the solo instrument can be a violin, viola, or viola d'amore, should be tagged as:

• Concertos for violin and strings
• Concertos for viola and strings
• Concertos for viola d'amore and strings

There's another real-world example somewhere in one of my earlier postings, but fortunately they're relatively few in number. I'm working on the instrumentation section of the tagging guidelines now, so please shout if you think of any other potentially awkard examples...

[varnis]

I think the other example you gave was Brahms' Sonatas for Clarinet or Viola and Piano. As for any other examples, i can think of quite a few that update instrumentation while providing the original, like Biber's Scordatura sonatas, in a similar vein works featuring lesser played instruments in an orchestral setting might be useful, like Cor Anglais (Perhaps a little common for a good example) or Guitar might be useful for players of those instruments.

Additionally, would alternate tunings or preparations have their own category, like Scordatura on violins or cellos, or prepared piano?

Also, if and when we start to gain Musical Theatre scores, or even modern operas, what is to be done about Reed1/2/3/4/5, name for the constituent instruments?

Then however we run into the Instrumentation problems we had before, where tagging all instruments in a Symphony is excessive and clunky with the existing system?

[Davydov]

Hi Varnis. Listing all the constituent members in an orchestra is best done in the "Instrumentation" section of the web page (as it should be now), and our tag will just say "for orchestra". The intention is to go into more detail on smaller-scale works though. Give me a little while to finish writing the project notes on the instrumentation part of the tag, and things should then become clearer..

[steltz]

our tag will just say "for orchestra".

While I think of it, can we use "string orchestra" instead of "string section"? This is a minor thing, but apart from the fact that it sounds less clunky, a "section" sounds like part of something else, i.e. incomplete.

"String orchestra" is more elegant and sounds like a whole ensemble.

[shafflein]

1. Thanks to all who have created this incredible site.
2. On the subject of genres/searching: would it possible to tag/search document types? For instance Autograph Manuscripts, First Edition etc.
[Please forgive if this is too basic/already possible.] Schaflein

[varnis]

Ya, i think I understand the intention now, but do we know if searching in instrumentation fields will be possible, it seems like it should, we would just need to have a regex kind of search means, but I dont know if this is possible with the current system?

Anyway, </minor thread derailment>

[Davydov]

Apologies for the brief replies:

@schaflein — that's not something that we're considering here, but maybe someone will be able to answer that question in another part of the forum.

@varnis — it's not possible to search on the instrumentation field at present because: (1) many of them have been left blank; and (2) the information in this field hasn't been standardised to make it searchable. But you will find that the tagging system will overcome most of those issues.

@steltz — it's going to be "for strings" (!)

[vinteuil]

So what are we going to do about the current intersections? Do we have to remove the template and redo it (I've added a lot, so if we have to do that, then I'll be happy to do so), or what?