6 Trio Sonatas (Pla, José)

[Notenschreiber]

Is there any reason, why these sonatas are tagged with 2fl bc ; 2vn bc; 2ob vc instead of 2fl bc ; 2vn bc; 2ob bc ?
As consequence the sonatas did not occur in the category "for 2 Oboes with continuo".
One has to keep in mind, that instrumentation specifications had not the same meaning as in later times. The sonatas
could be performed just as well with a bassoon as continuo instrument, with or without an additional keyboard instrument.

[pml]

Given the proximity of v to b on the Qwerty keyboard layout, I think that one may simply be attributable to error, rather than either incompetence or malice.

P.

[steltz]

It was indeed a slip of the finger, and thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[Notenschreiber]

In the category "For 2 Oboes and cello" now remains only "6 Trio Sonatas, Op.1 (Barbandt, Charles)". These are also
Triosonatas for 2 melody instruments with continuo. The word "continuo" doesn´t occur in the title, but the same is the
case for the Pla sonatas. The Pla sonatas are tagged correctly now after the principle not to specify the continuo instruments.
I repeat my opinion that instrumentation hints in the baroque era should not be taken too literally, they are sometimes a little
accidently.
@steltz: I don´t mention Heinichen, because I don´t want to be nerve-racking.

[steltz]

This work is tagged correctly. You need to understand that the purpose of tagging is not to delete works from lists. It is to tag according to title. I realize you have different opinions, but our system is based on the MLA system, which is the Music Library Association. It has developed the standard classification system.

It is understood that people looking for Baroque works will have to look under several categories. Good researchers do that anyway.

[kalliwoda]

Hallo Steltz,

Unfortunately (there I agree with Notenschreiber) this is not yet tagged correctly, what is missing is the bc tag! (even according to MLA criteria)

Prints from the London publishers of the period usually follow the style "...and a thorough bass for the harpsichord or violoncello/bass violin"
and this is for all these works just the basso continuo,
look for example here at imslp 6_Sonatas,_Op.2_(Quantz,_Johann_Joachim),
or at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9 ... .r=.langEN for a set of Handel Oboe Sonatas printed by Walsh. If you tag them as solos (without the sonata tag) or only for db, hpd without the bc tag it would clearly be wrong.

Since gallica has always the original title in their browse list, I could quickly find more examples for you. I am not sure how much importance to attach to the bass instruments mentioned in the title - I think little, and the "or" occurs so frequently that it seems to include "and"! But having hpd vc db as alternate tags is more a matter of preference, how closely you want to follow the letter of the tagging guidelines.

Regarding the "Heinichen" problem: There is as far as I know only one Triosonata by Fasch (not yet on IMSLP) from the early 18th century that exists only with the description 2 oboes, bassoon, also published in a modern edition that way. Otherwise one may assume just laziness on part of the copyist: Title pages by copyists are notoriously unreliable, they often get not even the spelling of the composer name right. And it is always possible that a figured bass part was lost. Again, once the tag bc has been added, I would be satisfied and see no major problems with an additional bn tag.

[Notenschreiber]

@steltz. The titles of the Pla sonatas and the Barbandt sonatas are (up to the order) exactly the same. So it is impossible
to deduce different taggings if you tag according to titles.
@Kalliwoda. The autograph of the first of the Zelenka sonatas is titled "Sonata a 3" and the following score has 3 lines, namely
Hautboy 1, Hautboy 2 , Basson. But I agree with you, that a restriction to these 3 instruments is not at all optimal. But it was the
most economical method to notate all what is necessary and to indicate, that a bassoon should be among the continuo instruments.
This applies certainly also to the mentioned Fasch sonata.

[vinteuil]

I concur with Kalliwoda and Notenschreiber—this is a pretty clear-cut case of continuo not being called as such à la Corelli—the "or" doesn't really mean anything...don't be too literal...
I changed the tag.

[Notenschreiber]

There is another problem with the Pla sonatas. According to the Haynes Catalog the sonatas are composed by José Pla and his
brother Juan Baptista Pla. The title pages says "Sig:rs Pla's", which confirms this. What is to do?

[vinteuil]

Manually add the category for his brother to the page.

[Notenschreiber]

The 6 sonatas are now uploaded under the names of the two brothers. It´s strange to say, that the tagging of the same sonatas is quite different.
I´m not in the mood, to argue against this. I can merely hope, that the damage, which do persons who are resistant against advice, is not to great.
It´s a pity, that some parts of this wonderful site could easily be better and more convincing to new visitors of IMSLP. The consequence for me is,
that I will restrict my activities concerning IMSLP to upload new edited or arranged works.

[pml]

Dear Notenschreiber,

with the greatest respect, please drop the attitude of passive aggressiveness. It’s not conducive to an intelligent discussion of the issues at hand.

There have been numerous discussions and disagreements between members of the tagging team regarding the correct categorisation of works of all eras, and how easily they may be “discovered” through the category walker system.

The handling of basso continuo from the era of Monteverdi all the way up to and including Mozart (yes, Mozart) is one of the knottier problems, and one solution to it, not without controversy, has been on occasion to add multiple tags to allow different modes of inclusion in categories. We are highly cognisant that a search method that fails to find works through straightforward means is not good, and are not trying to err in the opposite direction by including works in extra and completely erroneous categories. The complexity of the music itself adds to these problem: some categories do not combine, in a way which requires some thought to understand, and there are other ways in which the system lacks features some users would find highly desirable (e.g., orchestral shorthand).

Your accusation of bad faith on the part of the tagging team is unjustified. Your concerns on other topics besides this one have been addressed on many previous occasions (for example, specific instrumental tags for the woodwind families), and will continue to be addressed if you can bring them to our notice in a maturely presented and well-argued fashion. I am very sorry to report that your immediate previous post in this thread does not rise to that level.

Best regards, Philip

[pml]

Back on topic. What evidence is there for joint attribution of the Pla sonatas? I have no objection to the extra tag so that the work can exist under either category, but just wonder whether this is an example of assuming joint authorship is a lazy way of admitting that the cataloguers don’t know which of the two brothers actually did the work.

By the way, Perlnerd’s amended tagging of this appears correct; and also:

@Kalliwoda. The autograph of the first of the Zelenka sonatas is titled "Sonata a 3" and the following score has 3 lines, namely Hautboy 1, Hautboy 2 , Basson. But I agree with you, that a restriction to these 3 instruments is not at all optimal.

[My emphasis.] But it is not the job of the category walker to indicate optimal instrumentation where basso continuo is concerned, which would be over-prescriptive, and should always be left to the liberty of the performers. The solution adopted where there are ambiguities of instrumentation has been to supply extra tags to cover the most likely possibilities that will be searched on. The important thing to note is, these extra possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Cheers, Philip

[Notenschreiber]

Sorry, I don´t want to be aggressive. (May be, it is hard for me to estimate the effect of some words, not being an english native
speaker). We have had an intensive mostly factual discussion about this issue in these and other threads. As a consequence
I changed my mind in some aspects and gained a better understanding concerning the backgrounds of the tagging work. On the
other hand it seems, that my arguments lead to some changes in single cases, which I appreciated. But the tagging of my new
entry in the composer page of the Pla brother seems to be a setback, which makes me angry, I admit. I can´t image, that it is
the result of a discussion of the tagging team to handle the same work quite different. The older version is exactly that what
is reasonable in my opinion, the newer one not by several reasons.
To be present at IMSLP is something what should brings some fun for me in my leasure time. As I have realized, to have discussions
like this sometimes dosn´t conduce to this aim. So I mean no harm, if I say, that I will more be concerned with "Noten schreiben"
in the future.

Pla brothers: I don´t believe,that anyone knows, who of them had composed which of the sonatas or even single movements of them.
It is known, that the Pla brothers often acted collective.

[pml]

Hi Notenschreiber,

thanks for your reply — I was not entirely sure before posting whether it would help the discussion, or hinder understanding.

Firstly, with 40,000 works on the website stretching across ten centuries of musical history, a search mechanism that can filter and categorise works is always going to be non-trivial. The old system was obviously unequal to the task, while the current system still has areas for possible improvement, and other vexed issues: one of which is the specialist knowledge required for correct identification of some types of music (as historical types, or instrumental types). It’s not surprising the actual categorisation of some works turns out to be in error: as a result of honest mistakes, for sure, but also because of the inherent ambiguities of some forms of musical notation and specification.

Secondly, the field which we conveniently reduce to a single word, the “Baroque”, is vast, frequently ambiguous, and research into it is still on-going and often controversial: for example, one voice per part (OVPP) performance in the vocal works of JS Bach might imply that we should never use the “ch” tag (for choirs, which are many voices per part or MVPP) against the church cantatas. We don’t have the ability to bring the dead back to life in the hopes of getting better answers to our questions. Few would claim authoritative knowledge of every such aspect of the period that might impinge on the topic of categorisation, and I certainly don’t claim to that expert status: however the tagging team does have a variety of members each with particular strengths (and weaknesses also, obviously!) and so we try to share knowledge and capitalise on that where possible. None of the tags applied to the works are final statements. They are a means to an end.

I appreciate that English is not your first language (nor is German my own, though I can haltingly read it) and that some work entries on the website are making you angry. In some cases though, it’s very hard to understand what the precise target of that rage is — or if the target is known, it is hard to discern what about it is at fault. Perhaps in some cases writing in your native tongue might be better to get at the root of the issue, and then we'll try to translate it as best we can. But there isn’t a problem with the tagging of the Heinichen, Pla, Zelenka, and Barbandt works under discussion, in terms of the way we’ve set up the category walker to work with the inherent ambiguity of basso continuo versus instrumentation.

What’s the other problem with Pla? Is it the sonatas for 2 flutes/violins?

Regards, PML