Composer Work Lists

[Davydov]

IMSLP now have almost 450 of these work lists, with a wide variety of formats. For example:

• List of compositions by Anton Bruckner (a simple numbered list)
• List of compositions by Carl Maria von Weber (a basic sortable table with 4 columns)
• List of compositions by Franz Liszt (a fully sortable list with 8 columns)
• List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, by genre (a basic non-sortable list, in addition to the separate List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

So the question is, which of the above formats do you find the most useful? Is it helpful to include as much details as possible and fully sortable columns (like the Liszt example), or does this become too cluttered and unwieldy? Which sortable columns do you find the most useful?

Your views will be helpful in deciding the future development of the work lists, so please speak up!

[NLewis]

I prefer the following information in a sortable format:

Opus No. / Catalog # — As published
Title — used on IMSLP in accordance with naming guidelines
Key — the principal key of the work. (<--- IF applicable)
Date — the year(s) of composition, where known.
Scoring (Forces) — the instrumentation used.
Genre — as used by IMSLP's categorization system.
Notes — can include premires, dedications, related works, etc.


In some cases I like to include the duration of the work and the publisher, but it really depends. This is probably best. It creates a clean and sortable list with a lot of information, which users have found very helpful.

[Notenschreiber]

I like the third one most, becuase it is fully sortable and contains more information than list 2.

[vinteuil]

I think that more information is better, especially with our clear legends—but it is a lot of work to create. Bravo on all of your efforts in this field.

[NLewis]

More information is better, but we can't let the lists get too cluttered. The sort of "generally accepted format" is the CTKDFGN format.

[steltz]

I like the Liszt and Mozart pages the best. I agree that more information is better, but with the composers with hundreds of works, the Mozart page with sections for each genre seems the most logical, and is the way Grove does their Lis(z)ts.

[Davydov]

Thanks for those replies, which have given me a few ideas. To help reduce the size of some of the tables I've created a list of abbreviations for instruments, which the tagging team should find familiar

[NLewis]

Thanks Davydov, it seems useful.