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http://imslp.org/index.php?title=Ach_Go ... r,_Johann)

I have tagged this as "Motette" but the tag doesn't appear in the list of tags on the work page. Is this correct or am I doing something wrong here?

Ah, mystery solved, changing it to "motets" did the trick.

On a somewhat related note, I tagged this piece http://imslp.org/wiki/108_(Walker,_Christopher_Andrew), but the instrumentation doesn't appear in the tags. Again: is this correct or am I doing something wrong here?

The latter tag is correct; since it is a tag thus far not encountered, it appears as 'Unknown tag' in the categories. Once somebody gets around to creating the MediaWiki:Genres entry for it then the instrumentation categories will appear as expected.

On another note: for the J. Walter piece, you seem to have tagged it as 'sop alt ten bass ch', which does not appear to be correct as that designates four solo voices in addition to mixed choir. I've changed it to simply 'ch'.

For Accingeteui Amanti, is it actually intended to be 10 voices doubling 10 instruments? If that is the case, the tag should probably be the rather cumbersome '3sop 2alt 3ten 2bass open 3sop 2alt 3ten 2bass' rather than including the '2ch' notation out front - if I recall correctly, that actually invokes a now-obsolete syntax meaning two choirs of a certain composition (and doesn't make sense here), rather than two choirs and something else. Could be wrong, I guess. But the subtitle of the piece is just 'Battaglia à 10' which makes it seem to me like it should just be one or the other (and probably the version with voices) - but again, I don't know the piece.

Thanks for helping.

For the J. Walter piece I was following the guideline to tag it for both soloists and chorus where the designation is unclear.

If it is unclear whether a work is intended for solo voices or for a chorus, then both possibilities should be tagged

To my knowledge the "chorus" for this sort of work designation is itself somewhat of an anachronism. The indication for one voice per part in this sort of contrapuntal stuff often (but not always) indicates exactly that. While clearly there were "choruses" in pre-romantic contrapuntal music it is generally in keeping with historically informed performance practice principles to do it with a "chorus" of soloists.

The suggestion to have the Accingeteui Amanti with instruments doubling the vocal parts was made by the editor/uploader (I presume) in the work info notes, but again this is perfectly in line with how these sorts of works would actually be performed historically (the concept of "a Capella" music being unaccompanied is another romantic anachronism), so I thought it would be best to stick to that.

The simpler instrument tags would just be ch and 2ch respectively, even though strictly speaking this isn't correct, since that avoids a whole can of worms with trying to divine composers' intentions from historical practice.

dwscores wrote:... I was following the guideline to tag it for both soloists and chorus where the designation is unclear.

What that means is to tag it separately for each combination - not to lump everything into one instrumental tag. I guess the correct version of what you intended here would be 'sop alt ten bass ; ch' rather than 'sop alt ten bass ch' (and I've changed it again).

The suggestion to have the Accingeteui Amanti with instruments doubling the vocal parts was made by the editor/uploader (I presume) in the work info notes, but again this is perfectly in line with how these sorts of works would actually be performed historically (the concept of "a Capella" music being unaccompanied is another romantic anachronism), so I thought it would be best to stick to that.

OK, but as you say it's not easy to tell exactly what the composer may have meant in this period of music, and the tagging guidelines are designed to mostly just go with what the composer indicated, so I guess to cover all the ground here we'd have to use the incredibly cumbersome tag '2ch ; 3sop 2alt 3ten 2bass ; 2ch open 3sop 2alt 3ten 2bass ; 3sop 2alt 3ten 2bass open 3sop 2alt 3ten 2bass' (to clarify: [purely vocal, choral] ; [purely vocal, OVPP] ; [vocal with doublings, choral] ; [vocal with doublings, OVPP]). I've changed it to this for the time being but I guess I have mixed feelings about using something so obtuse. One other thing that should probably be kept in mind is that I've been out of the loop for a while with the project and Davydov may have changed his thinking on this matter by now without my being aware, so I suppose this tag is more tentative than anything. Hopefully he'll be able to give some input on the matter.

I guess this sort of thing is best to tag with just the simplest designation since they were usually not intended to have an exclusive instrumentation, which is why they were written in manner they were. The idea of exclusive instrumentation isn't really appropriate for the pre-baroque era, which is what causes the confusion, because most composers didn't indicate for precisely this reason.

I suppose the best thing to do in these cases is just to list it as chorus, since even those indoctrinated in the arcane mysteries of HIPP would know that that is how these things are usually categorised. It is more important to keep to whatever is the standard categorisation practice I guess, but I just wasn't entirely sure what it was in these particular cases (which is also why they have gone untagged so far I suppose).

Thanks for the clarification on the separate tagging in both these cases, that is enormously helpful, I will keep to that format in similar cases in future.

The rule is to tag for the instrumentation given in the original score, and not to try to anticipate all possible means of performance, even when encouraged to do so by the editor! Accingeteui Amanti has 10 voices divided into two 'Choro', without any indication of instrumental accompaniment. The only question then is whether these are ten solo voices or two choirs, and where there is such ambiguity we should tag for both options. So: "2ch ; 3sop 2alt 3ten 2bass".

I'm sure there is a good reason why the second bass part is under the first choir, and the first bass part with the second, but that's another matter entirely! No tags should be given for instruments, as their presence is only conjectural.

Great, thanks for the clarification here.

The reason for separating the parts like that is that it would literally be done with with two "choirs" of voices and/or instruments (the instruments would either double or replace depending on the forces available). But the point is that they would be physically separate.

Davydov wrote:I'm sure there is a good reason why the second bass part is under the first choir, and the first bass part with the second

Davydov, vocal range. The ‘bass’ voice of the first chorus is more like a low tenor part in range, given the clefs. The second bass part on the other hand is a real bass part. Also, this is vocal music, and a genera which Monteverdi would have dubbed ‘seconda prattica’.

The first bass part is fairly high, but not unreasonable for a baritone, especially considering the range of the second bass part is quite high to begin with. The tessitura is also lower than the tenors (at least in the first choir) and it does function as a "real" bass for much of the work.

On the other hand, the clef does argue for it to be tenor, but for the fact that the "tenors" all use the alto clef. Also given that this edition has a good set of critical notes it is probably best to use the editor's suggestion as guide short of seeing the original.

You are correct in designating "seconda prattica", despite it preceding Monteverdi's use of the term by ten years (which is interesting in itself).