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Beethoven was not the artist

Paul's Posts — 10 October 2012

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Beethoven was not the artist

Another consistent error I see is listing the composer of classical music as the artist or album artist.  If you have a copy of a recording performed by Ludwig Beethoven you probably have something worth a fortune since there was no way to record old Ludwig when he was playing the piano or conducting an orchestra.

Keeping the composer field accurate is critical in classical music and not all that important in anything else unless you’re a history buff in music or want to be able to hear all songs written by Lerner and Loewe.  Again, make sure you’re consistent in what you want.

We get asked all the time what should someone put into the artist field on a classical album, since Chopin cannot be the answer if you have a copy of Polonaise.

Here’s what we recommend:

  • Artist: Conductor, orchestra.  So here you have to decide last name first name or first name last name and then the rest.  Bernstein, Leonard or Leonard Bernstein, the New York Philharmonic.  I go this way: Bernstein, Leonard in the conductor field and New York Philharmonic for the artist.
  • Album Artist: Conductor.

Give some thought to how you would search for something.  Then consistently tag everything that way.

I have gotten a few notes that some of you are tiring of this subject and want some new and fresh meat to read.  I too want to jump to a couple of new subjects, one of which is SACD and DSD – which I will gear up for and spend some time writing about.  We also need to cover ripping CD’s and SACD’s and how to do it, so we’ll certainly be back onto this subject in die course.

In the meantime, I have been working on a new concept product that we want to launch this December and I thought it might be interesting to spend some time looking into the process of development of this new piece as well as cover some of the fundamentals involved with it.

Tomorrow, a change of pace.

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About Author

Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan is the CEO and co-founder of PS Audio Inc. a Boulder Colorado design and manufacturing company of high-end audio products and services. McGowan has been designing and building high-end products for nearly 40 years. Hobbies include skiing, music, hiking, artisan bread baking, kick boxing and cooking. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his 4 sons.

(4) Readers Comments

  1. ingoogni

    October 10, 2012 at 6:39 am

    Yes he was,

    the thing is that in most collections you scroll through by the Artist tag. So how do you feel today, feel like listening a bit of Karajan? Mmm… What piece of Karajan, a Beethoven piece. Nah, that’s not how it works, you’d like to listen a bit of Beethoven and then decide for Karajan instead of Bernstein. Now that we’re at Bernstein, what if Karajan had conducted a piece of Bernstein? The Artist is “Beethoven, Ludwig von”, the performer is Karajan, the orchestra is …

    The Beatles, yes, “Beatles, The” in the artist field. “McCartny, Paul” is probably a cultural thing. Over here every recordshop catalogs him under M, not P. Just like in the telephone book. Beach Boys is just Beach Boys, no comma, no confusion. Consequently using first name, lastname middelname makes it very easy to create firstname middelname lastname (except if have to deal with a band with a comma in its name)

    ‘ve been using this scheme for many years in my own private software for years without a hicup. Actualy, it is also what I use in directory structures, so wall you need is a file browser.

  2. firedog

    October 10, 2012 at 8:07 am

    Wow. Really disagree. The previous poster got it right.

    Yesterday you wrote that tagging should be done acc’d to how we THINK about our music library. Well, to me the artist on a Beethoven album is Beethoven, just as The Beatles are the artist on one on their records. As noted above, I want to be able to scroll through my collection by Artist, so that arrangement clearly works best. In classical music it starts with the music, not the performer. I can’t ever imagine saying to myself, I’d like to see all the different recordings I have by Karajan.

    Yes, classical music is somewhat complicated to tag. But for me, I’d tag any work by Beethoven as Artist=Beethoven, and then use piece, conductor, and performer/orchestra as sub categories. That way I can easily scroll to Beethoven>5th symphony>and see the various versions of the 5th symphony II own listed one after another.

    How does that not work? Like you wrote yesterday (and contradicted yourself today): Do what works for YOU, and be consistent about it. That’s what’s important.

    • October 10, 2012 at 8:13 am

      Exactly. Unless you’re running for librarian of a public venue, sort the way it makes sense to you. Beethoven as the artist would never work for me – but it does for others. :)

      • Soundminded

        October 10, 2012 at 10:29 am

        Paul, you got it right the first time. The “artist” is the performer. There are no recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven performing. Maybe Irving Beethoven but not Ludwig. He died before anyone knew how to make a recording.

        They do give courses, award Master’s degrees and PHDs in library science at some universities.

        Anyway, a library system for cataloguing recordings of classical music was created by the publishers of the Schwann Catalog decades ago. They catalog first by composer, then performer. However, with modern data base programs you can catalog and sort any way you want to. In my house for example we might want to compare a performance of the Bach Chaconne by Heifetz against one by Oistrach. So I would filter for Bach, then Chaconne, and see what choiced I have available. Or I might want to hear a recording of Heifez playing Gershwin. Then I’d filter for Heifetz and then Gershwin.

        I think PCs offer excellent data base programs like MS Access. When you surf the web or a web site to shop for something aren’t you doing the same? Eventually you get to realize that you’re like a rat in a maze looking for the cheese.

        “Like a tunnel that you follow
        To a tunnel of it’s own
        Down a hollow to a cavern
        Where the sun has never shone…

        …Like the circles that you find
        In the windmills of your mind”

        Personally I’d set up links between the menu database indicating what’s on the recordings and the recordings themselves which I’d file the way Sam Goody used to on their shelves, by recording company label and then catalog number. Or you could just do what some people I know do….file everything under “M” for miscellaneous. :-)

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