Talk:Composer Relationship Type
What to do with people who write drum lines, who decide what order samples should appear in, and a bunch of other things that are sorta tune-composition and sorta arent', is something we're going to have to analyse on a case by case basis, and record in the above "Examples" section as we find them. --MatthewExon
- That depends on the MusicalGenre IMO. There are musical genres where the composer gets important credit (Classical, Musicals, Jazz); there are genres where the composer acts "in the background" (Pop music mostly); and there are genres, where people deal with music in a different mindset so that the composer is not really important (Electornic, resampling etc.). in the latter case I would simply not give the composer, but link to the sampled material, using the Remix Relationship Class. --DonRedman
- Writing of drum lines etc would be a case for InstrumentatorRelationshipType --Gecks
When an artist both wrote and performed a piece of music, should PerformerRelationshipType, ComposerRelationshipType, or both be used? How do these overlap with the normal primary artist of a work? --MatthewExon
- My view: use both ARs. Each conveys useful information which the other does not convey. And the ARs are valuable regardless of the Artist to whom a Release or Track is credited. Various MusicalGenres have various conventions about what Artist gets credit for a Release: in PopMusic it's usually the performer, in ClassicalMusic it's usually the composer. The ARs give us a way to record who did what role on a Release or Track regardless of this variance. --Jim DeLaHunt 2007-12-17
What do we do when an artist wrote both the lyrics and the music? Usually, you would assume that if a song is "written by" a person, then that person wrote both. It's relatively rarer where the two can be picked apart, at least verifiably. --MatthewExon
- This claim is only true for some MusicalGenres, not all! In ClassicalMusic and Opera and MusicalTheatre, it's routine for one person to write the music and a different person to write the words. Some composers, like Richard Wagner and Stephen Sondheim, are unusual for doing both. So I think MatthewExon's claim that "it's relatively rarer where the two can be picked apart" must be specific to some genres, perhaps PopMusic or Jazz. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007/11/24
- I think we need a new relationship for 'Written By', as it's use in contemporary music is massive, and you often get credits like 'Written and Composed By' implying that it's a separate thing. this thread at discogs has some info about how they are different, if that helps. I think 'written by' is basically composition at its most basic form, but not really the same thing. --Gecks
- WriterRelationshipType, though this seems to be getting little support on the StyleMailingList --Gecks
Use of Date in ComposerRelationshipType
There is presently no guideline on what the date attribute means for this Relationship Type. I think we should get some consensus on guidance, and add it. This is an issue for example in Edit #7930890. There is a similar issue with PerformerRelationshipType and Composition Relationship Class generally. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-17
- My own view is that the date attributes should be filled in to indicate when the composition activity, separate from the performance activity, happened -- when we have the data. For ClassicalMusic, composition can happen hundreds of years before performance, or it could happen at the same time as performance (for world premiere recordings of contemporary music). For PopMusic and other contemporary music, composition may often happen at the same time as performance. Date of composition is nice to record when we know it, but a composer AR with no date should also be acceptable as a first step. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-17
- It may be that only the completion date is known, not the starting date. In this case I think it should be OK to fill in the end date and leave the begin date blank. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-17
- It may be that only the year is known from a date (e.g. 1876), so I think that either Year, or Year-Month, or Year-Month-Date should be acceptable values for the date attributes. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-17
ComposerRelationshipType at Track and Release level
Music is at a Track level, so the composition AR is also fundamentally a track-level attribute. However, ArtistRoleInheritance talks about how ARs could be applied at the Track, Release, or higher levels. It also proposes, "All information should be recorded at the highest possible level." Applying this principle, Composer relationships should be put at the Track level, unless all Tracks in a given release would have the same Composer AR, in which case it's OK to put that AR at the Release level. There is a similar issue with PerformerRelationshipType and Composition Relationship Class generally. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-17
For ClassicalMusic, where many releases feature the same musical work (e.g. Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven), it would be much better to have an entity which represents the musical work, put ARs from tracks to parts of that musical work, and have the composer AR attached to the musical work entity. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-17
Note that if a Release contains different works by the same composer, and the Composer AR records the date attributes, then presumably the dates are different for different works, and so the Composer AR will be different for the different tracks. Hence adding date attributes to a composer AR on a release with multiple works by the same composer probably forces the AR from the Release level to the track level. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-17
Additional attribute
- There are some instances of using the "additional" attribute in ClassicalMusic, where some composer writes new music based on a musical theme by a second composer. The resulting work is considered a work in its own right, but it is well known to be based on the second composer's work. The "additional composer" relationship links the second composer to the track or release. See discussion item "Based on a theme by" in Composition Relationship Class. -- JimDeLaHunt 2007-11-24
