Talk:Style/Specific types of releases/Theatre

From MusicBrainz Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

In cases where the composer and lyricist collaborated on a number of musicals, and are generally well-known, it would probably make sense to use a collaboration artist (e.g. "Rogers & Hart") rather than the composer alone. @alex

Disagree; this would introduce yet a third category of artist attribution - performer-as-artist, composer-as-artist, now composer+lyricist-as-artist, without any clear definition for "well-known" to allow for editors to identify when, and when not, this third class should be used. Were this standard to be used, a similar argument could just as easily be made for Opera (composer + librettist); I don't recall the last time I heard anyone suggesting this there, however. BrianFreud

OperaTrackStyle has a way to represent character information for songs. Would it be appropriate to include such information in track titles for musical soundtracks? @alex

It looks to me like MusicalSoundtrackStyle and SoundtrackStyle overlap and should be merged. See also SoundtrackTitleStyle. -- JimDeLaHunt 2008-01-05

  • Actually, if I recall the recent history of this proposal, it's the reverse - stemming from the latest few discussions on soundtrack style, it was pretty much decided that yes, there are different types of soundtrack, and yes, each type has its own issues. This page handles specifically the ones for Musicals - there were rough plans for a similar page for Video Games, Scores, etc - not sure if those ever ended up being done. -- BrianSchweitzer 18:37, 06 January 2008 (UTC)

It strikes me as wrong to credit the composer as ReleaseArtist for musicals. For one, composer is a distinct id3 tag. Also musicals, unlike classical music, are rarely attributed to the composer or the lyricist, they are mentioned by their title. Therefore I see it no less proper to create a fictional entity such as Cats to resolve the ReleaseArtist issue. -- sesam 2008-11-22

I would note several incorrect assumptions in this comment. First, "musicals, unlike classical music, are rarely attributed to the composer or the lyricist" - ever heard of Rogers & Hammerstein, Jonathan Larson, Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber... to name only a few? When did you last see a performance of Cats, to use your example, where any performer got higher billing than Andrew Lloyd Webber? I'd also note that attribution by composer seems an industry standard, as shown by Playbill, IBDb, or IOBDb. Second, why would we ever, here or anywhere, create a "work-as-artist" bogus artist, when there's perfectly good artists who can be used, and can be used without fragmenting a composer's works all across piles of bogus artists? Additionally, this assumes a clear distinction between classical (ala Opera) and musical theater which does not actually exist; see Porgy and Bess for just one example of genre-overlap. BrianFreud
: Gee can't say as I agree, even though Rogers & Hammerstein or Andrew Weber may stand out in your mind, I don't think those are the majority, but they're not entirely "rarely" either. I can see the release being credited to the composer, especially when "Rogers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music" is how it appears on the liner and movie poster. I do not think however every individual track should be credited to the composer as the artist. If we consider the days of vinyl certainly every label credited the artist in large type and the composer in smaller type, and that's true of all 45s and pop music for that matter, and really it is a significant shortcoming of MBz and cddb and the like that somehow composers aren't in the "basic" tags or prominent in the database, but why would we think "composer" should be artist always, particularly for seminole works of broadway or musical motion-picture performers, beit Julie Andrews or anyone else? I hope NOT. Perhaps the guideline could be we insist that composer AR be filled in, and like there is the "special" artist of Various Artists most likely we should build a special handling of "Cast" and "& Cast" "& Chorus" and such for the artist(s) on such works? drjohnnyfever_ca
  • Possible Exception? The only valid cast artist (ie, one who should not be merged into composer) I've run across so far has been this one: [| Glee Cast]. I think the important distinction here is that there are numerous releases by an ensemble, as if it were a group, even though it's ostensibly a cast release. BrianFreud
  • I think we might be inviting some disaster by applying this guideline to films, even musicals. Unlike musical theater, there isn't likely to be many different versions of the same film soundtrack, and even in those cases, it's rare that the songwriters are of more interest than the performers. I don't think users want to look up the title track for "Fame" and see Michael Gore as the artist on both rather than Irene Cara, Naturi Naughton, etc. Would we really want this release treated the same as this one? Musical film soundtracks are also more likely to throw in a few odd pre-existing songs, which would make things even more confusing - for example, how would this guideline apply to The Blues Brothers? Torc 21:49, 14 September 2010 (UTC)