User talk:Reosarevok/Work Types

I have some difficulties with this categorisation, and sometimes don't bother to use it (I don't like genres either, and often despair of the instrument list).

The addition of Symphonic Poem is a help - I suppose it can be used synonymously with "Tone Poem"? But sometimes these do have individual movements, for example some of the Sibelius ones. Or would you categorise these as Suites?

The biggest problem I have with this list for categorising WCM is how to handle chamber music. The list has "Sonata" and "Quartet", but it does not have "Trio", "Quintet" or other groups of 6, 7, 8, 9 .. 13 players. And anyway, to my mind it is less significant precisely how many people are playing than what the nature of the grouping is: standard string quartet (not SATB!), strings plus piano, strings plus one wind, standard wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, french horn, bassoon), other wind groupings, ... Monxton 19:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• This should be helped by the introduction of something like http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/MBS-3296 which would allow us to set instrumentation - fairly more useful for those than a type IMO. I was actually surprised to see Quartet in the list when it was made. --Reosarevok 16:33, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• • Oh, instrumentation for classical works would be a very interesting thing to have. Instrumentation (of written-down music) is a fact, not a categorisation based on someone's judgement, so my uncertainty about the value of the list would not apply. (Provided of course the Instrument List included all the required values …). But what, then, should be done about chamber music? It's anomalous for Quartet to be in the list but not Trio, Quintet …, and I suppose that's also true for Sonata in its usual sense of a chamber work for Something-and-Piano. --Monxton 17:49, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Outside of WCM the list is useless anyway. Almost everything in popular music is, as you say, a Song. In folk music it may be a Song or, equally likely, it may be a Tune. In English/Scottish/Irish/etc. folk music, there are standard categorisations of Tunes (Jig, Reel, Slow Air, Hornpipe, Mazurka, Polka, Slide, Slip Jig, Strathspey ...). Often the type is stated in the track title or the liner notes, and MBz editors add it to the MBz recording title or the disambiguation comment. More often than not, a track will be a series of more than one Tune, possibly including a Song, and is known as a "Set Of Tunes", or just a Set. Monxton 19:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• I don't agree it is useless outside of WCM. I'd say it is useful for folk tunes as you say, or for flamenco 'palos', or for a lot of other categorisations. As I mentioned in the ML, an uni project (http://compmusic.upf.edu/ to be precise) requested Ottoman ones. I do agree, though, it doesn't really apply to popular music too much. --Reosarevok 16:33, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• • I meant that the list as it stands is useless, since a non-classical work can either be a Song, or unclassified. It could be implemented for folk tunes if we added new types along the lines I describe above. It would be helpful to have this in the cases where there is, for example, both a Jig and a Reel with the same name. --Monxton 17:49, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Is it useful to record this stuff in a structured way? I'm not sure. Monxton 19:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• I am not really trying to reach a conclusion on that as much as document the stuff we do have now. I still think it can be useful, but more than that I think if we have it we should document it. --Reosarevok 16:33, 4 January 2012 (UTC)