Talk:Budget recordings of Alfred Scholz

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How Should We Record Credits for Scholz Releases and Recordings in MBz?

  1. Treat each of the pseudonyms as if they are real artists, with an artist entity for each name used. Use ACs and ARs as for any other release or recording.
    pros
    • This is more-or-less the status quo,
    • The ARs and ACs reflect what it says on the release cover,
    • It is familiar to editors and they don't have to make a judgement as to whether they are dealing with a ScholzArtist.
    cons
    • There are a load of pseudo-artists in the database,
    • There are separate (duplicate) MBz Recordings to represent each set of bogus credits, even though the recordings are acoustically identical,
    • Real artists whose names Scholz borrowed have bogus recordings ascribed to them.
  2. Merge all the bogus artists into one
    This is Hawke's proposal in edit #21801909. He proposes a single ScholzPianist, a ScholzConductor and so on.
    pros
    • Reflects the spirit of the Artist Credit concept: one entity represents all the stylings of the artist's name,
    • Reflects the spirit of the Recording concept: one entity corresponds with all appearances of an audio stream, regardless of how it is credited
    • Reduces the number of bogus ScholzArtists in the database.
    • Reduces the number of places to look when trying to research Scholz-related artists.
    cons
    • Confusing to editors who don't know what is going on. As the Scholz releases are likely to be owned by people who don't know much about classical, this will be most of them. Expect a constant stream of "corrections" and the creation of new bogus artists.
    • Doesn’t allow for a way to accurately describe a release-as-credited. Requires a change in MB[1] to show accurate credited artist names.
    • It can be difficult to be certain if an attribution is bogus.
    • Doesn't address the problem of multiple ACs for a merged recording. CSG says we should record the credit as given, and there can only be one, unless we use some form of structured text like "ScholzPianist as Dieter Goldman / Dubravka Tomsic".
    • Canonical ARs for a merged recording would just state that e.g. the piano was played by ScholzPianist, which is minimally helpful (not that the actual credits are helpful in any way…)

It would be good if bogus artists could be linked to real ones by PerformanceName ARs, but as Scholz's attributions were not 1-1 in either direction, this is a non-starter.

When to Merge Recordings

The relevant guideline says:

Generally, don't merge recordings if they have conflicting relationships. However, if you're certain that two recordings are the same and relationships are wrong, merge the recordings and correct the relationships.

What to do with Scholz recordings with more than one set of credits? These may satisfy the first condition the two recordings are the same, but do they satisfy the second? The problem with the guideline as stated is that it assumes that if there is more than one set of relationships, then one of them is a "correct" set. That's not the case for a Scholz recording, and hence the condition is not well-founded. I think it is better in that case not to merge them.

What if there is more than one set of credits and also one or more releases where the same audio is used but no credits are known? This is one case where I can see the value of using a generic ScholzArtist-type credit. It is tempting to merge the recordings without credits into those with credits. However this stores up problems for later when an editor comes along with better release data and corrects the credits to match their release. Ex: edit #21471476.

Examples

  1. Grieg Piano Concerto: III. Allegro. Has credits for: Philharmonia Slavonica, Alberto Lizzio / Björn Lundgren, The London Festival Orchestra, Sven Bengtson / Daniel Gerard, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Peter Wohlert /Dubravka Tomšič, Simfonični orkester RTV Slovenija, Anton Nanut / 3 with unknown credits. Appears on at least 18 MBz releases.
  2. The Four Seasons "The Spring": II. Largo e pianissimo sempre. Has credits for Alberto Lizzio, Baroque Festival Orchestra, Alexander Permovalsky (various spellings) / Heribert Münchner, Südwest-Studioorchester / I Musici di Zagreb / The English Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Addison / numerous uncredited uses. In addition there is a set of credits which is probably wrong: this BIS release: [1] (BIS is not a label which would use Scholz recordings), which serves as a reminder that many recordings have bogus acoustids.

Monxton (talk) 00:37, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

References