Work
Description
A Musical Work means a musical composition, that is, the instructions to performers about what sounds and silences to perform on what instruments.
It does not refer to the act of performing music. It does not refer to the sounds of the music — that is a Musical Performance. It does not refer to the recorded signal fixing the performance in a persistent medium. That is a Track Master or a Track.
The concept of Musical Work is important in Classical Music, because in many cases there are multiple recordings of the same Musical Work. The Classical Style Guide specifies that Release Titles and Track Titles identify the Musical Work.
As of January 2008, the MusicBrainz Database didn't have any entities to represent a Musical Work directly. However, the Next Generation Schema is planned to do so.
