[mb-style] [Clean up CSG] Classical and Release Language

[Brian Schweitzer]

This began as a private message to leivhe, but it got long enough, and
detailed enough, I figured it'd be better to just send to to the style
list...

Note - "CSG" here I also mean to encompass Opera Style.

------------------------------------

In my opinion, any concept of a release language, for classical, is rather
bogus.    Any decent non-budget release (Naxos, Philips, etc) tends to list
either multiple languages or single listings in a mix of languages.  We've
typically selected one, rather than enter the same classical release
multiple times.  The non-decent releases tend to be the ones with a single
language listing - but so minimal ("Adagio", "Allegro", etc) as to be rather
not worth consideration.  We also have people adding classical in languages
not even on the liner, yet we don't force those into the pseudo-release
category, as we would for anything else.

I just pulled a random selection of 20 classical CDs from decent and
non-decent labels, to show an example here of what I'm talking about:
(each number is a randomly select CD from the pile)

1. Philips: Mozart - English (budget line Philips)
2. EMI: Britten - English only (all works in English anyhow though)
3. Hänssler: Mozart - German / English / French
4. Sony: Bach - English / German / French / Italian
5. Sony: Mozart - English only (budget line Sony)
6. Telarc: Mozart - catalog number and tempos only (ie, "no" release
language)
7. Erato: Mozart/Beethoven - German / English / Spanish
8. London: Rossini - French / English
9. Nimbus: Mussorgsky/Skriabin/Balakirev - English only
10. Nimbus: Bretan - Romanian / French / German / English
11. London: Beethoven - English / French / German
12. Philips: Mendelssohn - English / French / German
13. RCA: Handel - English only (all works in English anyhow though)
14. Gimell: Tallis - titles in French, notes and all else in English
15. Debussy/Britten - Debussy in French only, Britten in English only
16. Erato: Beethoven - English / German
17. Excelsior: Mozart - English (about as budget as you can get...  the K
#'s are wrong :P)
18. Philips: Allegri/Tallis/Byrd/Desprez/Lobo/Gesualdo/Palestrina/di
Lasso/Taverner/Cardoso (2 CD) - each work listed only once, in original
language (so a mix of French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish)
19. RCA Victor: Haydn - English / German / French
20. Philips: Stravinsky/Mussorgsky/Tchaikovsky - English / French / German /
Italian

We can pretty much ignore #s 2 and 13, as they are English-only sold in
English speaking areas and of works already in English.

That leaves us with:
   1 release with no language,
   3 releases (all the $5 budget CD-type) with 1 language
   2 releases with 2 fully listed languages
   5 releases with 3 fully listed languages
   3 releases with 4 fully listed languages
   2 releases where we would call it "multiple languages"

I left #'s 9 and 14 out of the above counts.  #9 only has one language, but
contains only Russian composers, for sale in the US.  (No cyrillic/Russian
would be expected on a liner from a USA-sold CD from the early 80's...)

#14, we have the compositionally perhaps most correct French  used for the
titles, even though the liner is in English.  By normal language rules,
then, we'd say it's a "release in French" (according to the track titles),
even though the 18 page liner, and the notes around the track titles on the
outer liner, are in English.

Point is, "the language of the release" makes sense for most things.
Classical, though, it just doesn't.

Also, there's a lot more classical both in the db and newly coming in than
CSG-expert editors to handle it all.  You and I both know we can ask people
to fix their own adds, but realistically, when panda says I "standardized
languages" ( http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=6603509 ), here's just
a random group of the "more than just 'Allegro', but definately not CSG"
non-English we have or had:

(each is the entire track title, so note when, say, movements and such are
missing - also note, in the first 4, the language of the track (which was
then used for the release language) is the title of the work itself, not
really indicative of a release language):

* Deutscher Tanz KV 600
* Regina coeli K. 108
* Un moto di gioia KV 579
* Per pietà, non ricercate
* ... Andante (on a release titled 4 Hornkonzerte Fagottkonzert)
* Hornkonzert Nr. 2 Es-Dur (3)
* Violinkonzert Nr. 5 A-Dur
* 2. Akt: Nr. 11. Cavatina: Porgi amor qualche ristoro" (La Contessa)"
* Orgelsolo-Messe K. 258 - 03. Credo
* Serenade G-dur, KV 525 Eine kleine Nachtmusik": IV. Rondeau. Allegro"
* Une petite musique de nuit, sérénade en Sol Majeur KV 525: 4ème mouvement
* Sonate Pour Piano N° 2 En Fa Majeur, K.280, Presto
* SONATE D-dur K.576 - 2nd Movement - Adagio
* セレナード第13番ト長調K.525（アイネ・クライネ・ナハトムジーク） 第1楽章

These aren't even hard examples to find.  Out of the 18,112 single artist
Mozart tracks we had when I got this dump (I forgot to include Mozart-on-VA
at the time, figured I'd come back to those later), less than 1% had correct
CSG, whatever the language.  Less than 30% identified the movement.  Less
than 50% identified the work in each track.

I still have 1,596 tracks where I cannot even figure out what work+movement
they are.  Around 100 aren't even Mozart, another ~400 there's no info to
even figure out what work it is (let alone the movement), another 250 or so
identify the wrong work ("Sonata in F minor, K 466 (L118)" - K. 466 is a
concerto for piano in D minor, KV 118 is an oratorio...), and the remainder,
the work can be ID'd but there's not enough info to figure out which
movement.

I have a hunch that these kinds of numbers are true no matter which composer
we could look at.  We have dedicated classical editors - leivhe, liff,
symphonick, Jim, me, etc, but there's still only a dozen or so of us, and
ten thousand+ classical releases.

Until CSG, classical itself was a mess.  CSG helped, by giving a framework
for how to name works on these releases.  Now, with Satie, Mozart, Chopin,
Beethoven, and JS Bach, we have master work lists under way.  That puts us
in a new situation.  Now, instead of having to rebuild the research into a
work, then develop the correct CSG title, each and every time, we do it
right once, then we can apply it over and over.  As the CD examples above
show, there is no one language that classical is released in.

So we have two problems with classical.  1) The classical box sets problem
that's been referred to recently in style/users (and in recent edit notes),
where the same single CD classical gets reissued over and over, and 2)
classical CDs with 2, 3, 4, or more languages all listed.

Theoretically, for the same CD, we could have it released singly and in 4
box sets, with 3 to 5 languages on each release.  Assuming each one were to
be added to the database, an argument could be made that each separate
listing in of itself is legitimate.  But that means that *1* CD now could
have between 12 and TWENTY release listings.  Add in pseudo-releases, as
people want that same disc in yet another language, the number gets even
higher.

That simply, to me, makes no sense.  And from a "cleanup and maintenance of
the data" point of view, as well as the muliplication of the number of ARs
to be added, it's beyond the scope of reality to think we could ever do it.

What I suggest then, is that, once we do have a works list for a classical
composer, we standardize the language for that composer.  The effort
involved in the creation of such a works list is massive, but we already
have some of us doing it.  The effort to then correctly identify and rename
each and every track for that composer too is great.  But it's far better
than trying to do the exact same thing, but across multiple languages for
the same release - not only do we then have works by Mozart, but we have
works by Mozart in English, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian,
Japanese, Chinese, etc - and for each one, then translate each track, then
rename it.

My hope is that eventually we have real generic works lists as database
objects (not just wikilists), and can then translate on demand to any
release to any desired language.  But until then, just getting the data
clean is in of itself a large job.

So, I suggest, rather than "choose one out of the four languages on your CD
as the one to use", or the debates (like one recently) over what language to
use when essentially there is no release language for a classical CD,
instead, let us get the info entered right, work on works lists (whichever
the CSG language that is used for each composer), then, once works lists are
done, standardize all instances of those works by that composer to the same
title.  Perhaps we even can get a language list entry specifically for
classical, "classical"...

Brian
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