[mb-style] Bach passions and CSG

[Leiv Hellebo]

Chris has replied to you on the history and the officialness of the CSG, 
I'll answer more directly.

Brian Schweitzer wrote: > Not to be totally sidetracked, though, the 
point here you may think is
> unimportant, but I would disagree.  If we go around saying that this
> or that guideline is unofficial just because it never went through
> this or that proposal process, we'll never get anything done.
> Partially, esp with regards to CSG, the reason I reacted is because I
> have myself run into situations where even autoeditors have made the
> claim that "that guideline isn't technically official, so we're free
> to disregard it".  Open that door for classical, and we'll have chaos,
> where what I think we all would love is to find a way to make both
> sets of classical guidelines, for tracks and works, happen.

With regards to the SMP, this thread has brought up two (perhaps three) 
arguments to follow the CSG for it:
1) More information is better information
2) The CSG should be followed because it is the CSG

(There's also Andrew's argument, but I think it'll be hard to make an 
official guide out of it ;)

It seems we can agree that 1) does not carry as much weight as it 
perhaps has done, given that we will have Works soon.

Ad 2):
It would not take me much effort to redo the SMP (and the Messiah the 
only ones I've done this for). Still, I am reluctant to do so, because I 
do think the adding of workname more or less breaks the primary function 
of the track title: To be useful in a normal listening context (some 
tracks on this release lasts only seven seconds, so there's little time 
to decipher the full title and extract the part title).

To generalise that lesson:
It is better to regard the CSG as a guide, not a set of hard rules.

In other words: Using the CSG form for each and every piece of classical 
is plain baseless formalism if it doesn't provide the best possible form 
for each and every piece of classical music.

In practice, I occasionally do run into some editor that has good 
reasons for doing one thing in some non-CSG way. More often than not, I 
tend to agree with these persons (also because I don't think I should be 
running this show: the more people helping out here, the more and better 
data we'll have).

I do also suggest editors read the OperaTrackStyle and other unofficial 
guides, some of which are/have been more or less agreed upon, but I 
think I usually say they can check these for "hints", not "rules".

(I remember abstaining on some Schubert Winterreise edits pradig did, 
and suggesting doing something which I had tricked myself into believing 
was agreed upon, to which pradig could inform that the score did not do 
do it like that, and that he found it improper. I felt stupid for at 
least two weeks afterwards.)


Leiv